Accelerating Agile Development for Scrum Teams (AADST) – Outline

Detailed Course Outline

Reviewing Agile Development and the Scrum Framework

  • Realising the strategic role of the Product Owner
  • Treating the Product Backlog order as the critical path
  • Building better processes through Scrum

Growing Agile Teams with Proper Methodology

Developing coaching skills

  • Applying different Agile coaching styles
  • Climbing the Shu-Ha-Ri ladder of attainment
  • Practising servant-leadership

Achieving continuous improvement

  • Prioritising business value as the primary concern
  • Emphasising Scrum's self-management versus the approach of other Agile methodologies

Organising around value-driven software

  • Reinforcing the strategic role of the Product Owner
  • Ordering the Product Backlog dynamically to determine the project's critical path
  • Sniffing out bad "smells" in Scrum Teams

Delivering High Performance with Agile Team Training

Employing advanced team practices

  • Distilling requirements with Acceptance Test Driven Development (ATDD)
  • Designing products through Test Driven Development (TDD)
  • Integrating functional increments continuously

Scaling Agile development

  • Coordinating the work of multiple teams
  • Applying Continuous Integration (CI) for large projects

Accelerating organisational change

  • Exposing dysfunctions in the software development process
  • Driving change through the Scrum Master role

Managing Backlogs

Prioritising product requirements

  • Separating concerns with value propositions
  • Organising Epics and Stories
  • Story-Mapping to visualise backlog

Slicing and dicing Stories

  • Planning releases with Minimal Marketable Features (MMF)
  • Characterising a well-formed Product Backlog
  • Avoiding "Story Card Hell"

Streamlining Team Progress with Lean Thinking

Maximising the amount of "work not done"

  • Thinking Lean to eliminate waste
  • Comparing Lean and Kanban to Scrum
  • Identifying opportunities to eliminate rework

Implementing Lean thinking

  • Prioritising resources with Agile portfolio management
  • Visualising throughput with Cumulative Flow Diagrams
  • Reallocating resources to eliminate bottlenecks

Improving and Measuring Team Performance

Assessing agility

  • Measuring the delivery of business value
  • Defining team performance
  • Selecting metrics that support self-management

Implementing improvement through Agile development process

  • Creating Improvement Backlogs
  • Tracking the removal of impediments
  • Developing a momentum for success

Planning for External Dependencies

Resourcing projects

  • Integrating contractors into Scrum teams
  • Outsourcing to third parties
  • Running geographically dispersed teams

Relating to external constraints

  • Mapping external dependencies
  • Addressing the slow-moving infrastructure team issue
  • Working with deployment teams

Generalising Scrum in the Wider Organisation

Scaling Scrum

  • Gaining support for Scrum
  • Creating Agility assessments
  • Addressing impediments at the enterprise level