COURSE SUMMARY
COURSE SUMMARY
Do you want to take Disciplined Agile to a new level? Are you looking for tools to solve complex problems and enhance your organization’s agility? Do you want to learn how to lead your team to excellence? Expand your knowledge and build practical skills around Disciplined Agile, business agility, leadership, and team development.
Disciplined Agile Senior Scrum Master is a nine-lesson, instructor-led course that shows you how to use the Disciplined Agile tool kit to solve a variety of advanced problems, work with allies within your organization, and optimize how teams work.
You will gain knowledge in planning, reporting, and metrics, and coordinating activities, as well as how to meet challenges in these areas. And you’ll develop the skills you need to foster emotional intelligence, resolve conflicts, and lead high-performance teams at any stage of development. Filled with activities, supplemental reading, and more, this course will prepare you to take the Disciplined Agile Senior Scrum Master (DASSM) exam and, equally important, start using Disciplined Agile immediately within your leadership role.
Benefits
Vitality Chicago’s Disciplined Agile training program provides attendees with additional value-added resources and services. Students that attend Vitality Chicago’s Disciplined Agile training will have access to:
KEY LEARNING OUTCOMES
With DASSM training and certification, you will:
- Take a deep dive into the DA tool kit to develop a comprehensive understanding of the hundreds of practices and strategies it contains and the trade-offs of applying them
- Learn how to apply the DA tool kit to guide your teams in choosing and evolving your best way of working (WoW) in any situation
- Use the DA tool kit to solve complex challenges commonly encountered in both software and operational business teams
- Learn how to lead agile teams through key enterprise activities, such as planning, coordinating, and reporting, and be ready to show your improvements in areas where your organization is struggling
- Understand how to improve value delivery for your customers by empowering others in your organization, nurturing emotional intelligence, and resolving conflicts
WHO SHOULD ATTEND
This workshop is for people who:
- Have 2 years of experience working on an agile team in a leadership role, like DA scrum master, scrum master, product owner, architecture owner, etc.
- Want to hone their Team Lead skills to the next level
- Want to advance their career and get certified in Disciplined Agile
prerequisites
- Have 2 years of experience working on an agile team in a leadership role, like DA scrum master, scrum master, product owner, architecture owner, etc.
- Prior to the workshop, students must purchase or have a copy of the book Choose You WoW! A Disciplined Agile Delivery Handbook for Optimizing Your Way of Working (WoW) by Scott Ambler and Mark Lines. If you are a PMI member, you can download a free e-copy. https://www.pmi.org/disciplined-agile/books/dad-handbook
- (Highly recommended) Read Section 1 of Choose Your Wow! Book and have a solid foundation in Disciplined Agile (DA) including but not limited to DA Mindset (Principles, Promises, Guidelines), DA Life Cycles, DA People, Agile Ceremonies and Artifacts, DA Process Blades, DA Process Goals, DA Process Goal Diagrams, DA Scaling Factors, 5 steps to choose your WoW, DA Phases, and Lean Principles and concepts.
- A computer with video and audio capabilities and a high-speed internet connection.
- Access to Chrome, Edge, or Safari browser
course logistics
- The course will be delivered live by Jonathan Lee, Project Management Institute Certified Disciplined Agile Instructor (CDAI), through Video Conferencing and Online collaboration tools.
- Students are highly encouraged to have video cameras on during the workshop to enhance collaboration and engagement amongst attendees.
- Students Course Materials will be provided (.pdf) one day before the session.
- This is 3 half-day course. Each day, the workshop will begin at 8:00AM and end by 1PM CST with frequent breaks.
- Class size is limited to 21 attendees
DASSM Exam Details
- One free voucher for the DASSM exam is included in the course registration fee
- Candidates need to take the DASSM exam within 30 days after the DA instructor submits the roster to PMI to use the free exam voucher
- Candidates will receive an email from PMI with instructions on how to register for the DASSM exam
- The DASSM exam is Online and hosted by Pearson Vue; it is not proctored
- Candidates can take the exam any time of the day or night
- There are 50 questions are on the exam
- Students get 90 minutes to take the exam
- PMI does not share the passing score for the DASSM exam
- If a candidate does not pass the exam on the first attempt, they may retake the exam for a $150 fee
- If a candidate fails the DASSM exam 3 times, they will need to retake the training course
- The renewal cycles for the DASSM certification is 1 year and the PDU requirement is 7 PDUs
join A public training COURSE
- Learn from the experience of participants from other companies
- Early bird pricing is available
- Courses are run every month
- PMI members may claim 14 PDUs
Upcoming Training
Jun
14
Disciplined Agile Senior Scrum Master (DASSM)
Live Online Training
Jul
30
Disciplined Agile Senior Scrum Master (DASSM)
Live Online Training
Aug
20
Disciplined Agile Senior Scrum Master (DASSM)
Live Online Training
what our PARTICIPANTS say
"I was very impressed with Jonathan's vast knowledge of DA , his approach to conducting the class, and the whole aspect, topics and format were just great. I would highly recommend his class as you start your journey to a new “WOW" way of working."
