Introduction to Disciplined Agile - Certification Prep Workshop
Presenter: Mark Lines, Enterprise Agile Coach for Scott Ambler
Agile transformation is hard because cultural change is hard. It’s not one problem that needs to be solved, but a series of hundreds decisions affecting lots of people over a long period of time that affects relationships, processes, and even the state of mind of those working within the change. Disciplined Agile (DA) is unique because it’s based on empiricism, industry data and adoption of proven practices. The result is a huge wealth of structured information that allows you to map your challenges into a tree structure of proven strategies that other people have found to work in practice. In effect you can apply DA to identify process improvements that reflect the actual situations faced by your teams.
Disciplined Agile (DA) allows you to choose your IT process for delivering sophisticated agile solutions in the enterprise. It builds on the existing proven practices from agile methods such as Scrum, Extreme Programming (XP), Lean software development, Kanban, Unified Process, Agile Modeling and others to include other aspects necessary for success in the enterprise. Discipline Agile (DA) fills in the gaps left by mainstream methods by providing guidance on how to effectively plan and kickstart complex projects as well as how to apply a full lifecycle approach, with lightweight milestones, effective metrics, and agile governance.
This workshop is not technical and is suitable for all team members. Many group exercises reinforce the principles learned. The workshop is also valuable for management tasked with moving from traditional approaches to agile.
Audience
- IT practitioners new to agile who want to get an effective start at agile solution delivery
- Existing agile practitioners who want to take it to the next level
- Senior IT Management who want to gain a deep understanding of how to take a disciplined approach to agile solution delivery
- Agile practitioners who seek Certification in Disciplined Agile
Prerequisites
- Basic concepts of agile methods such as Scrum useful but not required
- Pre-workshop Prep: Please view the “Being Agile” and “Being Disciplined” sections on the Introduction resource page before the first day of the workshop to ensure all attendees begin with the same knowledge base.
What You’ll Learn
- Discover how all aspects of software delivery – architecture, design, testing, programming, leadership, quality assurance, data administration - come together in a cohesive whole
- Gain hands-on experience with agile solution delivery techniques
- Learn how to avoid costly agile adoption mistakes by starting with a full delivery lifecycle
- Discover how to tailor your agile process to reflect the actual situation you find yourself in
Benefits
- Attendees earn the designation of Disciplined Agilist, with free first year membership and full benefits, a $50 US value
- One free Certified Disciplined Agilist test attempt when written within 30 days of the course end date, a $200 US value
- See how you can claim PMI PDU’s
Outline
Workshop Logistics
- Level: Introductory
- Length: Two days – 14 hours of classroom time plus breaks
- Approach: Approach: For each major topic in the agenda there will be instruction followed by group work. Students will work through a case study throughout the workshop so that they can discover how to apply a disciplined agile approach from end-to-end
An agile enterprise increases value through effective execution and delivery in a timely and reactive manner. Such organizations do this by streamlining the flow of information, ideas, decision making, and work throughout the overall business process all the while improving the quality of the process and business outcomes. This talk describes, step-by-step, how to evolve from today’s vision of agile software development to a truly disciplined agile enterprise. It briefly examines the state of mainstream agile software development and argues for the need for a more disciplined approach to agile delivery that provides a solid foundation from which to scale. It then explores what it means to scale disciplined agile strategies tactically at the project/product level and strategically across your IT organization as a whole. Your disciplined agile IT strategy, along with a lean business strategy, are key enablers of a full-fledged disciplined agile enterprise.
Along the way Mark will describe his experience with organizations around the world that have successfully adopted agile and lean for their teams while at the same time transforming their culture across the organization to streamline these agile initiatives.
