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Agile Leadership Training

Our Agile leadership course is focused on providing leaders and executives with the understanding and tools they need to oversee Agile and Scrum teams.

Course Summary

This two-day Agile for Leaders Training provides leaders with the understanding and tools they need to effectively lead Agile and Scrum teams, create an Agile culture, and support an Agile Transformation.

The course provides a brief overview of Agile Leadership which includes the Agile Values and Principles, lean concepts, and a summary of the most popular Agile frameworks. Leaders will understand common Agile terminology and practices, why those practices are used, and how to support teams to master them.

Agile Leaders will also gain an understanding of the benefits as well as the disadvantages of using agile as well as the common challenges involved in implementing agile ways of working.

Our Agile for Leaders training also explores governance and reporting for Agile teams and how to avoid asking teams to report on the wrong things. The course addresses the key agile leadership traits needed to be effective and how to create a receptive environment for Agile to succeed. Participants will learn how to support, coach, and lead Agile teams to maximize the benefits of Agile in their organization.

Beyond immediate Agile benefits, attendees will gain a greater understanding of the role Agile Leaders play in creating supportive Agile environments. This includes setting attainable goals, facilitating team efforts, and exploring new ways to improve operations and deliver business value.

In-depth knowledge of Agile methodology also prepares agile leaders for new cultural and behavioral transformations within the organization — equipped with Agile skills, leaders can help teams effectively navigate these transitions. It also explores in detail how Agile Leaders successfully plan and lead agile transformations and the patterns that other agile leaders have used successfully in their agile transformations.

Looking for agile leader certification courses? Check out our certified Agile Leader courses including the Professional Agile Leadership and Certified Agile Leadership Courses.

Course Outline

  • Agile Introduction & The Agile Leader Role
  • Popular Agile Approaches
  • Common Agile Practices & Concepts
  • What is Agile Leadership?
  • Addressing Organizational Culture
  • Agile Leaders Shape the Environment
  • Agile Leaders Adopt a Coaching Stance
  • Leading Organizational Change
  • Agile Governance and Funding
  • Create Your Agile Transformation Roadmap

Key Learning Outcomes

Following this Training, Leaders will be able to:

  1. Articulate the business case for Agile
  2. Understand the Scrum Framework and what to expect from Scrum Teams
  3. Implement effective Agile metrics
  4. Coach and Lead Agile teams effectively
  5. Apply the correct leadership tools for the situation
  6. Understand and remove organizational impediments to Agile success
  7. Support an Agile Pilot or Transformation

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Who Should Attend

The Agile for Leaders course is intended for executives, PMO leaders, managers, stakeholders and others who play a leadership role in an Agile environment or are responsible for helping Agile teams succeed.

  • Executives
  • PMO Leaders
  • Managers
  • Stakeholders

Agile leadership training is a great investment for any leaders who are responsible for improving the performance of Scrum teams and ensuring their organizations are on track to meet business goals.

Additional Details

Our Agile for Leaders training course can be delivered remotely, which lets staff easily connect from their home or office. We can also have our agility experts deliver the training in person in a private setting

Either way you get top-rated instructors with the experience and expertise to help leaders fully realize the benefits of Agile practices for their organizations. Our goal is simple: Give leaders a new mindset for transforming their organization’s culture with Agile training for executives that provides actionable knowledge delivered in a clear, concise, and consistent format.

Curious about what is included in our Agile for Leaders Training course? Please see below for the complete list of topics. Our team will work with you to build the course package that works best for your needs. We tailor each course from the list below to deliver a training course that provides the maximum benefit while taking as little of your valuable time as necessary.

