Professional Agile Leadership - Essentials

Why Professional Agile Leadership - Essentials (PAL-E)?

When I was a traditional manager, my role and responsibilities were well defined. I knew what to do, what to tell, and whom to tell. I also knew what I was accountable for. As my organization adopted Scrum, I encountered two challenges

1. I understood self-organization but did not understand how to enable teams to self-organize.
2. As a manager, I did not know what to do as most of my responsibilities were now distributed among the Scrum Team members. 

Over the course of time, I understood that the role of managers and leaders are critical enablers in an Agile transformation. I learned that the roles, and responsibilities of an "Agile manager/leader" is completely different than that of a traditional manager/leader. This workshop tries to unpack some of the differences to enable you to be an Agile Leader.

Today, when I consult with organizations, I have seen managers and leaders struggle with the below questions

• If the Scrum Team is self-organizing, what happens to the managers then?
• Team members are looking up to managers/leaders, how can I create conditions so that they can self-organize and that I not be a bottleneck?
• What is the role of a manager/leader in an Agile organization?
• How do I know if my Scrum Teams are maturing and if the Scrum Master, Product Owner, and Dev. Teams are improving?
• How can I assess myself in knowing if I am becoming a better leader?
• In an Agile organization, when should a leader intervene, and how should they intervene?
• I get "Agile", but how do I align cross-departmental organizations towards a shared vision/goal?
• We went through the Agile transformation process, but I somehow feel that the "transformation" is not sticky and we are not getting the expected benefits. How do I go about diagnosing it?
• How do I bring about cultural and behavioral changes to reap the benefits of our Agile product delivery approach?

If these questions resonate with you, you may find this course useful. 

Target Audience

Primary audience - Line managers, middle managers, Project Managers, Program Managers, Directors, and Senior Leaders.

Secondary audience - Scrum Masters and Agile Coaches who work with leaders in transforming the organization

Note: This is NOT a "Basic Scrum for Leaders" course. This is a "leadership" course and is more about "how to be a leader" in an Agile organization. We do not cover Scrum Basics in this course.  If you are looking for a basic introduction on Scrum, please take Professional Scrum Foundations (PSF) or a Professional Scrum Master (PSM) workshop.  Please see Professional Scrum Training Competency Mapping to get an idea of what competencies are covered in each of the Professional Scrum courses

Learning Objectives

The Context of Agile

• Why Agile?

• The challenges with Agile transformation?

• Leading Agile in a hybrid world

• Focus Areas of an Agile Leader

Developing People

• Typical problems when working with self-organization in a traditional setting

• Various levels of maturity of a Scrum Master, Product Owner, Dev. Team and an Agile Leader

• Effect of “expectation vs. maturity” mismatch in organizations

• Understand the nature of decision making and delegation. Understand the various levels of delegation and learn when to use which type of delegation

• Discovering Leader’s Impact of decision making in the organization

Measuring Agility

• Understanding how to measure – because what gets measured can get manipulated

• An introduction to Evidence-Based Management (EBM)

• Measuring Agility using EBM

Leaders Grow Agility

• Traditional vs. Agile Leadership

• Traits and characteristics of an ideal team player, and that of a successful team

• Success factors of High Performing Teams

• Hiring the right “Agilists”

• Understanding personal, team, and organizational values and bringing alignment in them

Challenges of an Agile Leader

• Challenges when moving from a traditional organization to an Agile organization

• Overcoming the challenges of an Agile Leader

• Bringing about a change in mindset in the larger organization

Reasons why should you choose Ram's workshops

• Ram Srinivasan has a very unique distinction of being the first person in North America (and the second person in the world) to hold both the coveted Professional Scrum Trainer (from scrum.org) certifications and Certified Scrum Trainer (from Scrum Alliance)
• Pragmatic practitioner with 600+ LinkedIn Recommendations. Ram works with teams and organizations (during weekdays) helping them build great products. And he is also passionate about training, that is why he runs workshops in his personal time. You can learn more about Ram's work with organizations and participants' experience in his workshops through his LinkedIn recommendations
• He also has an extensive background in coaching, facilitation and working with leadership teams in helping organizations transition to Scrum. So you get to hear battle stories from which you can learn. (Tip - if you are looking to hone your coaching/facilitation/leadership skills, ask him about the various programs he has attended)

About Your Instructor:

Ram Srinivasan has a very unique distinction of being the first person in North America (and the second person in the world) to hold the coveted Certified Scrum Trainer (from Scrum Alliance) and Professional Scrum Trainer (from scrum.org) certifications.  His mission is to help his clients build great organizations and he does this by focusing on people, process, and product development. 

Ram started as a developer and later moved to hold various roles including software architect, Project /Program Manager, and Agile Coach. He has coached, mentored, and consulted with teams to organizations of different sizes across many industries (finance, insurance, retail, banking, media, telecom, government, etc.). This depth and breadth of experience give Ram the ability to view clients' challenges from different perspectives and provide pragmatic solutions, making him a sought after Agile Coach.

Beyond Agile and Scrum, Ram’s interests are in Emotional and Social Intelligence (for individuals, groups), Applied neuroscience for organizational and culture change, System Thinking, Complex Adaptive Systems, and understanding Human Systems in organizations. He is a frequent speaker at Agile meetups and conferences.  From time to time, Ram also runs free coaching circles and book clubs.

Ram holds a Masters degree in Engineering from The University of Arizona and is currently based out Boston, MA. You can reach him at Ram at InnovAgility dot com

Connect with Ram on LinkedIn (600+ recommendations) - https://linkedin.com/in/ramvasan

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