This workshop is best as a full day off-site for the entire senior leadership team and your organization’s Agile champion. A team of experts who are experienced at guiding organizations through Agile transformations will lead you in:
- Building a consensus about the importance of becoming Agile,
- Coming to a common and accurate understanding of the Agile mindset,
- Exploring the ways in which Agile practices differ from your current practices, and
- Determining what you as organizational leaders must do to make the Agile mindset and practices the norm.
Skills Gained
At the end of the day, you will have built:
- A description of your organization’s Future State with Agile,
- A strategic plan for achieving that Future State,
- Tactical plans for each area of responsibility to become Agile, and
- A commitment to moving forward with these plans to become Agile.
Who Can Benefit
Project Managers Analysts Developers Programmers Testers IT Manager/Directors Software Engineers Software Architects Customers
Prerequisites
Although it is not mandatory, students who have completed the self-paced Foundations of Agile eLearning course have found it very helpful when completing this course.
Course Outline
Future State with Agile
- Actions: We begin by reviewing the results of your Agile Assessment with an eye toward determining how each of the recommendations applies to your organization. We will add to that by brainstorming additional pains, problems, or issues that Agile practices could help correct, and benefits of Agile that the organization is looking to achieve.
- Outcomes: We will come to consensus on a list of outcomes from your Agile transformation that represent your desired Future State.
Agile Mindset, Principles, and Practices
- Actions: We then build a common understanding about Agility among the workshop participants and begin discussing the senior leader role in embracing the Agile mindset and implementing each practice. We will discuss these topics:
- Why Agile?– We look at the benefits of Agility and discuss how they apply to our organization.
- The Agile Mindset – We explore the Values and Principles that underpin Agility and discuss the degree to which the organization must change to make each part of the Agile mindset the norm.
- How Agile Differs from Traditional Project Approaches – We look at the Agile practices in each of the following categories and discuss the degree to which they differ from our current practices.
- Value Delivery and Customer Engagement
- Team Structure and Enablement
- Project Initiation, Estimating, Planning, Tracking, and Oversight
- Requirements Definition and Management
- Technical Collaboration and Quality Management
- Product Delivery and Acceptance
- Transitioning from Waterfall, Becoming Agile – We look at a model for organizational change and discuss how each step of that model could be helpful as our organization embraces Agility.
- The Future State of Agile - We end this section by reviewing the Future State with Agile that we built in part one, with the intent of making additions or changes based on our new more complete common understanding of Agility.
- Outcomes: At the conclusion of this section, we will have:
- Shared understanding of Agile
- Appreciation of senior leaders’ roles in adopting DevOps Culture, Practices, and Tools
- Future State with DevOps, updated
Part 3: Strategic Agile Plan
- Actions: We will look at a Generic Strategic Plan for Agile Transformation, discuss the applicability of each item to our organization, and brainstorm additional items that we may need. Then, based on that discussion, we will build a Strategic Agiler Plan for our own organization and come to consensus on it.
- Outcomes: At the conclusion of this section, we will have:
- A Strategic Agile Transformation Plan for the whole organization
Tactical Agile Plans
- Actions: The workshop participants will break out into small groups or as individuals to build Tactical Plans for their own areas of responsibility. Each Tactical Plan will be based on the Strategic Agile Plan, and will identify concrete, specific actions that are necessary for that particular area of responsibility to become Agile by both embracing the Agile mindset and implementing Agile practices. The workshop facilitator will circulate among the participants to help them build complete and workable plans. The workshop will then reconvene. Each Tactical Agile Plan will be presented and discussed in an effort to improve it, and to ensure that all of the Tactical Agile Plans align, synchronize, and synergize across the organization.
- Outcomes:
- A Tactical Agile Plan for each area of responsibility
- Tactical Agile Plans aligned and synchronized across the organization
Next Steps Toward Agile
- Actions: We will end by identifying actions that are necessary after this workshop, e.g.:
- Make the Strategic and Tactical Agile Plans actionable (dates, metrics, deliverables)
- Define how progress against the Strategic and Tactical Agile Plans will be tracked
- Obtain the required training, coaching, and tools.
- Wrap up with a verbal commitment by all workshop participants to do their part to make the organization’s Agile Transformation successful.
- Outcomes: Participants will list steps to take after the workshop to ensure:
- The success of the Strategic and Tactical Agile Plans
- Achievement of the desired Future State with Agile