Beyond Basics Education

Fearless Agility's Beyond Basics workshops are intended for teams and organizations who have provided foundational training to their team(s), have conducted one or more pilot projects, and are ready to take their Agile implementation to the next level. All of our workshops use cutting-edge adult learning methods designed to provide maximum comprehension and retention, helping to ensure that students not only walk away with the necessary building blocks, but remember them months and even years later.

Objectives:

• Educate developing teams in the tools and best practices of high performing Agile teams
• Reinforce organizational best practices
• Promote wider acceptance and adoption of Agile approaches across the enterprise
• Build and strengthen the framework necessary to achieve Agile transformation at an enterprise level

Audience:

• Team members who feel and exhibit a growing sense of Agile mastery
• Organizations and/or business units which are ready to move beyond the basic language and mechanics of Agile approaches on the path to full Agile transformation
• Organizations and/or business units which have achieved some degree of basic Agile success but would like to experience greater performance

Workshops:

• Becoming a Self-Organizing Team
• Practical Skills for ScrumMasters
• Practical Skills for Product Owners
• Practical Skills for Scrum Teams: Introduction to Extreme Programing (XP)

Fearless Agility's Becoming a Self-Organizing Team is a 1-day intensive workshop specifically designed to follow our Foundational Education classes, such as our Certified ScrumMaster or Introduction to Scrum trainings, picking up right where our foundational classes leave off.

Through a combination of group discussion, facilitated working sessions, and interactive exercises, participants learn what it means to be self-organizing and self-managed and are given the tools and techniques necessary to foster team mastery, autonomy, and purpose.

This workshop is appropriate for all members of an Agile team.

Duration:  1 day

Prerequisites:  Completion of CSM, CSPO, or other Foundational Education workshop

Outcome:  Ability to initiate and engage in team self-organization and self-management

Class Options:  Onsite only, booked in conjunction with a Foundational Education class

Fearless Agility's Practical Skills for ScrumMasters workshop is a 1-day intensive follow-up to our Certified ScrumMaster training. Through a combination of lecture, group discussion, and hands-on exercises, students broaden their knowledge and learn more advanced tools and techniques for being a great ScrumMaster.

Topics covered include:

• Facilitation: The art of “doing nothing” with style
• Diagnosing Scrum maturity: Knowing what to look for and what to do about it
• Advanced retrospective techniques: Tools and tips for conducting great retrospectives that foster team growth and continuous improvement (without getting boring)
• Preparing for the Certified Scrum Professional (CSP) certification exam
• Additional topics identified by participants

This class is appropriate for those who have had a formal introduction to Scrum, tried their hand at being a ScrumMaster, and want to take their skills to the next level.

Duration:  1 day

Prerequisites:  Completion of Certified ScrumMaster workshop

Outcome:  Deeper understanding and utilization of effective ScrumMaster tools

Class Options:  Onsite only

Fearless Agility's Practical Skills for Product Owners workshop is a 1-day intensive follow-up to our Certified ScrumMaster and/or Certified Scrum Product Owner training. Through a combination of lecture, group discussion, and hands-on exercises, students learn advanced tools and techniques for being a great Product Owner.

Topics covered include:

• Understanding strategic long-range vision in an Agile context
• Engaging stakeholders and business leaders
• Advanced story writing techniques: Tools and tips for conducting productive backlog grooming sessions that maximize the delivery of stakeholder value and development ROI
• Release planning deeper dive: A robust set of empirically proven tools for long range planning and monitoring progress
• Preparing for the Certified Scrum Professional (CSP) certification exam
• Additional topics identified by participants

This workshop is intended for those who have had a formal introduction to Scrum, tried their hand at being a Product Owner, and want to take their skills to the next level.

Duration:  1 day

Prerequisites:  Completion of CSM, CSPO, or other Foundational Education workshop

Outcome:  Ability to utilize intermediate and advanced techniques for effective Product Ownership

Class Options:  Onsite only

Once teams have received Foundational Education and have mastered basic Agility, Fearless Agility’s Practical Skills for Scrum Teams: Introduction to eXtreme Programming (XP) is the next logical step to becoming a successful Agile enterprise.

Ken Schwaber, co-creator of the Scrum framework has said, “Scrum is a pathway...” Noted Scrum expert and Certified Scrum Trainer, Dr. Dan Rawsthorne, describes Scrum as “training wheels for Agility.” We agree with them. In our experience, Scrum is only the beginning of the road to Enterprise Agility. Scrum provides Agile-minded leaders and their staff the bare minimum of Agile management processes and, once implemented, surfaces dysfunction. Real transformation begins at the point an organization starts to address what Scrum exposes.

Practical Skills for Scrum Teams: Introduction to eXtreme Programming (XP) is 3 full days of immersive, interactive, and activity-based instruction that puts practical application at the forefront (and puts the instructor in the “back of the room”). Through a combination of informal discussion (no lectures or power point presentations in this workshop!), group activity, and hands-on technical exercises, participants learn the basic theory and practice of eXtreme Programming’s “essential practices”.

Topics covered include:

• Pair programming
• Test-driven design and development
• Merciless refactoring
• Continuous integration tools and tips
• Simple Design strategies & The Walking Skeleton
• The XP roles
• Iteration and release planning
• Estimation and velocity
• Maintaining a sustainable pace
• The System Metaphor

Duration:  3 days

Prerequisites: 

• Working knowledge of at least one modern programming language (e.g. Java, C#, Ruby, etc.)
• Basic understanding of object-oriented design and development
• Familiarity with the concept of unit testing and at least one unit testing framework (e.g. JUnit)
• Completion of 1/2 day of pre-course work and a pre-course knowledge assessment

Outcome:  Ability to put the core of XP into practice immediately; Certified Scrum Developer (CSD) eligibility*

Class Options:  Onsite only

*Requirements for CSD Certification:  In addition to the 3 days of technical instruction provided by this workshop, participants wishing to earn the Scrum Alliance Certified Scrum Developer designation must complete additional course work, such as our Certified ScrumMaster training. For more information about the full requirements for CSD certification, please visit the Scrum Alliance website.