Agile Fundamentals

Overview

Scrum is an Agile method that has been around since early 1990's. It is a lightweight process framework for producing software in a way that allows for much faster time-to-marked and much faster return-of-investment, through iterative and incremental development. It is based on transparency, rapid feedback and continuos learning and improvement on all levels.

When introducing an organizational and process change like the introduction of Agile/Scrum, it is important to get everybody on the same page. Ensure that everybody knows why we are doing it, what we are trying to obtain, what problem we are solving and what obstacles and challenges you are likely to face. Also - its important that everybody has a good solid understanding of the underlying principles and practices applied. Know who is responsible for what, and make sure that everybody has clear picture of how to move forward.

This course has been designed to give you just that!

The course centers around Scrum, but also goes into both Lean principles as well as Engineering practices (XP). It is highly interactive, and expects high participation from the audience. There will be many discussions relating the material to your day-to-day life as well as fun and engaging exercises.

Audience

This course is targeted at all roles involved in a software project. Developers, Architects, Project Managers, Product Owners, Testers, Business Analysts, etc.

If this course is used as a kick-start of an Agile project, it is important to get the entire core team on board, as well as all major stakeholders, and other roles that will work closely with the core team.

No previous knowledge on Agile, Scrum or Lean is required.

Objectives

By the end of this course, the participants will:

Understand the core agile and lean principles Have a thorough overview of the Scrum framework Understand the importance of continuous improvement, and self organization. Know how to estimate, plan and track agile projects. Understand the importance of quality, focus, priorities and getting things done-done-done, and how the inspect and adapt cycles of scrum helps maintain that. Have a clear picture of the responsibilities of the core roles in an agile project.

Duration and Variations

The course has been designed as a 2 day course.

However the course can be condensed into a 1 day intense introductory course – still covering the core of scrum and agile, but with less exercises and less time to go into engineering practices. This variant will be suitable if you want a broad introduction to agile principles in your organization.

If this course is used to jump-start your team it can be setup as a 2-3 day course customized to your specific needs. We will include your project specifics into the exercises and get the team ready for their first sprint just after the course. A jump-start typically also includes a 1 day follow up when the team has run their first 2 sprints.

Outline

The course will cover:

• Agile background and history
• Motivation
• Scrum Overview:
• The 3 roles
• The 3 lists
• The 5 meetings
• The 5 levels of planning
• Requirements using User Stories
• Estimation using story points
• Tracking using burn-down charts
• Overview of Lean principles
• Overview of Engineering Practices (XP)