Agile Boot Camp

Overview:

An immersion workshop across the broader aspects of Agile Software Development including: the Methodologies, Requirements, Planning, Development & Testing Practices, and Enterprise Scaling & Adoption Strategies.

Description:

Explore Software Agility from a Variety of Perspectives
There’s more to Agile development than simply a different style of programming. That’s often the easy part. However, it totally changes your methods for:

Requirements Gathering

Project Estimation & Planning

Team Leadership

Producing High Quality Software

Working with your Stakeholders & Customers

Focus on Team Development
While not a silver bullet, Agile Methodologies are quickly becoming the best way to create outstanding software. We’ll explore the leading methodologies where you’ll learn the basic premises and techniques behind Agility—so that you can apply them to your projects.

Discover the Differences Across the Various Methodologies
One of the most confusing parts of adopting Agile development surrounds the wide variety of specific methodologies. Some are targeted towards very small environments, while others tend to scale better. You’ll discover the differences and how to select characteristics that best meet the demands of your organization—enabling you to tailor Agility within your environment to maximize your adoption success.

Realize that Customer Collaboration is the Key to Effective Requirements
Somewhere in our traditional software history we left the customer out of the requirement management life cycle. We also forgot that requirements emerge and are discovered while building software and can’t always be well defined in advance. The Agile Methodologies take a fresh and different approach. Setting a collaborative and exploratory model with the customer that allows for change and adaptation. Customers are involved heavily in each iteration—defining requirements, their priority & value, and accepting each iterations result. There are no surprises or long periods without visible results. From the perspective of driving business value, there is no better way to work!

Transform Waterfall Thinking to Agile Action
To some degree we’ve been trained too well. We think that solid software can’t be built without following the pre-defined waterfall process. For example, architecture, design, and requirements MUST be defined in complete detail before coding can begin. Even when we iterate, we do the work in a define-code-test approach, throwing deliverables over each of the “walls”. Agile methods subscribe to a very disruptive alternative to these approaches. One that’s hard to grasp on your own. Here we explore Lean principles of reducing waste, just-in-time development, and emergent product development—all leading towards more actionable delivery.

In this 4-day, one-of-a-kind course, you will gain the practical and pragmatic real-world skills to successfully utilize Agile Software Development methods back at the office.

Leading-edge tools, techniques, and ideas
The Agile Boot Camp is based on leading-edge tools and techniques from some of the principles leading the Agile evolution. We’ll explore concepts from:

Agile Estimation & Planning - Cohn

Agile & Iterative Development – Larman

Crystal Clear – Cockburn

Extreme Programming – Beck

Lean Software Development - Poppendieck

Retrospectives – Derby & Larsen

Enterprise and Scrum – Schwaber

Managing Agile Projects – Augustine

User Stories Applied – Cohn

Scaling Software Agility - Leffingwell
One of the strengths of the course is that it serves as a learning springboard into further areas of Agile Methods and Practices. A full reference resource list will be provided.

Immediate Benefits of Participating in this Workshop

Review the Agile Manifesto Principles to fully understand the philosophy and balance required for “True” Agility
Gain a solid overview of the technical and management aspects of the leading Agile Methodologies
Learn how to blend aspects of the Agile Methodologies into your traditional projects—for incremental Agile improvement
Discover how to conduct an Agile Retrospective—to learn how to continuously adapt your team to work most effectively
Gain techniques to develop Agile requirements in the form of User Stories that are both simple and powerful
Learn why Agile requirements are emergent in nature so that you develop only what you need, when you need it
Order your stories into themes that encompass architecture and feature development in a value-based manner
Discover the power of the Card-Collaboration-Confirmation technique for defining requirements that emphasizes customer defined Acceptance Tests
Understanding the different approach to Agile architecture and design that supports a more incremental and emergent approach
Learn how to adapt from a plan-driven approach to continuous planning including actual velocity-driven aspects into your planning, scheduling, and tracking
Understand various Agile estimating techniques that can easily be used in Agile and traditional projects
Improve your Release planning with Agile Release Planning including very visible goals & metrics
Learn how to adopt Agile practices effectively within the context of your existing software development framework
Use velocity-driven planning in order to support Fixed Date or Fixed Price environments
Discover the critical factors driving Agile adoption failure and how to avoid them in your adoption
Using Scrum as the backdrop, acquire techniques for successfully scaling Agile Methodologies across your teams and Enterprise 

Learn how to plan multifaceted, top-down AND bottom-up Agile adoption strategies that work
Most important, take away lessons in how to change your leadership style towards a more coaching based model for successfully leading Agile self-directed teams