Agile from the ground up
Agile methods, teams and governance.
A half day on agile from the ground up: its roots and mindset, Scrum, Lean, Kanban and experiments, then how leaders, teams, scaling and governance make it work.
- Level
- Explore
- Learning time
- 6 hours
- Where
- Agile and New Ways of Working
- Price
- £129
When you step up to a higher level, what you paid in the last 12 months for lower-level courses inside the bigger course comes off its price, in proportion to how much of each is inside it, whichever topic it's from. Courses at the same or a lower level don't give credit against each other. A Focus course or above always costs at least £15. Read the full terms
Certificate of Completion, or Certificate of Completion and Assessment with a short assessment
Overview and Outcomes.
Who It's For
Managers, service leads and board members in councils, the NHS, housing, police, fire and charities adopting or overseeing agile work.
Overview
This half-day Explore builds agile from first principles to organisational practice. It begins with where agile came from and the difference between being agile and agile theatre, using Cynefin, the Stacey matrix and Denning's three laws. It then covers Scrum and the FBI's Sentinel system, Lean, Kanban and Seddon's failure demand, and safe-to-fail experiments after Eric Ries. Leadership follows, through Bungay's three gaps, mission command and McChrystal's team of teams, with Team Topologies and psychological safety for teams. It closes with scaling frameworks, the Spotify model, Beyond Budgeting, OKRs and board assurance that tests value.
Aims
This Explore aims to develop leaders who understand agile accurately, choose methods that fit the problem, set intent that lets teams decide how, and govern, fund and scale agile work so that learning comes early and public accountability stays intact.
In summary, you will be able to:
- Diagnose the kind of problem your service faces and choose a delivery approach that fits it.
- Build the conditions for agile teams, including clear intent, stable structures and psychological safety.
- Shape funding and board assurance so that uncertain work is reviewed for value and can continue, change or stop.
What you'll develop
Across this Explore, you will develop the ability to:
- Judge where a piece of your own work sits on the spectrum from predictive to adaptive delivery, based on how much uncertainty it contains.
- Diagnose the kind of problem in front of you using Cynefin and the Stacey matrix before choosing a method.
- Identify common failures in public service Scrum, such as a status report stand-up or a Product Owner without authority, and judge what leaders must change.
- Identify waste and failure demand in your own service, using Ohno's seven wastes and Seddon's distinction between value demand and failure demand.
- Write a testable hypothesis with a belief, a change, a signal and an exit, and use assumption mapping to choose the riskiest assumption to test first.
- Set intent and boundaries for a team, checking understanding through backbriefing, so that the people closest to the work can decide how.
- Use Team Topologies, cognitive load and the inverse Conway manoeuvre to design or review teams around the service you want users to experience.
- Plan board assurance that moves from checking the plan towards testing value, using outcome roadmaps and a quarterly review to continue, change or stop work.
Built from 4 parts.
6 hours of learning.
- 01Being agile, not doing agileAgile principles, mindset and ScrumBitesize3 modules
- 02Flow and the freedom to testLean, Kanban and test-and-learnBitesize2 modules
- 03Clear intent, free handsLeading agile organisations and agile teamsBitesize2 modules
- 04Agile at scale, honestlyScaling agile, governance and fundingBitesize2 modules
Keep going.
Part of the Agile and New Ways of Working topic, also sold whole as Lighter, faster, more human.
Go deeper, and pay only the difference
- You are hereExplore, 6 hours, £129
- The whole topicImmerse, Lighter, faster, more human, 11 hours 30 minutes, £249. Already own the Explore? You pay £120.
When you step up to a higher level, what you paid in the last 12 months for lower-level courses inside the bigger course comes off its price, in proportion to how much of each is inside it, whichever topic it's from. Courses at the same or a lower level don't give credit against each other. A Focus course or above always costs at least £15. Prices per person. Read the full terms
Also part of: Built to adapt