NEW RECORDING – Launching Agile Release Trains: Why Start at the Program Level?
Many organizations are tempted to begin their agile transformation with a series of low risk, stand-alone pilots. While these pilots may prove that teams can adopt a new process, they don’t prove that enterprise teams can work together to drive out dependencies, gain alignment across stakeholders, provide program-wide transparency, and deliver end-to-end value.
Why is it that companies who go “all in” at the program level have a higher chance of success?
In this webinar, Dean Leffingwell himself will answer questions like the following:
- What are the business benefits companies have seen by launching agile programs (also known as Agile Release Trains)?
- How do you identify the value streams in an enterprise – the long-lived series of system definition, development and deployment process steps used to build and deploy systems?
- How do you identify your Agile Release Trains – the virtual organizations formed around these value streams?
- How do you prepare an organization for the first Agile Release Train launch?
- How do you execute using the one week Quickstart adoption model?
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?
Creating a Kaizen Culture for a High Maturity Agile Organization
Everyone I know working to help organizations to become Agile agree that…
Becoming Agile is a Process
I know teams that have been maturing for 3+ years and they will tell you they still have room for growth. That tells me from first hand experience as well as talking to organizations that have committed to this journey so they can be more responsive to their customers and business, that not only do you have to be committed to being patient with the growth process – you can help the process by creating a Kaizen Culture.
What is Kaizen?
Kaizen is a Japanese word for “improvement”, or “change for the better”. It refers to philosophy or practices that focus upon continuous improvement of processes.
Kaizen is a daily process, the purpose of which goes beyond simple productivity improvement. It is also a process that, that can humanize the workplace, helps people work smarter, not harder; and teaches people how to spot and eliminate waste in their own work and business processes. It covers five main areas: Read more
6 Agile Planning and Analysis Practices to Try
Recently I spoke at a Fortune 50 PMO gathering of all their PMs – where the CIO encouraged them to “try” new things to deliver value faster to customers. Several of the ideas I shared with them are listed in a great article at ebg Consulting.
Someone asked:
“What Agile techniques would you suggest introducing to a software development team that is currently not using the Agile approach but would like to get a flavor for the methodology?”
Several key fundamentals for doing and being agile in the Planning & Analysis area shared included:
- Analysis is the “entire teams responsibility”
- Expect to “fail” to learn
- Value is in the eyes of the beholder
Read much more detail in the entire article here.
NEW BOOK – The Scrum Field Guide “Practical Advice for Your First Year”
The Scrum Field Guide (by Mitch Lacey) is meant to help you fine-tune your own implementation, navigate some of the unfamiliar terrain, and more easily scale the hurdles we all encounter along the way.
Who Should Read This Book
If you are thinking about getting starting with Scrum or agile, are at the beginning of your journey, or if you have been at it a year or so but feel like you’ve gotten lost along the way, this book is for you. I’m officially targeting companies that are within six months of starting a project to those that are a year into their implementation, an 18-month window.
This is a book for people who are pragmatic. If you want theory and esoteric discussions, grab another of the many excellent books on Scrum and agile. If, on the other hand, you want practical advice and real data based on my experience running projects both at Microsoft and while coaching teams and consulting at large Fortune 100 companies, this book fits the bill.
Read more
CERTIFICATION: Lean-Agile Project Management
This course incorporates all of the latest lean-agile methods to ensure your success!
- Participants will learn how to effectively implement Lean practices, Scrum, Enterprise Scrum, Kanban, and hybrids driven by lean thinking
- Designed for those looking to start an Agile initiative, mature their current Agile process, or to extend their Agile initiative beyond their teams
- Addresses which Agile method is best for your company’s culture.
** $100 discount for The Agilista PM readers (Code = AgilistaPM).
*** Earn 21 PDU’s for an early-bird price of $695 – that is only $33 per PDU !!!
Learn SCRUM in Under 10 Minutes (in HD)
All new recording…in HD just released !
Learn Scrum in under 10 minutes. This video is an introduction to the Scrum software development methodology. By the end of this fast-paced video, you’ll practically be a scrum master. You’ll know about the follosing and will be ready to start implementing Scrum in your own team.
- burn-down charts,
- team roles,
- product backlogs,
- sprints,
- daily scrums
- and more…
PMI-Agile Webinar – “Does Risk Mgt have a place in an Agile Lifecycle?”
We often have questions about relating traditional PM practices to Agile practices. This is especially true in the area of risk. In this one hour webinar, Greg Smith (Author of Becoming Agile) and Donna Reed (The Agilista PM) will cover traditional risk management techniques and contrast them to the Agile risk management practices.
You will learn how to use traditional risk management in harmony with an Agile lifecycle and how to perform risk management at a level that minimizes waste and over-planning.
Areas covered include
- BURP (Big Upfront Risk Planning),
- daily risk management,
- and Team involvement in risk identification.
Hosted by: PMI Agile Community of Practice
Duration: 1 hour
PDU’s earned: 1
Differences between Waterfall, Iterative Waterfall, Scrum and Lean Software Development (In Pictures!)
This simple overview of the different Agile-Lean methods found was too great to not share. Sometimes it is best to keep it simple to build a foundational understanding….then build on that. Pictures speak a thousand words.
- Waterfall Development,
- Iterative Waterfall Development
- Scrum/Agile Development
- Lean
Thanks goes out to author Tara Lee Whitaker, a digital program director of a leading consumer magazine publisher in the UK. She has over 10 years of experience in the areas of product, project and program management. – The Agilista PM
Read more
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…
