Agile Project Management

Prerequisites:

Course Description:

Agile promotes a move away from the traditional practice of creating and following a big, detailed up-front plan and design. Instead Agile emphasises an approach of empowered teamworking, frequent and constructive cross-project feedback, responding to change and evolving the best, high quality solution.

Consequently to be successful, Agile project teams need to apply common skills openly and in challenging new ways, and Agile Project Managers need to adopt new approaches, to traditional skills and competencies - focussed into short, measurable iteration cycles.

This course focuses on the competencies and skills required to effectively manage the processes, people and technologies required for a successful Agile delivery. It covers all the leading Agile methods including eXtreme Programming, Scrum, DSDM, the Agile Unified Process and Lean Software Development. It also explains how to introduce Agile practices successfully and ensure a sustainable transition so that Agile become 'Business as Usual'.

Attendees will gain an in-depth knowledge of how to manage agile software development projects. As well as project management skills attendee will also learn about project retrospectives, how to transition a team to agile methods and the human implications of agile software development.

This course includes the following modules:

Introduction to Agile Development

• History
• Agile Manifesto
• Agile Frameworks
• Agile Principles

Is your project suitable for Agile?

• Size
• Criticality
• Personnel and environment

Building the Team

• Multiple roles and effective communication
• Quality Goals, sharing of project management

Stakeholder Considerations

• Importance of stakeholders
• User stories
• Envisioning
• Team Vision
• Importance of Scheduling
• Deliverables
• Prototyping

Requirements

• Vision
• Objectives
• High & Low-Level Requirements
• Gathering & Modelling
• Estimating
• Prioritisation (MoSCoW Rules)
• Managing Change

Planning & Managing Project Construction

• Objectives and deliverables of construction Iteration management
• Daily Meetings
• Creating and managing the Backlog / Story List Driving the Project with Use Cases
• Estimating work and calculating velocity

Risk Management

• Difference between Agile and Waterfall
• The Risk Lifecycle

Architecture

• Importance of architecture
• What do we architect
• Need for & cost of refactoring

Planning for Quality

• What is quality and how is it measured
• Test driven development
• Test automation
• Coding & testing practices

Communication

• Project internal and external communications

Governance

• Which governance structures work
• Objectives & Business Case
• Reporting
• Working in mixed framework programmes
• Agile and regulatoy frameworks

Transition to Agile

• Preparing for change
• Agile Release Planning
• Support responsibilities during and after transition Project closedown