I.  Project Envisioning or Chartering for Success

Many projects fail because they start poorly, not taking the time to establish key goals, requirements, resource needs and constraints. This is clearly one of the top three causes for failure. Here we'll explore how to properly setup an effective Project Charter and the concept of iterative Chartering to get things moving in the right direction.

a. Setting up a project Charter

b. Exploring the primary components of a solid Charter (template)

c. Beyond the physical charter, using the Chartering process as a vehicle for leveling expectations

d. Leveraging the Charter as an agile planning vehicle

e. Explore the Team Software Process (TSP) as a more "traditional" Chartering process

Practice Session:

While Chartering is often thought of as an "Initiation" mechanism, it can also be useful as a project correction mechanism, with the same processes being applied to sort through what's going wrong, planning corrective action and establishing buy-in for the compromises. This session explores this aspect of Chartering for a sample project.

II. Adapting Your PM Style to Various Software Methodologies

Even experienced project managers struggle with how to adapt their style and focus towards the various Software Development Methodologies. It's simply not about the planning, but also covers adaptability in estimation, monitoring, risk management and release readiness and delivery management. This section focuses on the keys to your agility regardless of the methods.

a. Review overall DLM (Data Lifecycle Management) types

b. Focus in on Waterfall, RUP (Rational Unified Process), Agile, and Maintenance as primary discussion points, and these 4 methods apply to:

• Planning & Estimating implications

• Product evolution

• Milestones

• Monitoring

• Change & Release Management

• Risk Management

• Test Planning

Practice Session:

In this session we'll explore some of the differences that each methodology brings to your risk management and release readiness planning. We'll do this by exploring several different metrics and examining the difference influence that the development methods have on each.

III. Agile Project Management - Principles & Practices

Software projects are increasingly challenged to do more, faster, with less. That's the driver for Agile and Lean practices being applied within software projects. This session will introduce you to Agile, Agile Project Management and how Lean principles can be applied to software projects.

a. Agile Manifesto & principles

b. Introduce APM model - Envision, Speculate, Explore, Adapt, Close

i. Go through each of the phases

c. Bringing Lean principles into play for software

• Eliminate waste

• Amplify learning

• Decide as late as possible

• Deliver as fast as possible

• Empower the team

• Build integrity in

• See the whole

Practice Session:

This session leverages the groups' current cultures and experience to perform a Force Field Analysis on adoption dynamics for bringing Agility within their own teams. This will help with taking course lessons learned back to their organizations.

IV. Extreme Programming Overview (Agile Development Practices)

Extreme programming is not only the most pervasive of the Agile Methods it's also the most effective. XP has been used in virtually every product domain and culture with outstanding results. This session begins our examination of specific Agile Methodologies - to not only learn the basics of each, but how the techniques may also be applied to more traditional projects.

a. Provide overview of XP core engineering practices

b. Focus on XP planning aspects

• Planning Game (for release and iteration planning)

• Story based requirements & card based planning

• Wideband - Planning Poker

• Velocity - based estimation & planning

c. Leveraging XP to bring Agile principles to your software projects

Practice Session:

In this session we'll explore the use of Planning Poker, a derivation of the Wideband Delphi technique, to use in a XP story release planning simulation.

V. Scrum Overview (Agile Project Management)

Scrum has been called a Project Management "wrapper" for agile teams. That's what makes it one of the most intriguing and useful of the Agile methodologies within Agile and non-Agile projects-the flexibility. This session will explore Scrum project management dynamics in detail.

a. Scrum as an Agile PM "wrapper"

b. Overview of Scrum practices

• Backlog planning

• Sprint planning

• Daily Scrum

• Self-directing teams and the notion of Agile Coaches

c. Using Scrum principles to add general agility to your projects

Practice Session:

In this session we'll explore the release planning dynamics of Scrum. Teams will be composed of Product Owner, Scrum Master and developer roles and will negotiating the trade-offs associated with fitting the proper content (prioritization, estimation) into an iteration.

VI. Crystal Clear / Orange Overview (Agile Technical Feasibility)

The Crystal agile methodology is the most openly scalable of the methods. It also aligns well with traditional approaches for architectural design and use cases for requirements. The primary reason for examining it is leveraging its practices for agile technical evolution into your project thinking and toolbox.

a. Overview of core Crystal practices

• Exploratory 360

• Design & architectural exploration (Prototyping, Walking Skeleton)

• Blitz Planning

b. How to scale the agile methods and some of the challenges associated with scaling

VII. Aspects of Agile Coaching

Many of the agile methods subscribe to a self-directed team model to increase the creativity, innovation and productivity within development teams. This places pressure on Project Managers to adopt the more effective coaching style in leading these teams. This session explores the critical attributes of high performance coaches.

a. Focused on PM soft skill development (not plan-driven)

b. Attributes of "good" coaches

c. How to make the shift towards collaborative - self-organizing team leadership models

d. Review several decision-making and facilitative tools

e. Effectively dealing with conflict

Practice Session:

In this session we'll simulate some of the more challenging feedback scenarios that face coaches. You'll learn how to create the sorts of conversations that are bi-directional and constructive-leading towards performance and collaboration improvements. It will also help hone and improve your listening skills.

VIII. Using Reflection & Making Adjustments

Often we fail to learn from our mistakes and errors and carry those lessons actively forward for improvement. Agility is truly about establishing a spirit of continuous improvement by reflecting on progress iteratively and making finely grained adjustments as required. Here we'll explore some of the secrets to running project retrospectives and making practical adjustments.

a. Aspects of a proper Retrospective

• Preparation

• Meeting facilitation

• Follow-up and driving action

b. Creating safe environments

c. Examining some of the basic facilitation skills

Practice Session:

In this session we'll discuss a few of the key success factors for running effective retrospectives-gathering lessons from the group and merging them with best practices.