Agile Simulation – The Daily Standup Meeting
What better way to learn how to do a great Daily Standup than watching it done right before your very eyes in just 10 mins!
First witness a disfunctional way of doing Standups – then see how it should be done.
It really is an excellent example to watch and learn.
Watch the video here
RECORDING – Effective Leadership Techniques for Project Managers
There is no doubt that knowing how to effectively manage the nine Knowledge Areas identified by PMI®’s PMBOK® Guide will make you a great project manager; however project managers must also have sound leadership skills in order to set the project vision and inspire project teams to overcome project challenges and road blocks. In this webinar, you’ll learn the competencies needed to apply effective project leadership techniques to your projects, so you can create a positive, thriving, and successful project environment. What you will learn:
- Theories and applications of project leadership styles
- Methods of successful motivation techniques of project human resources
- How to lead effective project teams and negotiate with project stakeholders
- Project leadership ethics
- Project vision and commitment
- Project management strategies that help build and sustain a high-performance project
NEW RECORDING – What They Forgot to Tell You About Agile
Do Agile without sprints? Stop using Story Points? Create a Microsoft project plan for my sprint?
This webinar covers numerous uncommon ways of being Agile, without conforming to the most common Agile practices. You will learn what seasoned Agile teams know – that Agile principles can be supported in numerous ways, not strictly by the practices we usually associate with Agile.
DURATION: 1 hour
Earn PDU’s: 1
SPEAKER: Greg Smith is a seasoned Agile coach and the founder of GS Solutions Group. He is a Certified Scrum Master, Certified Agile Project Manager, and a PMI Agile Certified Practitioner. Read more
NEW RECORDING – Case Study into Leveraging Scaled Agile Framework™ in Mixed Waterfall and Agile Environments
While the adoption of Agile practices has become more and more prevalent in the industry, it’s clear that many large organizations are often unable to go “all in.” Even as we attempt to isolate initial use of Lean and Agile methods in a “pilot” environment, external forces often exist that prevent a “pure” implementation. Waterfall and Agile/Lean can co-exist.
This Agilista PM webinar will dive into 3 real life situations with mixed Agile/Waterfall environments to show you:
- How Agile projects can align their plans to a Waterfall project when they are not in sync?
- How Waterfall projects can operate within a fixed cadence?
- How to deal with potential issues that may arise in these mixed environments?
- How to know when things are not working and when to make some changes?
WEBINAR: Coping with Multitasking During Project Meetings (9/17)
During your project meetings, are the participants
reading email, surfing the web, or doing instant messaging
while they “half-listen” to the meeting?
Research shows that 90% of people participating in virtual meetings are “multitasking”: doing at least one other thing that is not related to the meeting.
Wouldn’t it be better for your project outcome if team members and stakeholders paid full attention for the whole meeting?
You may be surprised at the answer.
This entertaining and information-packed talk examines the challenge of multitasking and teaches coping skills, techniques, and tools to manage the attention of meeting participants.
Created and delivered by a master presenter who is a veteran of both project management and executive management, this course shows you how to manage participants’ attention, get your issues resolved, and adjourn the meeting with time to spare.
After this presentation, you will be able to:
- Take a rational, systematic approach to managing attention
- Get more done in less time
- Apply techniques that reduce everyone’s frustration level
Why attend?
- You sense that meeting participants are not paying enough attention.
- You have trouble getting informed decisions from busy stakeholders.
- Your meetings run too long and still do not achieve their goals.
- You experience mounting frustration about multitasking
Presenter: Jim Black (LinkedIn profile), PhD
WEBINAR: The Essential Product Owner: Partnering with the Team (10/17)
Wednesday, October 17, 2012
11:00 AM – 12:30 PM Eastern Time
In this webinar, Bob Galen will share real-world experiences where he’s observed product owners who deliver truly balanced value for their business stakeholders, and he will explain how they do it.
Agile Practices You Can Try Today
I spoke at a Fortune 50 PMO gathering recently – where the CIO encouraged 100’s of PMs to “try” new things to deliver value faster to customers. Someone asked,
“What Lean-Agile techniques can I start using tomorrow?”
My responses included the following, which every project and PM can benefit from to stay on budget and on time and on scope !!!
- Focus on one thing at a time – Studies proove that multitasking is a killer of productivity. You can really only done one thing at a time and every time you try to start something new – you actually take longer at getting everythind done. So, “Stop Starting – Start Finishing !”
- Make things VISIBLE – If you make the progress of work visible on a board or in a spreadsheet….you can easily see bottlenecks, and adjust when you see problems. “What you track is what gets done” – so track value being delivered!
- Burn Charts – Are a great way to visibly let you see how value is really being completed by tracking deliverables, features, … (not tasks getting done). When you see it is not being delivered as estimated – then you can address it quickly to bring the project back in line. It shows you if you are really on schedule or not – predict when you’ll finish too !
