Professional Agile Leadership - Essentials

Helping Leaders Understand their Role in Enabling Agile Transformation

The Professional Agile Leadership Essentials (PAL-E) is a 2-day hands-on workshop that uses a combination of instruction and hands-on exercises to help managers and other leaders who work directly with agile teams understand how to best support, guide, and coach their teams to improve their agile capabilities.

The workshop provides a foundation for the role that leaders play in creating the conditions for a successful agile transformation.

Leaders and managers are critical enablers in helping their organizations be successful, yet the role of leaders and managers in an agile organization can be quite different from what they are used to.

This workshop uses a  combination of instruction and team-based exercises to help participants learn how to form and support agile teams to  achieve better results, and how to lead the cultural and behavioral changes that organizations must make to reap the benefits of an agile product delivery approach.  

Becoming an agile organization is a profound transformation that requires senior leaders, middle managers, and agile team members to change the way that they organize their work, manage that work, and measure the results of the work. Agile teams cannot do this on their own; they need help from the entire organization. The changes for all involved are profound, but so are the results when everyone's goals and ways of working are aligned.

Course topics

• Why Agile matters
• How to develop the Scrum roles and a Scrum team
• Situational Leadership
• Measuring Agility
• Connecting individual, team and organization purpose
• Challenges of an Agile Leader

Objectives

• Participants will have an understanding of how agility can help you improve your organization's performance
• Participants will have an understanding of how you, as a manager or leader, can help your organization achieve the benefits of agility
• Participants will have an understanding of how culture and values influence your organization's ability to reap the benefits of agility
• Participants will leave with practical skills for helping to guide and coach agile teams, and to help them remove impediments
• Participants will have an understanding of how to measure the benefits and impacts of agility in your organization

After this training you will:

• have a number of concrete practices to work with Agile teams
• be better prepared for the typical questions that teams have when they grow more mature
• be prepared to provide an Agile transformation with the right boundary conditions
• have more insight how teams can better align with organisation goals
• have gained more insight in the typical pitfalls of an Agile transformation
• have a list of personal actions to implement Agile Leadership in your organisation

Target Audience

The Professional Agile Leadership Essentials course is designed for managers and those in leadership roles who are responsible for the introduction and establishment of Agile methods and techniques in an IT organization/division. 

The training is therefore recommended for

• Product managers and departmental  (or similar) managers, responsible for one or more teams
• Scrum Masters and Product Owners,
• Senior Executives who act as a sponsor for the Agile transformation.

Format

Students work in small teams. They learn through team assignments, discussions and hands-on exercises. This course will be taught in English.

Prerequisites

Attendees make the most of the class if they:

• Have studied the Scrum Guide.
• Passed the Scrum Open assessment.
• Have a solid understanding of Scrum either through working on a Scrum Team, or through taking part in an Applying Professional Scrum or similar course.
• Have been on or are closely involved in building or enhancing a product, service, or application.
• Have read one of the Scrum books of Ken Schwaber or the book “Scrum – A Pocket Guide” by Gunther Verheyen. 

Assessment and Certification

• All participants completing the Professional Agile Leadership - Essentials course will receive a password to attempt the Professional Agile Leadership I (PAL I).
• PAL-E class participants who attempt the PAL I assessment within 14 days of receiving their free password and do not score at least 85% will be granted a 2nd attempt at no additional cost.
• This industry-recognized certification requires a minimum passing score on the associated rigorous assessment. Scrum.org maintains public lists of all PAL I certificate holders
• Students are able to claim Project Management Institute (PMI) PDU credits: 14 PDUs after attending a two-day Professional Scrum Foundations (PSF) course. Please note that PMI PDUs are earned for course attendance and not for passing a PSM I assessment. Students can claim PDUs under PMI's "Education courses provided by other third-party providers” category. You can claim your PDUs online at https://ccrs.pmi.org.

Live Virtual Class using Zoom and Mural