Professional Agile Leadership Essentials

Professional Agile Leadership Essentials is a two-day training workshop leading to the PAL-I certification, for managers wanting to maximize their effectiveness in leading teams in the digital age.

Organizational leadership is a real game-changer that can either reduce or increase the effectiveness of product owners, scrum masters, and the development teams they lead. This class is a leadership development experience allowing you to hone your leadership style, align actions with objectives, and begin continuously improving performance toward measurable strategic goals.

This Scrum.org certified class includes up to two free attempts at the PAL-I assessment. Delegates take a multiple-choice assessment after the class, leading to a permanent qualification with no renewal fees.

Training Objectives

This Professional Agile Leadership - Essentials training course is designed to leave delegates more confident in five key areas:

1. Why agile matters to organizations
2. How to develop people
3. Measuring the performance and competitive advantage of agility
4. The role leaders play in growing agility
5. How to overcome the challenges faced by agile leaders

Audience, Pre-requisites and Assumed Knowledge

The Professional Agile Leadership - Essentials training course is intended for senior leaders, department heads, senior managers, and anyone in a leadership role supporting agile teams. Knowledge of the Scrum framework and experience in an IT delivery environment is beneficial.

When delivered as a private class, the course may be pitched at an appropriate level. For example, experienced teams can quickly re-establish the basics and then spend more time considering the detail of their approach.

Approach

We are a friendly team of practitioners and we like to provide a personal level of support, before, during, and after the class:

Pre-course reading is designed to expose questions so that they can be explored in class.
Contact details allow delegates to ask questions to the trainer before and after the class.
Access to a comprehensive set of guidance after the course so that delegates apply what has been learned.
Digital course effectiveness surveys with results sent out to delegates and sponsors straight after the class.

Course Content

Why Agile Matters

Agile is not the only way to manage work - traditional, plan-driven approaches have long-established practices and benefits. As a leader, you need to convince yourself of the best approach for your context. In this section, you will have the opportunity to identify and develop some key themes and challenges faced by your organization, decide whether agile techniques can help, and then lead others to buy in to it.

Developing People

Learn how to create an environment where people can thrive, and develop confidence in your decision-making in an agile environment. Specific topics in this section include:

Understanding levels of team maturity, and how to adapt your leadership style to the situation
Levels of delegation and how they should change as a team matures
Leading people in a way that they take ownership
Case studies and pitfalls to watch out for
How to respond to requests or disagreements from scrum masters and product owners on how decisions should be made
The impact that leadership style has on long-term team maturity

Measuring Agility

Measurement is a powerful tool: if you measure something, it is likely to improve, especially if it is done so prominently or in a way that is incentivized. It's critical therefore to measure the right things and to use the information in the right way. In this section, we'll review the evidence-based management approach as a way of focusing the mind on the real competitive advantage you want to achieve for your organization.

Leaders Grow Agility

This section takes a comprehensive look at the potential of agile leaders to cause long-lasting change in their departments and organizations. This will include:

Servant leadership in practice
Knowing how and when to intervene
Hiring effectively to build high-performing teams
The leaders role in the scrum principles and values
Causing organizational impediments to be removed

Challenges of an Agile Leader

An agile leader relies heavily on the roles within the scrum team - the developers, product owners, and scrum masters that make things happen. There are many challenges the leader might face in creating an environment to enable them to succeed and reach high performance. This final section allows delegates to explore real examples arising from the shift from traditional to agile; fears of losing control of risk and rigor; how people respond to change; and more.