- Define “DONE” – Stop using percentages complete – only when something is DONE is value actually delivered! DONE tells you when you are complete your project. 90% done is not DONE. Use your Burn Charts to track DONE.
Improve Estimates by Studying Kanban Card Flow
You don’t have to use fancy tools to analyze what is going on with your projects. keeping work visible tot he team can in itselft help the team to see what is working or not — and can help them adjust to improve.
It is the job of the Agile PM to keep an eye on how work is actually getting done (or not)!
…so they can work with the team to make improvements on delivering results as quickly as possible.
Analyzing Kanban cards allow us to see where estimates can be improved as we compare actual time vs. estimated tim
Ben Mitchell shares a few of the ways his team does this by using kanban cards during the daily standup and asking good questions. A few of those questions that I’ve use all the time include:
- What kinds of work take us longer?
- Where is the time taken?
- Are there any patterns around which columns (steps) in our workflow take time?
- Where do we see delays?
- Is a step in our process adding a burden to the time it takes us to complete work?
WEBINAR – Save Time Through Collaborative Requirements Management
July 19, 2012 (10am Los Angeles / 5pm GMT)
Business Analysts are faced with an information overload problem. You spend hours circulating, editing and tracking changes to requirements stored in hard to track documents. It takes crazy heroics and is a nightmare to manage using Word, Excel and email. And still, teams often get out of sync on what they are supposed to build and why.
To get in sync, companies are adopting social technologies. But social for social’s sake has limited business value. It can create noise or distraction if not done purposefully around the requirements. Tools allow teams a new way of working that helps us collaborate in the context of our projects, by:
- Capturing decisions
- Understanding goals
- Increasing visibility
- Recognizing impacts
Join this webinar and learn how to save time and work more efficiently. We’ll examine how the BA can better interact with requirements by applying social collaboration to the requirements lifecycle, creating deeper engagement across teams and delivering successful projects.
** Bonus: All Attendees will receive a PDFof Jama Software’s, “Top Five Frustrations of Requirements Docs & Tips to Avoid Them.
SPEAKER: Derwyn Harris, Senior Solutions Architect, Jama Software
PDUs: 1
COST: Free
WEBINAR – What Is Your Teamability? Understanding the Natural Roles Your Team Members Best Fill with a Role Based Approach
July 11th and 18th, 2012 (11-2pm Los Angeles / 7-9pm GMT)
Do you want great team players on your team?
- Would you like to learn who can make or break your project?
- Are you interested in reducing the risk of a failed hire?
There are many ways to measure skills, talents, and traits, but teaming metrics are unique. It took 25 years of research and testing – including 9 years of software development – to produce TGI Teamability™ reports, which are the foundation of TGI’s Role-Based Approach to selecting, structuring, managing and motivating teams.
Organizations of every type and size experience the cost and pain of human performance failings, and are highly vulnerable to the ‘collateral damage’ that results from hiring the wrong people. TGI Teamability™ makes it possible to reliably select high quality team players, and to match their job responsibilities to the way they envision themselves serving their team (their ‘Role’).
TGI Teamability was designed from its very beginnings to measure and predict the quality of a person’s team interaction. It can greatly reduce the costs and risks associated with errors in hiring and promoting, while delivering significant business value by matching people to the functional mission of their team. It is also highly effective in analyzing and solving team performance problems.
This course is a comprehensive overview of Teamability and CHI methods. It prepares learners to provide basic support to users of TGI Teamability™, and to apply for an optional Certification. Certification requires passing a written examination and meeting TGI’s modest standards for ongoing participation.
Course content includes:
• Participant’s own TGI Teamability report ($80 value!)
• 4 PDU’s / CDU’s “category C”
• Readings to be completed during course attendance
• Brief written examination to measure comprehension of course
materials and to receive certificate (optional!)
PDUs: 4
COST: Free
Speaker: The Gabriel Institute has created technology that reveals how people will perform when working with others to solve problems, overcome obstacles, and achieve common goals. In short, it measures Teamability: the ability to connect with others to form a productive team.
** NOTE: This registration is for 2 consecutive Wednesdays.
Let’s Connect!
My Speaking Engagements …..
-Feb 28: PMI Agile CoP: Agile Estimation 102
-Apr 18: TOYOTA HQ: Start Using Agile|Lean in your Projects Today
-Nov 10: HOW TO PLAN, MANAGE, and TRACK ITERATIONS (ProjectTimes)
-Dec 16: DEALING WITH THE TOP 10 ISSUES DURING & AFTER AN ITERATION (ProjectTimes)
-Jan 13: AGILE REQUIREMENT GATHERING & DOCUMENTATION - BEYOND USER STORIES (ProjectTimes)
-Feb 10: DEALING WITH THE TOP 10 ISSUES IN AGILE ADOPTION (ProjectTimes)
Some Agile User-Groups and Links…
