Agile Project Management (ICP-APM)

About This Course

In this Agile Project Management training course you will learn advanced project management skills to help you, the servant leader of your Agile teams, enable your team(s) to deliver what your customers want faster and with better quality than ever before! This is an advanced course for those who are already familiar with agile methodologies who wish to take their skills in Project Management for Agile Teams to the next level. All of the Agile Project Management practices in this course are documented and cross referenced as part of the course materials — allowing you to continue your study after the course!

This course meets the requirements for the ICP-APM designation (ICAgile Certified Professional in Agile Project Management).

Course Objectives

• Understand Agile Project Management principles and practices that will transform team performance and improve customer satisfaction
• Acquire valuable insights into how you can build trust and “empower and inspire” your Agile team
• Gain insight on how to establish transparency in communication inside the team as well as with customers
• Learn techniques to develop teams into high-performance Agile teams
• Gain powerful Agile Project Management skills using Agile estimating techniques that will allow you to derive estimates quickly and more accurately and aid you in iteration and release planning
• Combine the best methods from multiple Agile Project Management methods to apply to your Agile team
• Establish a plan for incorporating Agile Project Management practices into your specific work area
• Gain powerful insights, techniques and skills to successfully coach a new or existing Agile team
• Learn how to establish and communicate appropriate expectations for your Agile team, including roles, responsibilities and accountability
• Convert prioritization of requirements from a point solution to a continuously evolving part of the Agile development process

Course Audience

This Agile Project Management training course is designed for anyone who is considering the use of an Agile methodology for software development, including:

• Project Managers
• Analysts
• Developers
• Programmers
• Testers
• IT Managers/Directors
• Software Engineers
• Software Architects
• Software Managers
• Testing Managers
• Team Leaders
• Customers/Stakeholders
• Product Owners/Product Management

*Delivered by ASPE, ICAgile Member Organization

Course Outline

Cutting Edge Ideas

This Agile Project Management workshop is based on leading edge tools and techniques from many of those at the forefront of the introduction of Agile and current thought leaders in the industry today. Every ASPE instructor has been “in the trenches” as an Agile Project Manager and Coach of Agile teams. Each instructor brings real-life experience to teach and guide participants during the delivery of this course.

Specifically, this course will cover:

Class Exercise
In this exercise, we will discuss the project team in today’s environment and the impact that knowledge work has had on the development industry. Views from Drucker and select studies from leading industry whitepapers will be discussed to help you gain an understanding of and how to work with development teams in complex environments.

Class Exercise
In this exercise, participants will investigate project uncertainty and discuss specific techniques to not only mitigate risk — but to leverage it! We will look at different ways to view constraints and tradeoffs to share them with the stakeholder.
Additionally, we will review different approaches the Agile Project Manager can take to mitigate risk when dealing with budget, vendors and contracts.

Class Exercise
The case studies and discussion exercises in this section help the Agile Project manager understand the difference between diagnostic and performance metrics and how to utilize metrics in an Agile Framework. Participants will discuss how understanding these types of metrics, applied to the individual, team and project, will help the Agile Project Manager guide both the team and the project in the daily work environment.

Class Exercise
The exercises in this section will provide participants with an overall view of how to establish empowered teams quickly based on the organization of roles. Exercises are designed to create an understanding of team dynamics. In addition, case studies are used to examine the differences between Agile teams and traditional teams. We will discuss a set of Agile project management “tools” which teams can use as they work towards becoming a high performing team. Additional exercises in this section cover trust and the three steps of rebuilding trust as well as conflict and conflict resolution and how the Agile project manager can help the team to develop trust and resolve conflict as it arises. A final, interactive exercise for this section will challenge the participants to put all of these tools and topics in place and work as a team to meet the exercise objective.

Class Exercise
In these sections, the exercises will help the Agile PM focus on the delivery of value and achieving customer/stakeholder satisfaction. We will discuss theory and show the use of feedback loops in the value cycle and discuss as a group how techniques like “trimming the tail” can be used to assist the team and stakeholder. 

A highly interactive team exercise will be used to teach participants the concepts of continual planning and re-estimation how and why to make these plans visible to the organization.

Class Exercise
The objective of the exercises in this section are to understand the importance of and how to create stakeholder involvement in our projects. As a “live case study,” teams will create an Agile “communication plan” and then, as a group we will discuss the options for communication and collaboration which an Agile project manager can utilize to create transparency and help create team success.

1. The Reality of Agile Projects
   • Taking an Agile View
   • Tolerating ambiguity and uncertainty
   • Understanding where traditional practices fall short
2. Managing Constraints
   • Strategically Leveraging Constraints
   • Managing Tradeoffs to Enhance Quality
   • Managing Risk
   • Managing Budget, Vendors and Contracts
3. Understanding Agile Team Performance and Metrics
• Measuring Team Performance
• Team Productivity Metrics
• Determining the Health of the Project
4. Establishing and Emporering Teams
• Establishing Effective Teams
• Work with Project and Team Charters and Working Agreements
• Creating an Empowered Team
• Servant Leadership and Building Trust
• Developing Team Members and Managing Resources
5. Maximizing Value and Agile Planning & Estimating
• Gain an Understanding of Adaptive Planning
• Learn How to Leverage your Plan to Deliver Quality and Value
• Learn How Much to Invest Up Front
• Understand Progressive Elaboration
• Learn Continuous Planning, Collaboration and Transparency of Estimation
• Review Estimating and Estimation Techniques for an Agile Team
• Iteration and Release Planning Estimation
6. Communication and Collaboration
• Creating Stakeholder Engagement
• Building Community
• Establishing Fluid Communication Planning
• Creating Open Information and Visible Communications