Workshops and Training Sessions
Our workshops bridge the gap between Agile training and “walking the talk” – actually running your agile iterations. After brief initial training the real test is whether your team can apply what they learned. Our workshops occur over the span of one to three weeks as part of normal coaching. By immediately using their new skills, you ensure your team gets a return on your training investment.
The emphasis is on action – learn by doing. We make a light pass through some of these workshop topics early on. Then we make a deeper pass through more of them. In order to start your iterations you need to create a backlog of stories to work on, plus enough technical practice foundations to deliver tested working code as you go. It’s important not to get bogged down trying to do too much up-front work based on guesses.
These topics are not strictly sequential. It is normal to begin doing some story writing workshops before release planning, for example. Several cycles of story writing and estimating will usually occur also. These workshops are designed to cover all the considerations necessary to get a team and their stakeholders ready to start their first agile iteration (or to get back on track if their agile process has become stalled).
Project Initiation
∆ Communicate project goal and scope
∆ Identify key stakeholders
∆ Understand what constitutes a viable agile team
∆ Decide who fills agile roles
∆ Ensure that liaison people are in place for any external vendors or others
∆ Identify key risks and mitigation
Release Planning
∆ Understand the depth of release planning needed by this project
∆ Determine this project’s release date goals
∆ Decide iteration lengths to use
∆ Understand why we separate size and duration estimates
∆ Understand story point estimation concept
∆ Estimate team’s expected velocity
∆ Decide whether an ‘Iteration Zero” is needed
Working Agreements
∆ Identify contact points in departments that the team will interact with
∆ Identify external parties the team depends upon
∆ Establish mutual commitments with each outside group the team depends upon
Backlog Management
∆ Understand backlog prioritisation strategies
∆ Know roles of stakeholders in backlog maintenance
∆ Set up invitee list and schedule for stakeholder meetings
∆ Know Product Owner’s duties before, during, after iteration
Story Writing
∆ Identify requirements
∆ Decide on high level acceptance criteria
∆ Write requirements (stories) that can be implemented iteratively
∆ Write enough stories for sufficient backlog to start this project
Planning Poker
∆ Understand concept of ‘just-in-time’ specifications
∆ Learn technique of fast team-based estimating
∆ Generate story points estimates and, optionally risk estimates for stories
Software Defect Prevention
∆ Ensure that team has sufficient tools and servers to enable automated unit testing
∆ Set up initial Agile technical practices
∆ Evaluate how the new code will fit the present architecture
∆ Establish a strategy and team norms for use of software configuration control
∆ If legacy code is involved, analyse root causes and cluster patterns of defects
∆ Ensure team is fully equipped to produce bug-free new code
Consensus Decision Making
∆ Equip team with multiple ways to make decisions
∆ Know when to use the various decision rules
∆ Get basic decisions made for initial team norms
Visual Workspace
∆ Understand techniques for story board organization of work
∆ Set up team’s story board
∆ Decide norms related to use of visual work space
Planning Bucket
∆ Understand why/how cross-skilling plus proper selection of team members gives schedule flexibility
∆ Understand when to use more than one “planning bucket” for a project
∆ Generate a capacity plan for the first iteration’s work
Task Estimation and Tracking
∆ Break out a story into its tasks
∆ Provide team-owned estimate for each task
∆ Decide what stages each task must traverse till it is complete
∆ Decide how the team will use the visual workspace to signal task completion
The emphasis is on action – learn by doing. We make a light pass through some of these workshop topics early on. Then we make a deeper pass through more of them. In order to start your iterations you need to create a backlog of stories to work on, plus enough technical practice foundations to deliver tested working code as you go. It’s important not to get bogged down trying to do too much up-front work based on guesses.
These topics are not strictly sequential. It is normal to begin doing some story writing workshops before release planning, for example. Several cycles of story writing and estimating will usually occur also. These workshops are designed to cover all the considerations necessary to get a team and their stakeholders ready to start their first agile iteration (or to get back on track if their agile process has become stalled).
Project Initiation
∆ Communicate project goal and scope
∆ Identify key stakeholders
∆ Understand what constitutes a viable agile team
∆ Decide who fills agile roles
∆ Ensure that liaison people are in place for any external vendors or others
∆ Identify key risks and mitigation
Release Planning
∆ Understand the depth of release planning needed by this project
∆ Determine this project’s release date goals
∆ Decide iteration lengths to use
∆ Understand why we separate size and duration estimates
∆ Understand story point estimation concept
∆ Estimate team’s expected velocity
∆ Decide whether an ‘Iteration Zero” is needed
Working Agreements
∆ Identify contact points in departments that the team will interact with
∆ Identify external parties the team depends upon
∆ Establish mutual commitments with each outside group the team depends upon
Backlog Management
∆ Understand backlog prioritisation strategies
∆ Know roles of stakeholders in backlog maintenance
∆ Set up invitee list and schedule for stakeholder meetings
∆ Know Product Owner’s duties before, during, after iteration
Story Writing
∆ Identify requirements
∆ Decide on high level acceptance criteria
∆ Write requirements (stories) that can be implemented iteratively
∆ Write enough stories for sufficient backlog to start this project
Planning Poker
∆ Understand concept of ‘just-in-time’ specifications
∆ Learn technique of fast team-based estimating
∆ Generate story points estimates and, optionally risk estimates for stories
Software Defect Prevention
∆ Ensure that team has sufficient tools and servers to enable automated unit testing
∆ Set up initial Agile technical practices
∆ Evaluate how the new code will fit the present architecture
∆ Establish a strategy and team norms for use of software configuration control
∆ If legacy code is involved, analyse root causes and cluster patterns of defects
∆ Ensure team is fully equipped to produce bug-free new code
Consensus Decision Making
∆ Equip team with multiple ways to make decisions
∆ Know when to use the various decision rules
∆ Get basic decisions made for initial team norms
Visual Workspace
∆ Understand techniques for story board organization of work
∆ Set up team’s story board
∆ Decide norms related to use of visual work space
Planning Bucket
∆ Understand why/how cross-skilling plus proper selection of team members gives schedule flexibility
∆ Understand when to use more than one “planning bucket” for a project
∆ Generate a capacity plan for the first iteration’s work
Task Estimation and Tracking
∆ Break out a story into its tasks
∆ Provide team-owned estimate for each task
∆ Decide what stages each task must traverse till it is complete
∆ Decide how the team will use the visual workspace to signal task completion