Our Training offerings.

Integral Agile is pleased to provide personalized training to introduce participants to Agile principles and practices. Our courses are designed to be very hands-on and action oriented; with the objective of grounding the participants in Agile principles and providing them anchors which will help them apply the practices immediately in their product work. The courses are led by senior Agile coaches and trainers who spend the majority of their time in hands-on coaching roles for high-performance Agile teams and organizations.

Agile fundamentals for Teams 

This course examines the values, principles, and practices of the Agile methodologies and their relationship to established practices. The described practices borrow heavily from two of the most popular Agile approaches: Scrum, Kanban, and Extreme Programming (XP); important concepts from other Agile methodologies such as the Unified Process are also discussed and contrasted throughout each section of the course. 

Participants will learn how to: 

• Understand how to achieve superior results using Agile vs traditional methods
• Understand the Scrum & Kanban processes
• Understand the true motivation and practical implications of Agile Principles
• Using relative-size estimating to produce accurate forecasts
• Assess & reduce project risk
• Manage releases
• Maximize product value
• Minimize waste
• Collaboratively engage the Team and Customer roles
• Write user stories and corresponding acceptance criteria 
• Create and maintain release backlogs and iteration plans 
• Get the most out of the daily scrum
• Continuously improve & refine
• Steer delivery using throughput metrics in addition to traditional burn-downs 
• Track and measure velocity & predictability
• Abstract the lessons from Lean manufacturing and determine their applicability to software development 
   

Servant Leadership in the modern Agile World

This course focuses on making leaders aware of the changing industry landscape and the mindset shifts that are necessary to survive and thrive in this new world. No company, regardless of size is immune to disruption anymore, this course will help leaders guide their organizations to stay ahead of the competition.

Participants will learn how to: 

• Inspire the best performance from their direct reports and departments/organizations 
• Create an environment of trust and safety
• Move from a control hierarchy to a growth hierarchy
• Distinguish between healthy uncertainty and unhealthy uncertainty
• Use retrospectives/inspect & adapt to continuously improve what matters to them
• Eliminate waste using Lean Principles
• Improve cross team/department communication and reduce dependencies
• Lean Portfolio Management
• Advanced Agile metrics to track progress and expected cost/delivery date
• Understand short & long feedback loops
• Understand how to use Agile frameworks to accelerate results
• Fully understand what’s expected of them and how to get the most out of the time they invest
   

Software Craftsmanship (DevOps)

This course will teach attendees the latest DevOps standards, with a focus on communication, collaboration, integration, and automation. It will use a combination of lectures and hands on technical exercises split at about 50%. Attendees will learn new techniques to help them achieve their intended functionality with significantly fewer lines of code

Participants will learn: 

• Working to completion with frequent delivery of small increments of potentially shippable “done” software
• Working in small, self-directed teams with individual and group accountability for results
• Collaboration with stakeholders throughout the product design, development and deployment.
• Doing just enough to go forward
• Using retrospectives to achieve continuous improvement and acceleration
• Continuous attention to technical excellence — technical environment with automated tests, configuration management, and frequent integration
• Using design patterns to improve communication, software design flexibility and improved maintainability
• Integrating design into the agile development process 
• Early defect discovery/prevention
• Testing across the lifecycle 
• Creating and maintain release and iteration plans.
• Managing and tracking projects using backlogs, burn-down charts and other metrics
• Conducting and participating in iteration planning and review meetings
• Writing user stories and corresponding acceptance tests
• Decomposing projects into basic activities and manage these in an iterative development manner.
• Test-Driven development
• Continuous Integration, Continuous Delivery
• Applying Design Patterns at the code, design and architectural level
• Communicating designs using UML sequence, class and collaboration notation

Advanced Agile for Scrum Masters, Coaches & other change agents

This course expands on the Agile Fundamentals course with the intention of creating change agents that can take ownership of your Agile transformation and sustain change without the support of a coach. The course will use a mix of lectures, hands on exercises, and games to illustrate ideas and help attendees understand the Agile mindset. 

Participants will learn how to: 

• Help their teams self-organize for success
• Understand the principles behind servant leadership
• Create a safe environment for individual & collective growth
• Understand the true motivation and practical implications of Agile Principles
• Use relative-size estimating to produce advanced delivery metrics
• Effectively work with business partners
• Create effective team working agreements such as Definitions of READY & DONE
• Collaboratively engage the Team and Customer roles
• Create and maintain release backlogs and iteration plans 
• Get the most out of the daily scrum
• Continuously improve & refine
• How to scale successful results
• Understand the best uses of Scrum & Kanban
• Track and measure velocity & predictability
• Create a business case for changes leadership may be reluctant to address

Advanced Agile for Product Owners & Product Managers

This expands on the foundational POPM course by bringing incorporating System and Design Thinking principles and practices enabling the creation of products capable of disrupting their given industry. These ideas work as a starting point for many of our advanced workshops.

Participants will learn how to: 

• Visualize the Value Stream of the product(s) they support
• Use Value Streams to accelerate impact and delivery across product families
• Design Thinking
• BDD (Spec By Example) 
• Set Objectives and Key Results (OKRs) to create top to bottom alignment
• Validate assumptions and pivot early
• Optimal engagement of customer(s)
• Continuously improve & refine
• Understand how to use Agile frameworks to accelerate results
• How to create a healthy Product Organization