Ura PurandaPortfolio Manager
"Jonathan was very engaging and provided really good content in a short amount of time. His delivery and mastery of DASSM was impressive!"
Caesar BernardoSenior Technical Program Manager
"Jonathan, you are not just a terrific and precise DA Instructor & Coach but also an inspiring person. Glad that I registered for the training and took it otherwise I would have missed great learning experience. Thank you again!"
Susmita SharmaSenior Consultant
"Jonathan delivered the DASSM material well and made the three half days enjoyable. I’d recommend this course to anyone who leads a team or plans to in the future - very valuable!"
Phil SmeltzSenior Consultant
"Learning Disciplined Agile (DA) was one of the smartest moves I made in my project management career. ...the most benefit I got was that I was able to apply the lessons immediately after the course and implement DA on a current project."
Rob RoqueTechnology Services Manager
FAQ
- 78% of students have their PMP certifications
- 22% of students did not have any certification at all
- 31% of the students have, in addition to PMP, other agile certifications such as Scrum Alliance, Scrum.org, SAFe, and PMI (PMI-ACP)
- 5% of students only had Scrum Alliance or Scrum.org certs.
Yes, the majority of them said they intend to take the exam.
They struggle most with situational questions. Since this is an open book and open notes exam, straightforward questions are fairly easy to answer. When a question is situational and asks what would be the best answer, that is where some people can get tripped up. The DASM exam is pretty straightforward. On the other hand, the DASSM exam is much more difficult and has more situational questions. The questions force you to think deeply about the best answer and most students say they have to choose between two possible correct answers.
DASM exam is much easier than the DASSM so many students pass the DASM exam on their first or second attempt. It is dependent on how much the student was focused during the training and comprehended the information and/or studied before the exam. That said, approximately 80% of students that took the DASM course have passed the exam. There were some who were busy with work and other things that missed the 30-day window and weren’t able to even attempt their first try at the exam.
A great thing right now is that PMI is currently providing up to 3 attempts to pass the exam. That takes the pressure off a little and will make it easier to pass the exam. I tell my students to take their first exam attempt as soon as possible, within a week, to gauge their level of knowledge and then brush up on areas that they lacked based on their exam experience and try to take the exam again.
We provide a complimentary online DASM or DASSM exam prep session after the training, usually scheduled one week from class completion. In that session, we go over key focus areas. We also provide sample exam questions for students to take and get a feel for the type of questions they can expect on the exam. So far we have received a lot of great feedback on our exam prep sessions from students. They’ve said it really helped them in their preparation, confidence, and ultimately in passing the exam.
For those who are experienced agilists and have been actively practicing agile ways of working for two or more years, I recommend that they skip the DASM and go directly to the DASSM course. But before you do that, it is highly recommended that you, at a minimum, read the first 107 pages of the Choose Your WoW book by Scott Ambler and Mark Lines. PMI Members can download this book for free from the PMI site.
Those that are new to agile should start with the DASM course and then work toward the DASSM. Or if they have taken some other agile training before but haven’t really practiced agile ways of working, then start with the DASM. This will provide a solid Disciplined Agile foundation to start building agile skills.
After taking the DASM, they should take the DASSM soon after even if they don’t have the agile experience. That way they are aware and learn the advanced skills that are taught in the DASSM course. The DASSM course not only dives into more complex scenarios but also covers how to build high-performance teams, emotional intelligence, conflict management, and other useful skills that team leads need to have in their toolbox.
Disciplined Agile is a great tool kit to learn and establish your base of understanding as you get engaged in the agile way of working. DA really helps you better understand what “being agile” really means and helps you to get your mindset in the right place before you start engaging in “doing agile” work. We all need to continuously learn and grow our knowledge to stay relevant in this fast-evolving environment we live in these days. As Albert Einstein once said, “Once you stop learning, you start dying”
Students whose company is paying for the training tend to prefer weekday training. Those paying out of their own pocket and working during the week tend to prefer the full-day weekend training. Students don’t want to consume their vacation time if the company doesn’t pay for it or if they are independent consultants and don’t want to lose billable hours.
our agile training clients
