Pmi Acp Certification Leading An Agile Team

Agile Certified Practitioner Certification Program - Course 6 of 8 - Leading an Agile Team

Last updated 2022-01-10 | 4.4

- Understand how the role of project manager differs between traditional and agile project management
- Recognize practices that reflect the mindset of an agile project leader and the characteristics of an Agile team
- Identify causes of problems on agile teams and understand strategies for overcoming agile team challenges

What you'll learn

Understand how the role of project manager differs between traditional and agile project management

Recognize practices that reflect the mindset of an agile project leader and the characteristics of an Agile team

Identify causes of problems on agile teams and understand strategies for overcoming agile team challenges

Recognize strategies for boosting team performance and understand agile coaching activities

* Requirements

* Useful but not compulsory to study before - Course 1: Agile Project Management Essentials
* Course 2 - Adopting an Agile Approach
* Course 3 - The Scrum Development Process
* Course 4 - Initiation and Requirements Gathering and Course 5 - Planning and Monitoring Iterations
* Courses under development - Course 7: Managing Stakeholder Engagement on an Agile Project; Course 8: Ensuring Delivery of Value and Quality in Agile Projects
* This is course 6 of 8 from the Agile Project Management - The PMI-ACP (Agile Certified Practitioner) Certification Program

Description

This is the six course out of eight of the Agile PMI-ACP (Agile Certified Practitioner) Certification Program. This part is on Leading an Agile Team.

1. The Agile Project Leader

Traditional and agile project management roles differ in their approaches to decision making, project planning, and management generally, but both need excellent people management and leadership skills, as well as technical knowledge. An agile project leader should view the customer as a collaborator and focus on continuous improvement throughout a project. The project leader should also serve as both a servant-leader and facilitator, and view a project as a CAS.

2. The agile team

Agile teams are typically cross-functional in their makeup and self-organizing, with members who are empowered to make their own decisions during the development process. Problems in agile teams result from management miscues, including confusion over a project's mission and scope, and team dysfunctions that occur when teams don't follow agile principles.

3. Managing Distributed Agile Teams

Managing a distributed agile team poses particular challenges. To help overcome these, you can focus on creating cross-functional teams, building solid working relationships, using interactive modes of communication, ensuring knowledge sharing between team members, organizing regular meetings at appropriate times, promoting collaboration, and using online collaboration and meeting tools.

4. Coaching an Agile Team

Agile coaches are responsible for developing team and individual performance, and for helping team members apply agile practices in their daily work. Agile coaching occurs at the team and individual levels. At the start and end of each iteration, agile coaching occurs largely at the team level. While an iteration is in progress, individual coaching is most appropriate.

5. Improving Team Performance

You can improve the performance of an agile team by expecting high performance and technical excellence. As project leader, you should also remove obstacles that could hinder high performance, such as an inadequate product backlog, poor engineering practices, and multitasking.

To ensure that a team can identify and fix problems quickly, you should remove obstacles that could hinder performance, such as individuals working in isolation, a culture of tolerating defects, and a project leader that tries to solve problems for the team. A final strategy you can use to improve performance is to ensure that team members stay energized by eating healthily and taking regular breaks.

This course has two sections: The Basics of Agile Teams and Managing Agile Team Performance.

After completing the section called The Basics of Agile Teams, you will be able to:

indicate how the role of project manager differs between traditional and agile project management,
recognize practices that reflect the mindset of an agile project leader,
recognize the characteristics of an Agile team,
identify causes of problems on agile teams, and
recommend strategies for overcoming challenges faced by dispersed agile teams.

After completing the section called Managing Agile Team Performance you will be able to:

match iteration phases with corresponding coaching activities
recognize strategies for boosting team performance

Who is your instructor?

My name is Sorin, and I will be your instructor. I am a trainer and project manager with more than 10 years of experience. Before Udemy, I trained hundreds of people in a classroom environment – civil servants, managers, project workers, aid workers and many more. And I managed projects in the fields of justice, corrections, regional development and human resources development.

How will you benefit?

This course is intended for project managers, program managers, or anyone who wants to efficiently participate in agile projects. It is aligned with the Agile Certified Practitioner exam objectives developed by the Project Management Institute® and Certified ScrumMaster learning objectives.

Training videos, examples, exercices and quizzes will help you learn all about the Leading an Agile Team. And, if you take your time to go through all the learning materials this will entitle you to claim 5 PDU’s for the PMI certification exams and to maintain your PMI certification.

So, thank you for considering this course! Now, go ahead, and hit that "Take This Course" button. And, see you on the inside.

Who this course is for:

Intended for project managers, program managers, or anyone who wants to efficiently participate in agile projects.
Aligned with the Agile Certified Practitioner exam objectives developed by the Project Management Institute® and Certified ScrumMaster learning objectives
Will entitle you to claim 5 PDU’s for the PMI certification exams and to maintain your PMI certification

Course content

5 sections • 36 lectures

Course Introduction 4 lectures

Course Overview Preview 04:39

Welcome! This is the six course out of eight of the Agile PMI-ACP (Agile Certified Practitioner) Certification Program. This part is on Leading an Agile Team.

Program Overview Preview 10:01

This video will help you understand better the content of the other courses that will form this Agile Project Management - The PMI-ACP (Agile Certified Practitioner) Certification Program.

Course Guidelines Preview 03:29

You might know this. I’m adding it to any course in the introductory section. But, just in case, some suggestions to improve your learning.

Course Introduction

Welcome! This is the six course out of eight of the Agile PMI-ACP (Agile Certified Practitioner) Certification Program. This part is on Leading an Agile Team.

