Course Overview

Within the profession and discipline of project management, Agile continues to develop as a significant and important aspect of bringing change to an organization. Where the products of change must be delivered to the business “on time”, Agile is often the chosen methodology. This course is designed to give you the knowledge and tools to pass your PMI-ACP® exam. Learn the 10 tools and techniques and 43 knowledge and skills areas pertinent to exam success. Walk through real-world Agile techniques that project teams have successfully implemented, and so much more. There are many reasons to go for your PMI-ACP® certification. As prior knowledge and experience is assumed, this workshop will not provide any topical project management training. It will, however, provide candidates with an opportunity to demonstrate the tools and techniques of agile project management.  In addition to equipping candidates for the PMI® Agile Certification examination, this course will also support candidates in taking a more informed and effective role in Agile projects. It will also enable them to take a significant role in encouraging and enabling the organization to become or develop as an Agile environment. Even though this course is for certification it’s designed such that this course empowers the participants practically as well.

 

Who should attend?

This course is designed for anyone currently working on Agile-based projects and with wider project experience who wants to become PMI® Agile certified. Anyone with a working knowledge of Agile from senior management to product developers will benefit from this course including but not restricted to:

• Project Managers
• Team Leaders
• Business Analysts
• Technical Coordinators

 

Performance Focus

• Mastering the understanding of how to apply agile project management skills and knowledge in the real world projects
• Garnering knowledge and confidence and the skill set to clear the exams for PMI-ACP within a shorter duration of preparation time
• Mastering the tools and techniques and the structure approach needed to plan for and track to completion an agile project

 

What You Will Learn

Understand the 10 tools and techniques and 43 knowledge and skills areas needed to pass the PMI-ACP® certification exam

• Study advanced topics such as scaling Agile to large projects, distributed teams and lean portfolio management.
• Explain Agile principles
• Describe the difference between Agile methods and traditional methods, including roles and responsibilities
• Compare and contrast various Agile methods
• Plan your release and build a backlog
• Identify users and write good user stories
• Prioritize and size user stories
• Explain the steps of the Agile iteration life cycle
• Identify practices that lead to effective Agile team management
• Explain considerations for adopting Agile methods

 

Training Content and Basic Outline of the course

This engagement is designed tcover all of the following 6 Domains:-

• Domain I – Value-Driven Delivery
• Domain II – Stakeholder Engagement
• Domain III – Boosting Team Performance Practices
• Domain IV – Adaptive Planning
• Domain V – Problem Detection and Resolution
• Domain VI – Continuous Improvement (Product, Process, People)

As well as the 3 Levels of Knowledge and skills would be covered viz.,

• Agile Knowledge and Skills – Level 1
  • L1 – Process focused
    • Agile manifestand principles
    • Assessing and incorporating community and stakeholder values
    • Communications management
    • Feedback techniques
    • Problem-solving strategies, tools, and techniques
  • L1 – People focused
    • Active listening
    • Building empowered teams
    • Coaching and mentoring within teams
    • Knowledge sharing
    • Leadership tools and techniques
    • Stakeholder management
    • Team motivation
  • L1 – Product focused
    • Incremental delivery
    • Prioritization
    • Project and quality standards for Agile projects
    • Time, budget, and cost estimation
    • Value-based decomposition and prioritization
• Agile Knowledge and Skills – Level 2
  • L2 – Process focused
    • Agile frameworks and terminology
    • Continuous improvement processes
    • Elements of a project charter for an Agile project
    • Process analysis techniques 
  • L2 – People focused
    • Building high-performance teams
    • Co-location (geographic proximity) / distributed teams
    • Facilitation methods
    • Participatory decision models
    • PMI's Code of Ethics and Professional Conduct
    • Self-assessment 
  • L2 – Product focused
    • Business case development
    • Value-based analysis
• Agile Knowledge and Skills – Level 3
  • L3 – Organization focused (Organizational compliance)
  • L3 – Project focused
    • Agile contracting methods
    • Agile project accounting principles
    • Control limits for Agile projects
    • Failure modes and alternatives
    • Regulatory compliance
    • Variance and trend analysis
    • Variations in Agile methods and approaches
  • L3 – People focused
    • Applying new Agile practices
    • Globalization, culture, and team diversity
    • Innovation games
    • Principles of systems thinking
    • Vendor management 

Agile Principles and Purposes

• History of Agile
• Agile principles
• Benefits of Agile adoption

Agile Roles and Responsibilities

• Agile roles
• Scrum Master
• Product owner
• Stakeholders
• Agile team
• Technical leadership

Overview of Agile Methods

• Scrum
• Scrum ceremonies
• Scrum artifacts
• Lean development
• Kanban
• XP

Agile Planning

• Six levels of planning
• Release planning
• Product visioning
• Vision box

Users, User Stories and the Product Backlog

• Stakeholder engagement
• User roles and personas
• Product backlog
• Risk-adjusted backlog
• Writing user stories
• Breaking down epics

Prioritizing and Estimating

• Prioritization levels and factors
• MoSCoW prioritization
• Kananalysis
• Paretanalysis
• Dependency chart
• Estimating
• Sizing
• Story points
• Affinity estimating

Building a Release Plan

• Velocity
• Measuring velocity
• Team velocity
• Date-driven vs. scope-driven planning
• Estimating initial velocity
• Planning for additional iterations
• Time estimation

Iteration 0 and Story Elaboration

• Story elaboration and backlog grooming
• Acceptance criteria
• Acceptance tests
• Business rules
• Preplanning for the next iteration

The Iteration Life Cycle

• Iteration planning
• Sprint planning
• Team definition of done
• Daily stand-up
• Burn down charts
• Agile EVM
• Work in progress limit
• Retrospectives
• Escaped defects

Leading Agile Teams

• Forming the Agile Team
• Self-organizing teams
• Adaptive leadership
• Distributed teams
• Collaboration
• Servant leadership

PMI-ACP® Special Topics

• Agile risk monitoring and control
• Early reduction of risk
• Risk adjusted backlog
• Agile contracts