WEBINAR – Globally Distributed Agile (recording)
Learn about choosing Agile practices for your software development project. And learn what happens when the offshore value proposition comes along with the fact that the delivery team is spread over several locations. This webinar is by Thoughworks.
Webinar Recording can be listened to click here
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WEBINAR – The Different Agile Approaches: First (XP, Scrum) and Second (Lean/Kanban) Generation Methods
Get an overview of Agile approaches starting with eXtreme Programming (XP) & Scrum and then hear about Lean-Agile and its team oriented Kanban for software process.
Early Agile methods have been overly-team centric and have eschewed management. While second generation Agile methods build on a decades old history of Lean thinking and have extended agility in three ways that are not only required for an enterprise engagement but also for creating synergies that improve Agile at the team level:
- Extending the Team to across the Enterprise
- Extending Individual skill sets to Systemic Thinking
- Extending the Worker to include Management
Webinar Recording can be listened to click here
TOPICS DISCUSSED will include:
- How the new Agile team methods of Kanban and Scrumban fit into the larger picture of enterprise, management and systems.
- Why the low success rate at the business level is a direct result of first Agile generation methods’ focus on the team while eschewing systems thinking.
- The different Lean-Agile Methods
- Lean-Agile and Kanban address many of the issues that late adopters to Agile have intuitively felt are necessary for a mature organization. While many of these have been sometimes ridiculed by early agile methods, these concerns are a part of Lean-Agile / Kanban.
SPEAKER: Alan Shalloway is the founder and CEO of Net Objectives. With almost 40 years of experience, Alan is an industry thought leader. He helps companies transition to Lean and Agile methods enterprise-wide as well teaches courses in Lean, Kanban, Scrum, Design Patterns, and Object-Orientation. Alan has developed training and coaching methods for Lean-Agile that have helped his clients achieve long-term, sustainable productivity gains. He is a popular speaker at prestigious conferences worldwide. He is the primary author of Design Patterns Explained: A New Perspective on Object-Oriented Design, Lean-Agile Pocket Guide for Scrum Teams, Lean-Agile Software Development: Achieving Enterprise Agility and is currently writing Essential Skills for the Agile Developer. He has a Masters in Computer Science from M.I.T. as well as a Masters in Mathematics from Emory University.
PDU’s: 1…….(PDU info is provided in the recording)
COST: Free
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Agile Boot Camp…coming to Southern California (April 14-16)
A Practitioner’s Workshop to Pragmatic Real-World Adoption (a 3-day course)
- Iteration Planning,
- Product Roadmap and Backlog,
- Estimating Practices,
- User Story Development and
- Iteration Execution.
Bring your team together to learn and experience Agile as it should be done. Not just methods and approaches.
The only way to Agile success is practice… Agile is an art more than a science. The art of Agile must be practiced and finely tuned over multiple iterations. In this three-day Agile Boot Camp you will put the knowledge, skills, tools and techniques taught to work. The classroom will be broken up into Agile teams and your expert instructor will drive each team through the Agile process from vision down to daily planning and execution.
Your instructor will answer questions with real world experience, as all of our instructors have Agile experience in the trenches. You will leave the class with practical knowledge and a clear roadmap for your team’s success.
ASPE is a national leader in providing skills-based training solutions on the Systems/Software Development Lifecycle, Security, and IP Telephony. Based in Cary NC, ASPE offers both public and on-site delivery solutions. ASPE’s On-site Delivery Practice focuses on delivering tailored or customized courses at a customer’s location that meets the client’s specific training requirements. ASPE public course delivery brings courses to over 35 major cities nationwide, providing our customers with flexible learning options.
*** Mention priority code EBS1692 to receive special one-time pricing from ASPE
- April 14-16, 2010 – Irvine, CA
Exclusive Price: $1196 each for this class ONLY
PMI PDUs: 21
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CLASS – How to Win Cooperation and Influence People (3/19)
Learn to use Dale Carnegie’s proven methods to make people glad to do what you want to do – and create a win-win situation for everyone at the same time.
This NEW one-day seminar from Dale Carnegie Training will show you how to:
- Build and strengthen your credibility to gain influence
- Get buy-in for your ideas
- Get results even when you don’t have authority
Are you a manager or a leader?
Managers give orders and gain – at best – robotic compliance. Leaders influence people to their way of thinking and gain enthusiastic cooperation. If you want to be the kind of leader companies want today you need to attend How to Win Cooperation and Influence People.
