Info for SurveyMonkey Survey

Intro

This is background information for the public survey. You can take our survey here (Survey Monkey).

The key purpose of the survey is to serve you better.

The needs of the larger group of our contacts are diverse. Some want courses, some need workshops. Some people are looking as individuals, and some are looking for something for a group. Some are looking for public courses, and some for in-house courses.

One of our key concerns is to give you what you need where and when you need it. So, if 3 people from Group A and 3 people from Group B all want a course in NYC in July, then we create the course in July (if we can). That is, once we get 5+ people, we will create the course and confirm that with you.

Courses

Almost all of these are described more fully on this site, but here is a summary.

All of these can be done publicly or in-house.

All courses are 2 days unless otherwise indicated.

CSM

Best known course, best known certification. First thing to do for most people. Great for groups or teams.

If you want to get a team or teams started in agile-scrum, have them take this course together with the Agile Release Planning workshop.

CSPO

This is the Product Owner course, and good also for ScrumMasters (who must improve the PO) and good for others on the business side who work with POs. This includes business stakeholders, business analysts, SMEs, and the like.

More people should be taking this course. A weak PO or weak business side support is typically one of the team’s biggest impediments. And not because the PO is  weak personally, but usually because the PO is ill-trained and ill-informed about his or her role.

A-CSM

This is the new course defined by Scrum Alliance, on the Path to CSP. Aka – Advanced CSM.

This is an excellent way to develop your ScrumMasters and Coaches.

The way I do it will assure that the SM is much more effective in helping the Team move all the important metrics: BV, velocity, happiness, quality, sustainable pace, reliability. It is fairly demanding, but productive (people who can get better results).  3 days.

If you want a similar Team experience, we recommend the “Team Level-Up” workshop.

A-CSPO

This is the new course defined by Scrum Alliance, on the Path to CSP. Aka – Advanced CSPO.

This is an excellent way to develop your ScrumMasters and Coaches.

CSD

Certified Scrum Developer.

This course is not offered much. But we will arrange one if you have sufficient interest.

We think it can be very valuable.

It is 5 days in total. Typically the first 2 days are the CSM course, and the next 3 days are advanced developer topics, typically using your stack.

CAL

Certified Agile Leadership.

This is a new course.

We certainly agree that your management and your leadership needs training. This course is good.

Another approach is our Executive/Manager workshops, which are customized to your situation. See below.

Workshops

The style of these workshops varies a lot. Some are more like courses and some are very real, using real work.

These can be done publicly or in-house.

Agile Release Planning workshop

1 day. This workshop is done every time I do a CSM or CSPO. Or A-CSM.

We divide into “Teams” at tables. Each table identifies real work, that is an existing “project” or a set of work about to be started. It must be real at the organization of the person who plays the PO role.

This is very important in changing the culture regarding planning. And very important for many of the basic skills to do agile. Important even just to get a good start doing agile-scrum. Hard to be successful at Scrum if your product backlog is crappy.

Team Level-Up workshop

A lot of teams need to level-up in one sense or another. I think every team really.

The teams need to (a) all get on the same page about agile-scrum so they can do it more successfully (aka level-set), and (b) they need to raise the level of their play.

That’s the purpose of this workshop. To take teams from where they are to the next level.  Including the related manager(s).  And we expect this improvement to be measurable (higher BV, higher Velocity, higher quality, faster TTM, higher happiness, more sustainable pace, more reliability, etc.).

People may come with all or part of their team. Or we can take people and add them to a table, which acts as a team for the work.

This is a 3 day workshop. Two days are exercises and discussions.

The third day is the Agile Release Planning workshop. If people have done it before, we expect them to raise the level of their play and raise the level of play of the team they are with.

Scaling workshop

Scaling is a problem and important. And expensive.

Rather than talk about lots of patterns that you might use (using Scaling Method A or B or C), we like to get into your real situation, and help make you or your teams better now.

We want to take about 7 people that represent the people you are doing scaling with. Some managers, but I strongly recommend also some people inside a team or two.

Then we want to identify the current state (and its issues) and the future state (and its benefits). And then talk about how to move from current to future. Implementation is hard, and usually that is what restricts what we can do in the next 6 months.

We do talk about patterns, but the workshop is very practical. What are your current biggest problems? How do we solve them? (We do care we have the most important problems.) End result: Your group of 7 people is agreed on a game plan for change.

We could have two different groups in the room at the same time. This is typically very educational for all parties.

This can be done for 1 day or 2 days.

User Story / Story Splitting workshop

We help your team write user stories. And more importantly, we help them think about and practice breaking up the user stories. Often they find this hard or “impossible”.

This is very important. Large user stories in the sprint are a key reason for lower velocity, “failing” sprints and other problems.

We can have multiple teams in the room.

We usually can do this in half a day.

Impediments List workshop

Many teams do not have an Impediment List. Or, if they have one, it is not very good.

The standard version of this workshop has whole teams attend. Multiple teams is fine, even better. We can also take individuals and add them to tables, which act as a team during the workshop.

We help the team create a better Impediment List. We help them learn how to prioritize it (better). And we have them practice taking action on impediments, especially in making proposals that managers can approve.

Obviously, if you have 3 similar teams in your company, you can see the synergies in doing this together.

We can do the workshop for half a day or a whole day.

Agile/Scrum For Executives and Managers

This workshop is highly adaptive to your needs.  And we find from experience that it needs to be.

We can take: 1 hour, 2 hours, 4 hours, or 8 hours. They need lots of training, but often they will not take much extended time to go into it.

Our preference is to typically take 1-2 hours, and give an intro and get to know your people personally. This first session has some interactive elements but often is mostly basic education. All the people and politics stuff becomes much more understandable to us.

Then we discuss with you, and plan a second session, typically 2-4-8 hours more. This tends to be more interactive. The goal is to move them up the agile scale as much as possible. To help them become more effective in an agile environment (ie, we expect some of their behaviors to change). To help them feel comfortable (at least lower resistance from some). To help them become more effective advocates of agile (at least for many of them).

We can also do a 1 day “Intro to Agile-Scrum”. This can be helpful also. The expected outcomes are more in the “introduced and educated some” area.  Typically changing the culture does not happen if this is first.

We have done this many times, and each time it is notably different. Let’s talk about your specific needs.

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Please tell us if you have questions or want more information.  Info@LeanAgileTraining.com is the place to start. Or call 704-376-8881.

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