Learn Agile

Below are some learning resources to guide you through your Agile journey. If you are PMI member, you can access the ‘Transforming to Agile’ webinar series here.

Webinar: Top Reasons Agile Adoption Fails, and How to Avoid Them!

This was a webinar I presented to discuss real world reasons Agile adoption fails and the success factors for avoiding them. Enjoy!
 

Description: So you heard about Agile and Scrum – someone told you it was the silver bullet, you picked up a book, went to a seminar and maybe even actually dished out a few bucks to go get your team certified to be ScrumMasters. You might have even tried a Pilot project so you can try the methods out. So the question is, what next? How can I ensure a successful Agile adoption? How can I learn from other people’s mistakes and develop an adoption roadmap that bypasses all the common adoption pitfalls? If you are interested in learning the key real world success factors for Agile adoption, then this webinar is for you!

Real World Effective/Agile Requirements Gathering and Release Planning

This is the presentation I offered at the IBM 2010 conference around real world techniques and best practices for effective requirements gathering and release planning. Enjoy!

Nationwide Webinar: Comparing and Contrasting SOA and Agile

Yes, both of them are buzz words, but when you peel back the buzz, what is the true value that lies behind both of these methods? How do they compare and how do they differ? Most importantly, how can we bring about Agility to SOA projects and how can better architecture be applied to Agile projects? We will also discuss some of the challenges with attempting iterative development on SOA projects.

PMI ProDev Conference – Becoming an Effective Facilitator

Did you know that many judge your effectiveness and leadership skills by how well you run your meetings? The key to a successful group session is having an effective facilitator who can organize the meeting, control it and skillfully guide the team towards achieving their goal for the session.
You may think ‘We already know how to facilitate group sessions’ but you will be surprised at the statistics and costs of how many meetings we all attend yet how little of them are actually effective in terms of reaching their goal!
This seminar is a 1 hour version of our 2 day course on facilitation that covers at a high level what is taught in the class.

Nationwide Webinar – Agile and Scrum – Comparing Agile Roles to Traditional Roles

Have you wondered how different your role would be if you were adopting Agile and Scrum methods in your organization? The goal of this seminar is to explore and contrast the Agile vs. Traditional Roles and Responsibilities in addition to outlining the new skills needed for being part of an Agile team. We will explore the following roles:

1. Sponsor vs. Product Owner
2. Project Manager vs. ScrumMaster
3. BA vs. Agile BA
4. Tester vs. Agile Tester
5. Developer vs. Agile Developer
6. Architect vs. Agile Architect
7. Resource Manager vs. Agile Resource Manager

This was presented as a nationwide webinar in September and covered the success and challenges various organizations have faced with the culture change needed for adopting these new roles.

IIBA Seminar – ‘What is Just Enough Documentation?’

There are lots of misconceptions around what Agile says about documentation. One is that Agile has NO Documentation! That brings a smile to a few folks and drives others (like me) crazy! If you’ve read anything about Agile, you’ll hear that what it really preaches is ‘Just In Time’ or ‘Just Enough’ documentation. So what does that mean? Why aim for ‘Just Enough’ and not ‘Perfect’ Documentation? I prepared this seminar for the Omaha IIBA group to share my real world experience and examples of what we actually use on actual projects. I thought of sharing this here with all of you too. If you want a copy of the agile workbook I demonstrated here please email me sally@agiletransformation.com .

IIBA Seminar – The Agile BA Role

This seminar was presented to the IIBA Omaha group in July 09. My goal was to provide a quick overview of Agile and then dive into the role and skills needed for a BA on an Agile team and compare this role to it’s traditional implementation. Let me know if you would like me to present this or a similar topic at your organization. View the presentation below: