Agile Fundamentals: Scrum, Kanban, Lean and XP (Course 918)

Introduction to Agile Project Management

• Articulating Agile values and principles
• Comparing Agile with traditional, masterplan methods
• Appreciating Agile development as value-driven delivery

Fundamentals of the Scrum Framework

Dealing with uncertainty and risk

• Recognizing Scrum as a framework for self-managing teams
• Locating Scrum in empirical process control theory
• Revealing systematically the issues in product development

Identifying the roles and their responsibilities

• Ordering requirements and insuring Return on Investment through the Product Owner
• Establishing the ScrumMaster as a fundamentally new management role
• Shaping the self-managed Development Team

Managing product delivery

• Creating a Product Backlog as a list of requirements and technical issues
• Iterating development through cycles of one month or less
• Time boxing to establish a regular rhythm of energized work

Tools for tracking and monitoring a project

• Capturing user needs as stories
• Using capacity-based planning to plan progress
• Measuring estimated effort with story points

Product Planning with Agile

Focusing on business value

• Delivering business-valued functionality with Sprint Planning
• Collaborating with customers to manage risk and uncertainty
• Demonstrating implemented features as "potentially shippable increments"

Identifying features for development in an iteration

• Envisioning value through Product Chartering
• Concretizing a Sprint Goal through feature selection
• Identifying development tasks in the Sprint Backlog

Fostering Self-Management within the Development Team

Creating the optimal working environment

• Staffing the Development Team
• Protecting the team from outside interference
• Making progress visible and open

Transitioning to self-management

• Facilitating cross-functionality and team learning
• Empowering the team to control their own development process
• Adapting management roles external to the development effort

Running iterations

• Inspecting and adapting through the Daily Scrum
• Producing a quality-assured, business-valued product
• Ensuring standards through an agreed Definition of Done

Managing Change

Generating rapid feedback through Sprint Reviews

• Demonstrating completed functionality to the customer
• Fostering collaboration with stakeholders through discussion of "done" increments
• Recalibrating estimates based on experience

Reviewing iterations through Sprint Retrospectives

• Revising team behavior on the basis of lessons learned
• Continuously improving by embedding new knowledge

Applying Agile throughout Your Organization

Scaling for large projects

• Working with large Product Backlogs
• Scaling the Product Owner role
• Coordinating component teams with Scrum Development Teams

Managing distributed development

• Planning Releases and Sprints for distributed teams
• Ensuring effective communication across time zones
• Holding distributed Sprint Reviews

Establishing momentum for successful adoption of Agile methods

• Assessing the organization's readiness for Agile adoption
• Creating an Improvement Backlog for ongoing improvement

Project and program managers, software architects, systems analysts, team leaders, developers and anyone interested in applying Scrum and Agile methodologies.