At a glance
Practices of Agile Teams
This course examines the roles and responsibilities of team members working on Agile projects, and delves into the specific practices which are used on Agile projects.
This is a two-day course designed to give participants an understanding of what to expect on an Agile project and the skills to be effective on one. The course can also be run internally as two separate one-day courses.
The course covers the philosophy, values, principles and background to this approach to building software. It explains the flow, the processes and the environment of an Agile project, giving participants an overall understanding of the Agile world and the tools and techniques used in delivering value. It presents a structure for defining value and ensuring the project delivers the right product at the right time for the right customer.
Intended For
- Team members becoming involved in Agile development
- Project managers entering the Agile environment
- Managers of teams involved in Agile development.
Prerequisites
Some knowledge of Agile practices would be an advantage. A suggested precursor would be Software Education's course Introduction to Agile Methods.
Learning Outcomes
By the end of the course participants will be able to:
- Understand the background to participating in an Agile project
- Understand the roles and responsibilities of a typical Agile project team
- Understand the various tools available to Agile teams to facilitate the project
- Understand how Agile teams cooperate and collaborate to deliver business value
- Understand the important interpersonal skills Agile environments encourage and foster
- Understand how discipline and standards contribute to Agility.
Content
- The genesis of Agile -where these approaches came from and why they work
- The Agile lifecycle and iterations
- Roles on an Agile project
- The phases of an Agile project
- Project initiation activities - making sure we start right, focus on value and build the right product
- User Stories
- What's a story?
- How big is a story?
- Identifying stories
- Characteristics & content of stories
- What does “Done, Done, DONE” mean?
- Quality stories
- Stories & Epics
- Estimating from stories
- Release planning
- Acceptance tests and verifying stories
- Elaborating stories to be useful without wasting time or effort
- Agile tools - big visible charts, things on walls, velocity, burn-up and burn-down
- The “pulse” of an Agile project
- Iteration planning
- Collaborative work
- Make flow visible with the story wall
- Daily standup
- Showcase
- Retrospective
- Supporting tools
- Testing on Agile projects
- Design and development practices in an Agile setting - TDD, continuous integration, refactoring, pair programming, simple design . .
- Working effectively in empowered teams
- Listening and collaboration skills
- Dealing with issues and conflict in the team.
- Where to from here?
Method Used
Lecturing is kept to the minimum necessary, most of the learning is achieved through applying the practices and techniques in group exercises and a case study.
