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

• Articulating Agile values and principles
• Understanding the principles of Lean Thinking
• Comparing Agile with traditional, master plan methods

Scrum

• Recognizing Scrum as a framework for self-managing teams
• Locating Scrum in empirical process control theory
• Revealing the mandatory roles, artifacts and events of the Scrum framework

Kanban

• Identifying the link between Kanban and Lean’s focus on the removal of waste from the workflow
• Seeing Kanban as a change management approach rather than as a method
• Visualizing the workflow by designing a Kanban Board

eXtreme Programming (XP)

• Explaining the core values of XP
• Engineering software with XP’s core practices
• Running a software development project using the XP process

Comparing and contrasting Scrum and XP with Kanban

• Internalizing the differences between Scrum Boards and Kanban Boards
• Time-boxing with Scrum and XP
• Understanding why Scrum requires cross-functional teams while Kanban is neutral

Focusing on business value

• Delivering business-valued functionality as a priority
• Explicitly focusing on business value and product quality
• Evolving requirements and solutions together throughout development

Iterative and Incremental Delivery

• Delivering “early and often” for Return on Investment and feedback
• Comparing Scrum and Kanban as “pull” systems
• Classifying different types of requirement for value-driven planning

Mapping Roles and Responsibilities

• Contrasting the Agile “Feature team” model with traditional “Component teams”
• Shifting roles and responsibilities towards a self-managing team
• Leading teams rather than managing tasks

Transitioning to self-management

• Facilitating cross-functionality and team learning
• Empowering the team to control their own development process
• Navigating conflict so that it drives team behaviors in a positive direction

Growing Agile teams

• Developing genuinely collaborative behaviors
• Acquiring soft skills for servant leadership
• Adapting coaching styles to the experience and maturity of the Agile team

Defining customers and Other Stakeholders

• Regarding customers as individuals or groups who extract or generate business value
• Viewing other stakeholders as people or groups who exert oversight or impose constraints
• Prioritizing customers as the most important and relevant stakeholders

Involving Users

• Understanding the different ways Scrum and XP teams interface with customers
• Writing user stories to drive conversations with different classes of customer
• Splitting user stories so that they fit into inspect-and-adapt cycles

Planning for business value

• Envisioning products to establish the “big picture”
• Planning at release, iteration and daily levels
• Coordinating work through information radiators

Monitoring Progress

• Estimating effort with relative sizing units (e.g., story points)
• Tracking progress by measuring velocity and/or cycle time
• Holding reviews and retrospectives to adapt product and process

Removing Impediments

• Recognizing impediments as opportunities for continuous improvement
• Driving down technical debt with test automation, Test-Driven Development (TDD) and Continuous Integration