Agile, Lean, and Iterative Development: Management Overview

Overview

1 day

This practical, information-packed seminar summarizes the key research, ideas, and practices of agile and iterative development, lean product development, and Scrum, aimed at executive and product-development leadership. This is a high-impact guide for managers and students to agile or lean product-development methods: what they are, how they work, how to implement them – and why you should.

Using statistically significant research and case studies, noted methods expert Craig Larman presents a convincing case for agile and iterative development. Larman offers a concise, information-packed summary of the key ideas that drive all agile and iterative processes, with the details of popular, noteworthy agile methods: Scrum, Lean Software Development, and others. Coverage includes:

Compelling evidence that agile and iterative methods reduce project risk
Frequently asked questions
Agile and iterative values and practices
From command-and-control management to servant-leadership
Dozens of useful iterative and agile practice tips
New management skills for agile/iterative project leaders
The Lean Thinking movement and its application to software development
Key practices of Scrum, Lean Software Development, and more

Whether you’re an IT executive, project manager, student of software engineering, or developer, Craig Larman will help you understand the promise of agile/iterative development, sell it throughout your organization – and transform the promise into reality

Methods of Education

Discussion, presentation, Q&A.

Audience

This exploration of modern software management best practices is appropriate for anyone guiding, managing, or in a software development team.

Level

Introductory: This course introduces concepts and techniques that the attendee will not apply during the session.

Prerequisites

none

Objectives

Introduce Agile Methods and Lean Principles
Analyze outcomes of projects that have used Agile Methods
Convey the key principles in the new software development game
Dispel myths and rumors

Outline

Agile Methods — Agile product development frameworks aim to increase flexibility or agility in the development organization, and thereby enable business agility. They emphasize increasing transparency, inspection, and adaption, and flexible workers.

Motivation, Evidence, Benefits — There is indeed evidence that many aspects of agile frameworks (such as cross-functional teams and incremental, iterative and evolutionary development) are beneficial. In this section we examine some of that evidence.

Agile Values and Principles — Agile is based on 4 values and 12 principles. For example, Responding to Change over Following a Plan. We examine these values, with special attention to the "contract game" in traditional development.

Cross-functional Teams and Multilearning — Agile teams are cross-functional, composed of people with different primary skills so that the team is capable of doing (or learning to do) all the tasks to complete product features, without handoff from or to other teams. And the people apply multilearning, developing skills in secondary and tertiary skills, to increase their and the team's flexibility or agility.

Iterative, Incremental, and Evolutionary Life cycles — Agile frameworks deliver a working product in short cycles (iterations or Sprints), and the product evolves based on feedback each iteration, applying adaptive planning.

Self-managing Teams — The 11th agile principle is about self-managing or self-organizing teams, which implies the team decides how to achieve there goals, without micro-management. We explore the implications of this.

The Role of Managers — Since self-managing teams and adaptive planning are key elements are agile frameworks, this changes the nature of the manager roles. What are these changes and how can managers add value and help the teams?

Scrum, the most popular agile framework — By far, Scrum is the most popular agile framework, with good reason. In this section, we examine some key elements of Scrum, including roles, events, artifacts, and values.

Scaling Agile and Lean Methods — How do you apply Scrum to a product group of 1000 people, perhaps in multiple sites? We provide a few pointers to this large subject.

Lean Thinking — Lean thinking, or the Toyota Way, is not the same as agile methods, but it has been an influence on many agile approaches. What are the key elements of lean thinking? We explore some of these, including value flow, manager-teachers, managers practicing Go See and Help, continuous improvement, respect for people, and more.

Frequently Asked Questions — We conclude the introductory seminar exploring the top questions that people typically ask, including the attendees.

Maximum Participants

200

Environment - Room, Tools, Texts

Read this: Course Environment - Presentation Oriented