At this dynamic one-day seminar you will learn to use Dale Carnegie’s human relations principles made famous in How to win Friends and Influence People – to make people glad to do what you want to do. This is not a seminar in how to manipulate people. Rather it shows you how to:
- Build trust in the workplace
- Create a collaborative work environment
- Get buy-in because employees support directions they help create
These are exactly the skills you need to make it in today’s business environment where teamwork has replaced the old command and control structure. Often, in these team situations, you have no direct authority over the members yet you are expected win their support and get everyone pulling in the same direction. How to win Cooperation and Influence People will help you learn how to use your credibility and positive image to influence people to your point of view and create alignment so you can get the results you want.
Don’t miss this opportunity to acquire the skills you need to step up to the leadership role you know you deserve. Register for How to win cooperation and influence People today.
LEARNING OBJECTIVES:
* Use Dale Carnegie’s twelve ways to win people to your way of thinking
* Get results without authority
* Project self-confidence without being pushy
* Establish or enhance your credibility as a basis for influence
*Build a collaborative work environment
* Sell your ideas
* Develop “ownership” to get results
* Substitute questions for direct orders
* Influence outcomes – even if you’re not in charge
* Improve communication acrossfunctions
* Excel as a consensus builder
* Build an atmosphere of trust and collaboration
* Create win-win situations
* Influence people to follow you
* Use Dale Carnegie’s nine ways to change attitudes
* Make people glad to do what you want to do
Who Should Attend: Managers, supervisors, project leaders – everyone who needs to create buy in and ownership in order to get results through others.
SCHEDULE:
DATE: March 19, 2010 (Friday) 8:30 AM – 5:00 PM
LOCATION: 1805 East Dyer Road, Suite 109 · Santa Ana, CA 92705
INVESTMENT $198.00 USD
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KANBAN helps Agile Adoptance
KANBAN supports a team’s journey of process improvement and helps expose the best solution. Kanban says,
…start with what you do now, modify it slightly to implement work pull and provide a transparent mechanism for self-organization, then evolve from there by recognizing bottlenecks, waste and variability that affect performance. As a result, every Kanban implementation will be different.
If you are working non-software development projects (ie IT projects) or Software projects, then KANBAN is an agile approach to seriously checkout.
If you want to understand WHY KANBAN? And how it can impact any company…..INFOQ has a video – from Agile 2009 conference – that explores how Kanban teams at a company matured through the lens of the Dreyfus Model for Skill Acquisition:
1 – Beginner
2 – Advanced Beginner
3 – Competence
4 – Proficient
“SKILL is not acquiring more knowlege of principles….it is changing the way you think or approach of problems by implementing new practices.”
TOPICS INCLUDE:
- Examination of how Agile was’t truly encouraged to be adopted in his company until Kanban was introduced
- Discuss a counter-intuitive technique for higher success and adoption rates of new methodologies
- Review common pitfalls teams encountered adopting Kanban and how it catepulted them into Agility
Click here to view Video at INFOQ
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VIRTUAL WORKSHOP: Iteration Planning – the Nitty Gritty Details (ON DEMAND)
Release planning allows you to estimate features at a high level and lay out an overall project timeline.
- But what do you do when it’s time for construction?
- How do you move from high level information to specific tasks?
We will show you how in this 90 minute workshop on
Iteration planning moves you from the 1000 foot level down to the 10 foot level on your project. You will envision detailed functionality and identify the specific tasks that the team will complete in the coming 2 to 4 weeks. In addition we will show you how to increase status transparency and get your project off to a great start with “iteration zero”.
LEARNING OBJECTIVES:
- Modeling features to identify and estimate tasks to the hour level
- Obtaining team buy-in for the proposed workload
- Managing task assignments
- Making status transparent during an iteration
- Tools and templates to use for iteration tracking
- Getting off to a good start with iteration zero
YOU WILL TAKE AWAY:
- Templates, Examples and Guides to use in your workplace after the workshop.
VIRTUAL WORKSHOP – Adapting to Change throughout an Agile Project (3/12)
March 12, 2010……….11 am – 1 pm PST
What do you do when your customer changes a requirement? How do you keep going when a team member is pulled away for a production issue? What happens when you start coding and realize a feature is much bigger than anticipated? You will learn how to deal with these issues and more in this live virtual workshop.
We will follow a case study, Acme Media, as they encounter issues and constraints in the middle of an iteration. We will also join them at the end of the iteration and see how they adapt and replan based on acceptance testing, team throughput, technical discoveries, and changes in the business environment.
We will also answer common questions about adapting in an Agile environment:
- Can we adapt at any time during a project?
- If we adapt all of the time, how do we get any work done?
