Description

Leading agile teams might be one of the hardest things you’ve ever done. That is if you want to do it effectively and congruently. The agile methods have moved beyond hype and novelty to embed themselves in nearly every software company in the world. That’s sort of the good news. That these methods are here to stay and have the potential to be a game changer.

The bad news is that it takes a leadership transformation to effectively make agility work. You see, you can’t just “go Agile” and not change your leadership style, habits, approaches, and posture. It also requires a culture shift. All of which point to you as a key guide to lead your teams through all of these changes. But there has been a lack of focus on leaders and the requisite leadership skills in agile contexts.

Well, the good news is that this course is intended to address exactly that challenge. And do it in a practical way. Sharing stories, practices, and real world experience in into the dynamics of effective agile leadership. If you are looking to become a skilled agile leader, then this class is a wonderful way to kick-off that journey.

Duration 2 Days.

This workshop provides a Certified Agile Leadership, Level 1 (CAL-1) certification with the Scrum Alliance.

Content

1. What is the agile mindset, how to adopt it, and how to inspire it?
2. A walk thru Bill Joiner’s - Leadership Agility.
3. A quick overview of Scrum, XP, and Kanban thru the lens of the leader.
4. The importance of trust in any agile transformation: downward, upward, and outward
   trust.
5. The evolution of agility from a management and technology perspective – why agile?
6. We’ll spend ~20% of the workshop focused towards developing your coaching skills;
   practicing coaching conversations throughout.
7. We’ll also spend a considerable amount of time on communicating the vision, mission,
   WHY, behind agility. Exploring how
8. How to become a better storyteller as a leader and the impact that narrative can have in
   agile contexts.
9. How to create agile supportive organizational structures.
10. The dynamics of agile at-scale exploring: models, frameworks, networks, and simplicity.
11. What does high-performance agility “look like”?
12. Effective agile metrics – what, how, and from where.
13. How to approach “governance” within agile contexts.
14. Approaches for strategically guiding organizational change; including agile
    transformation.
15. Effectively structuring and leading distributed teams.
    Link to the more detailed CAL learning objectives on the Scrum Alliance website

There are about 1-2 hours of class prerequisites that will be emailed to you 2-3 weeks before
the start of the class. There will also be the opportunity for two post-class follow-up sessions.

One will be a Q&A session related to any class items that we weren’t able to cover to your
understanding. The other will be a 1:1 coaching session related to your ongoing agile leadership
journey. Both are “optional” and not directly related to certification.

Attendees

The CAL is focused towards leaders and managers. Line managers and up will gain value from the class. As would senior ScrumMasters and agile coaches. In addition, senior product managers or product owners would also gain value. The sweet spot for the class is a company’s entire cross-functional leadership team engaged in an agile transformation. The broader the
representation, the better.

Bob Galen

Bob Galen is an author, podcaster, teacher, conference speaker, and a top Enterprise-level agile coach. He’s been coaching organizations since 2000 on how to effectively “be Agile” and deliver on all of its promises. He is the author of three agile-related books, Agile Reflections, Scrum Product Ownership, and the 3-Pillars of Agile Quality & Testing. Bob is widely known as a “coach of coaches” because he is a go-to coach for other agile coaches when they’ve hit a particularly challenging context or situation. Learn more about and contact Bob at www.rgalen.com