1. AGILE INTRODUCTION & THE ROLE OF THE AGILE LEADER

  • Why do organizations pursue Agile?
  • Advantages and benefits of using Agile
  • Disadvantages of using Agile
  • Leadership in high VUCA environments
  • Project Failure Rates – Waterfall vs. Agile
  • The Agile Manifesto – 4 Agile Values and 12 Agile Principles
  • Leading causes of Agile failure
  • What is the Agile Leader’s role?
  • Enablers of business agility
  • Barriers to agile adoption & transformation
  • Common leaders’ concerns about implementing agile

2. POPULAR AGILE APPROACHES

THE SCRUM FRAMEWORK

  • The Scrum Pillars and the Scrum Framework
  • Scrum Accountabilities & Responsibilities
  • Scrum Meetings
  • Scrum Artifacts
  • Scrum as a tool for organizational change

KANBAN

  • Overview of Kanban
  • 4 Kanban Principles
  • 6 Core Kanban Practices

EXTREME PROGRAMMING (XP)

  • Overview of Extreme Programming
  • Extreme Programming Values
  • Technical Practices of XP

LEAN SOFTWARE DEVELOPMENT

  • Lean Principles
  • 7 Core Lean Concepts
  • Value Stream Mapping

3. COMMON AGILE PRACTICES AND CONCEPTS

  • Collaboration and alignment
  • User stories
  • Acceptance criteria
  • Short, timeboxed iterations
  • Minimum Viable Product (MVP)
  • Definition of Ready and Definition of Done
  • Relative estimation with points or t-shirt sizing
  • Velocity, Flow Metrics and throughput accounting
  • Reality-based forecasting
  • Plan work by teams, not by individuals
  • Multi-team planning in agile
  • Limiting work in progress (WIP) and context-switching
  • Agile teams in action

4. WHAT IS AGILE LEADERSHIP?

  • Traditional management approaches don’t fit a VUCA world
  • Agile leadership mindset shifts
  • Promote experimentation and a safe-to-fail culture
  • Demonstrate and promote learning

5. ADDRESSING ORGANIZATIONAL CULTURE

  • Agile transformation is a culture change
  • Key cultural aspects of agile ways of working
  • The competing values framework
  • Culture assessment tools
  • Tailoring the agile approach based on your culture
  • Cultural change through structure, policies, incentives, and behaviors

6. ORGANIZATIONAL STRUCTURES

  • Creating Agile teams that are effective, appropriately-sized, and cross-functional
  • Why self-organizing or self-managing teams are better
  • Protect agile teams from distractions
  • Establish communities of practice (CoP)
  • When to scale agile
  • Attending to team health

7. LEADERS SHAPE THE ENVIRONMENT

  • Leaders focus on removing friction
  • Create a leader’s backlog
  • Improve how work gets done
  • Optimize the overall Value Chain
  • Create transparency
  • Establish effective team workspaces & tools for distributed teams
  • Align HR to support agile ways of working
  • Intrinsic motivators (autonomy, mastery and purpose)
  • Evaluate the effectiveness of various staffing models

8. LEADERS ADOPT A COACHING STANCE

  • Moving from commanding to coaching
  • Team maturity and performance models
  • Coaching teams to self-manage
  • Key skills and tools for coaches
  • Self-awareness as a leader
  • Using the TAPS framework
  • How to ask powerful questions
  • Master the retrospective
  • Listening skills

9. LEADERS LEAD ORGANIZATIONAL CHANGE

  • Leading an agile transformation
  • The Kotter model for organizational change
  • The Rogers Innovation Adoption Curve
  • Satir Change Process Model
  • Create your coalition for change
  • Storytelling techniques
  • Communicating vision & celebrating wins
  • Assessing stakeholder satisfaction levels
  • Measuring Employee Engagement
  • Recognize and address organizational resistance to change

10. AGILE GOVERNANCE AND FUNDING

  • Annual budget cycles & Beyond Budgeting
  • Managing portfolios effectively
  • Why traditional project reporting doesn’t fit Agile
  • Understanding Agile metrics & reporting
  • Leveraging Objectives and Key Results (OKRs)
  • Reality-based forecasting in agile
  • Agile maturity assessments and team health surveys

11. CREATE YOUR AGILE TRANSFORMATION ROADMAP

  • How to get started with Agile (Pilot & Scale Agile Teams, Let 1,000 flowers bloom, group by group and team by team agile adoption)
  • Tips for using Agile with vendors
  • Common approaches from Patterns of Agile Journeys
  • Don’t use Waterfall thinking for your Agile Transformation
  • Create Your Agile Transformation Roadmap
  • Case studies of Agile transformation

Ready to apply the benefits of Agile to your organization? Enter your information below to request a quote:

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