- What is the process for adapting at the end of an iteration?
LEARNING OBJECTIVES:
- Understand the most common issues with software projects.
- Learn multiple options for dealing with each issue type.
- Using a tradeoff matrix to drive triage decisions.
- Learn how to demonstrate and drive acceptance testing at the end of an iteration.
- Learn how to replan and prepare for the next iteration.
YOU WILL TAKE AWAY:
- Templates, Examples and Guides to use in your workplace after the workshop.
INSTRUCTOR: Greg Smith is a Senior Project Manager, ScrumMaster, and Agile coach with ten years of experience leading project teams to a more agile process. Greg has received numerous awards for his work in helping start-ups establish good software practices, and for helping enterprises overcome bureaucracy and deliver urgent projects. Greg has worked for companies including Philips Electronics, The Seattle Times, R.R. Donnelley, Washington Mutual, and JP Morgan Chase. Greg has been teaching Agile Project Management at Bellevue College since 2005. Greg is also a co-author of the top rated agile adoption book, Becoming Agile in an Imperfect World.
PDU’s: 2
COST: $57
Agile 101: Laying the Foundation for Agile Development
If you want a great introduction to Agile Development, then check out this series by VersionOne.
1. Agile Basics [request recording]
What is Agile? How is Agile different? Why does Agile work? This webcast will explore the origins of Agile, the definition of Agile, how Agile differs from the way you work today and most important why Agile works. This information will then be applied to the business environment today.
The attendee will leave the webinar with the following:
- An understanding of the Prindipals and Values of Agile
- Knowledge of the difference of Agile -v- current woring methods
- An understanding of the beefits of Agile in today’s business environment
Read more
Agile Project Management – FREE Webinar Series by VersionOne
Learn how Project Managers are involved in Agile Software Development Projects. Take 5 FREE webinars by VersionOne to get a great introduction to being an Agile PM.
1. Agile Project Management for PMPs [request recording]
This presentation by Michele Sliger is specifically aimed at traditionally trained software project managers who are new to Agile, and who would like to be able to relate the Project Management Institute’s (PMI) best practices to their equivalent practices in Agile. By associating new Agile ideas to things that are already familiar, you can begin your Agile journey with a new shared lexicon and knowledge of general Agile concepts. In addition to the mapping some of the PMBOK Guide® knowledge areas to Agile practices, there is also focus on how the job of the traditional project manager is re-defined into a new – and often more important – role in the Agile development process.
Read more
WEBINAR – Program Management inside Microsoft
Find out what it is like to be a Program Manager at Microsoft.
….and hear what the interview process for PMs is like as well.
Michael
Surkan will share his experiences as a program manager in the Windows division at Microsoft, talking about what it takes to deliver software products at one of the biggest software firms in the world.
LEARN ABOUT:
- What makes the program management role at Microsoft unique
- What kinds of challenges PMs face
- What Microsoft hiring managers look for in program managers
- What types of questions are asked in Microsoft interviews
View the Webinar Recording [click here]
SPEAKER: Michael Surkan, a 20-year IT veteran at PC Week Labs and Microsoft, will share from his experience as a program manager in the networking group of the Windows division and other things he has learned from his career. You can check out Michael’s Entrepreneurs Northwest podcasts on what it takes to make a successful business. He also has a “Tales from the job search trenches” podcast show, which interviews employment professionals about how to find a job in a challenging economy.
PDU: 1
COST: Free
VIRTUAL WORKSHOP – Improve Virtual Team Communication using Behavior Cues (On-Demand)
Available On-DEMAND…
VIRTUAL TEAMS must Learn to Work Together…
…as if they were in the same room. The inability for virtual teams to “connect” can be detrimental to the team and can jeopardize the success of the project. Therefore, it is imperative for the team and its leaders to be proactive in developing strategies so that virtual teams are enabled with the right tools to excel in the absence of a face to face environment.
This is best outlined using a Behavioral Assessment Process.
Using a behavioral assessment process approach to improve virtual team communication allows individuals to “read” behavioral cues in a virtual environment. Understanding and responding to these behavioral cues can assist virtual teams in improving and opening up communication, as well as enhance overall group dynamics thereby increasing productivity levels.
WEBINAR – Selecting & Managing the Best Lifecycle for your Project, Team & Solution
You’ve managed projects but they’re never easy.
They don’t fit into the nice definitions found in project management books. Your schedules are generally off. There are always unkind surprises. Although you’re not failing, you feel you could be more successful. You have many possibilities to make your project rock and roll.