The Basics of Agile Teams 10 lectures

The Agile Manifesto and Agile Principles Preview 00:01

The Agile Manifesto and Agile Principles

The role of project leader Preview 06:13

Teams that use an agile approach adopt a much more flexible and interactive approach to development than those using a purely traditional approach, with all players taking an active role in the process. Accordingly, the project manager fills a different role and has a different focus.

Agile Team Roles Preview 00:00

Agile Team Roles

The mindset of an agile project leader Preview 19:56

Agile project leaders need a particular mindset. They need to view the customer as a collaborator and embrace the idea of continuous improvement. They need to think of themselves as having two roles - servant-leader and facilitator. And they need to view any project as a complex adaptive system, or CAS.

Characteristics of an agile team Preview 19:23

Although the success of any project depends on an effective project team, the team plays an especially critical role in an agile project. In a traditionally managed project, team members follow through on what has already been planned - but in an agile project, the team drives and shapes the project as work proceeds.

Attributes of Successful Agile Teams Preview 00:01

Attributes of Successful Agile Teams

Causes of problems in agile teams Preview 09:38

In some cases, agile teams may fail to function effectively. The causes for these failures can be categorized as either management weaknesses or team dysfunctions

Email versus face-to-face conversation Preview 00:08

Email versus face-to-face conversation

Strategies for overcoming challenges Preview 14:22

In agile development, it is ideal to have small teams with colocated members, but this may not always be possible. The reality of the work world today is that many companies use multinational teams, with members who are widely distributed geographically. This poses special challenges in terms of managing the agile development process.

The Basics of Agile Teams

Understand the role of project manager in an agile project and the characteristics of agile teams

Managing Agile Team Performance 5 lectures

Agile coaching Preview 12:10

Although an agile team may be self-organized and even self-managed, it still requires leadership, support, and encouragement. So coaching plays an important role. This applies especially when a team is new or working on a complex project.

An agile coach focuses on maximizing both team and individual performance, and mentors team members in applying agile practices in their daily work. The coach also models agile values and shares agile experiences with the team.

Expect high performance Preview 04:45

One of the key responsibilities of an agile project leader is to recognize when a team isn't performing at its best and then help it to boost its performance. As a project leader, you can use several strategies to do this. Among these are to make it clear you expect high performance and technical excellence from the team, quickly identify and fix problems, and ensure that team members are energized.

Identify and fix problems Preview 06:19

For an agile team to be highly productive, its members have to be able to identify and fix problems quickly. Various obstacles can prevent this. They include:

having team members working in isolation,
a culture of tolerating defects,
a project leader who tries to solve problems instead of allowing team members to do this themselves.

Energize team members Preview 05:02

Another strategy for improving a team's performance is to ensure that its team members are energized. Energized team members are excited, focused, and actively seek opportunities to improve. To remain energized, team members need to maintain a balance, both physically and emotionally

Managing Agile Team Performance

Recognize strategies for boosting team performance and get ready for coaching your team

Leading an Agile Team 3 lectures

Course project (optional) Preview 00:49

Course project (optional)

Leading an Agile Team Preview 04:17

Course wrap-up and conclusions.

Leading an Agile Team

Course wrap-up and optional project

Bonus - Agile Key Exam Concepts 14 lectures

Section Overview Preview 02:10

This course covers the key exam concepts of Kanban, work in progress or WIP, lead time, cycle time, and Little's Law. You'll also learn about Agile Team Spaces, sharing the product vision, and identifying and reducing defects.

Waste Types Preview 05:51

In Lean project management waste, or the Japanese term Muda, is defined as any activity or process that doesn't add value to a product but does add cost. Lean's original Seven Forms of Waste include transportation, inventory, motion, waiting, overprocessing, overproduction, and defects. The new eighth form of waste is skills or non-utilized talent.

The Kanban Pull System Preview 06:14

In a Pull-based system, the customer demand creates what is called pull. Production or development relies on pull rather than on complicated market forecast to determine how many products to deliver.

Kanban Boards Preview 05:36

A Kanban board is a tool that agile teams often use to visualize workflow through a system. While Kanban principles are often used in IT and software development, they can be helpful in any industry.

Determining Lead Time and Cycle Time Preview 05:59

In lean project management, one of the key concepts is process improvement. Lead time and cycle time are two important metrics that help determine how lean a process is. In other words, how much of the time dedicated to creating a product is value added.

Process Cycle Efficiency Preview 06:53

Lean manufacturing is a management philosophy that focuses on reducing waste and implementing a flow-based production line rather than a batch and queue method. It's aimed at reducing costs and improving overall customer value.

Little's Law Preview 07:17

In order to maintain a stable process with minimal chaos organizations should attempt to minimize work in progress or WIP in their processes. One way to do this is by setting WIP limits. WIP limits help to reduce bottlenecks, improve the rate of throughput, and control the workload levels of project team members.

Communicating the Product Vision Preview 06:03

Stakeholder engagement is a fundamental part of project management. It's important to be able to express the product vision to stakeholders in order to gain support in common understanding about the product requirements. The product owner often collaborates with other key stakeholders to develop a product vision.

Defining the Agile Team's Physical Space Preview 06:01

With today's modern technology there are a variety of tools to bring teams together virtually.

Exercise - Key Agile Exam concepts Preview 05:09

Agile teams achieve efficiency by leveraging many of the tools from Lean Management, but also by valuing individuals and interactions.

In this exercise, you'll demonstrate that you can identify characteristics of waste recognize the relationship between PCE variables identify characteristics of Agile environments