About this course
Course Overview
This Agile training course offers hands-on practices in Iteration Planning, Product Roadmap and Backlog, Estimating Practices, User Story Development and Iteration Execution.
There is more to Agile development than simply a different style of programming. That is often the easy part. Agile development methods change your approach for requirements gathering, estimation, planning, team development, stakeholder interactions and more. While not a silver bullet, Agile Methodologies have become the most practical way to create outstanding software. We will explore the leading Agile methodologies. You will learn the basic premises and techniques behind Agility — so that you can apply them to your projects.
The classroom will be broken up into Agile teams and your expert instructor will drive each team through the Agile process from planning through execution. Your instructor will answer questions with real-world experience, and you will leave the class with practical knowledge and a clear roadmap for your team's success.
Target Audience
Because this is an immersion course and the intent is to engage in the practices every Agile team will employ, this course is recommended for all team members responsible for delivering outstanding software. That includes, but is not limited to, the following roles:
- Business Analyst
- Technical Analyst
- Project Manager
- Software Engineer/Programmer
- Development Manager
- Product Manager
- Product Analyst
- Tester
- QA Engineer
- Documentation Specialist
The Agile Boot Camp is a perfect place for cross-functional teams to familiarize themselves with Agile concepts and methodologies and learn the basics of how to function as an Agile team. It's also a wonderful springboard for team building & learning. We invite you to bring your team and a team project to work on in class.
Course Objectives
After completion of the course, students will be equipped with the knowledge of PRINCE2 Agile to be able to:
- Structure a team with generalizing specialists so the team can develop working software incrementally
- Practice and maintain a regular cadence when delivering working software each iteration
- Follow the team approach; start as a team, finish as a team — and focus on delivering value to the organization
- Apply the different approach to Agile architecture and design that supports a more incremental and emergent project.
- Apply knowledge and understanding of Agile principles and why they are so important for each team
- Embrace the five levels of planning and recognize the value of continuous planning
- Build a backlog of prioritized and estimated user stories that provides emergent requirements for analysis and foster customer engagement and understanding
- Engage in more effective estimating (story points) and become more accurate by being less precise
- Create accurate Agile release plans that connect you back to business expectations – including hard date commitments and fixed price models
Course Content
- Why Agile?
- Becoming Agile
• Agile Mental Models
• Agile Manifesto
• Agile Principles
• Agile Practices
Team Exercise: Teams will engage in a fun exercise that will reinforce the importance of, and power behind, self-organizing teams. Great teams will not define themselves by their individual roles.
- Building an Agile Team
Team Exercise: We will discuss, as a class what makes a great team based on teams we have participated on that were great.
- Agile Project Planning
• Vision
• Roadmap
• User Roles and Personas
Team Exercise: Teams will practice turning User Roles into full-fleshed personas.
- Backlog Planning
• Writing User Stories
• Prioritization
• Estimating
Team Exercise: Each team will conduct a brainstorming session for creating a product backlog in the form of user stories.
Team Exercise: Teams are tasked with assigning story point estimates to enough user stories to extend at least a few iterations into the future.
- Release Planning
Team Exercise: Teams are tasked with building a release plan by incorporating priority, story point estimates, team velocity and customer/product owner input to assign stories to iterations for the desired release.
- Story Review
• Iteration Planning
Team Exercise: Teams are tasked with discussing the details of the stories that, based on the estimated team velocity, may be completed in the first iteration.
- Iteration Execution
• The Daily Scrum
• Visual Management
• Agile Metrics
Team Exercise: Taskboards are an invaluable communication tool during each iteration. Each team is tasked with coming up with their taskboard that communicates clearly their commitments for the iteration and progress against those commitments.
- Inspect and Adapt
• The Iteration Review
• The Demo
• The Retrospective
Team Exercise: Teams will discuss what things they can do the day after class ends to take what they've learned and implement it immediately so that they don't lose what they've learned.
Course Prerequisites
Test Certification
Follow on Courses
The following courses are recommended for further study:
- PRINCE2 Agile Foundation
- Agile Project Management – Foundation
- Agile Project Management – Foundation & Practitioner