Take a more pragmatic approach to choosing and using the best lifecycle for your project…
You can use an iterative lifecycle to explore prototypes — You can use an incremental lifecycle to start checking features off as done — You can use an agile lifecycle that allows for more adaptability — You can use a combination lifecycles.
LEARNING OBJECTIVES:
- LIFECYCLES – what each looks like
- which RISKS each lifecycle addresses
- HOW TO COMBINE lifecycles for the best way to start managing risk
View the Webinar Recording [click here]
Read more
WEBINAR – When to use Agile in a Waterfall Enterprise
Many practitioners take a black and white stance regarding implementing agile.
They discuss how to start using Agile in your organization, what projects to choose and how to gain acceptance from executives, but do not address the fact that enterprise portfolios are often comprised predominantly of waterfall projects.
This webinar takes a fresh look at the benefits and challenges of implementing agile projects in a waterfall portfolio. It draws upon extensive personal experience and ongoing interviews with Agile thought leaders such as Ken Schwaber, Marry Poppendieck and others.
LEARNING OBJECTIVES:
- Learn how to know when to use Agile?
- What makes Agile valuable on a project.
- Learn about the “hybrid” project model – part Agile / part waterfall (ie. standard reporting, staffing)
- Learn about complexities of tracking & reporting Agile Projects with Waterfall Portfolios
- Get an introduction to the idea of Agile Earned Value
View the Webinar Recording: [Click here]
Read more
The Business Driven Software Development webinar series
Business Agility enables an organization to respond quickly to external forces (such as new market opportunities and competitive forces) as well as to respond quickly to new insights attained internally.
While many organizations have achieved the local optimizations of more effective teams, few have achieved agility at the organizational level. Even when team agility has been achieved, if improvements to how the business is selecting their product enhancements isn’t done, overall return on investment of software development may not have significantly improved.
This series is organized around “roles” - Executives to Team Leads – so each person in an organization can be introduced to what “they” need to know to achieve business agility.
FREE Webinar Series – 7 sessions:
- Session 1 – An Overview
- Session 2 - Product Portfolio Management
- Session 3 – Where to Start Your Agile Transition
- Session 4 – Team Agility: Scrum or Kanban?
- Session 5 - Essential Skills for the Agile Developer
- Session 6 – Acceptance Test-Driven Development: Bring the Customer, Developers and Testers Together to Understand Requirements Up-Front
- Session 7 - The Role of Management in Lean-Agile Transformations
….SCROLL DOWN TO Reserve your seat for each session….
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VIRTUAL WORKSHOP – Identify, Scope, & Prioritize Features using Agile (On-Demand)
Available On-DEMAND…
We always need to define the scope, duration, and costs of a project quickly.
Sponsors want as many details as possible before providing total funding. The team wants to understand the scope of the work they will be pursuing. Everyone wants to know what the major risks to the project are.
In this virtual workshop we will show you how to scope a project when information is low and requirements are still evolving. You will quickly define an overall project/release plan, and while doing so you will identify risks, prioritize features, and bring the project team and customer together with a common project vision.
Click book to Purchase
LEARNING OBJECTIVES:
- Use a powerful Agile planning tool – The Feature Card
- Perform the correct level of planning – based on the information available
- Work with the customer to understand and scope project features
- Identify feature attributes that allow you to quantify value, risk, and uncertainty
- Involve the project team during feature scoping and sequencing
- Identify the minimal marketable feature set
- Deliver a project/release plan early, when requirements are still evolving
YOU WILL TAKE AWAY:
- Templates, Examples and Guides to use in your workplace after the workshop.
INTENDED AUDIENCE:
- IT Project Managers
- Business Analysts
- Product Managers
- Program Managers
- Product Owners
- PMO executives or managers
- Anyone who works on software projects (developers, analysts, testers, DBAs, architects)
INSTRUCTOR: Greg Smith is a Senior Project Manager, ScrumMaster, and Agile coach with ten years of experience leading project teams to a more agile process. Greg has received numerous awards for his work in helping start-ups establish good software practices, and for helping enterprises overcome bureaucracy and deliver urgent projects. Greg has worked for companies including Philips Electronics, The Seattle Times, R.R. Donnelley, Washington Mutual, and JP Morgan Chase. Greg has been teaching Agile Project Management at Bellevue College since 2005. Greg is also a co-author of the top rated agile adoption book, Becoming Agile in an Imperfect World.
PDU’s: 1.5
COST: $57 (An on-demand course – recorded on January 14, 2010)
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WEBINAR – Selling Agile to Management, the Business & your Team
Trying to get BUY-IN from your Organization about using Agile?
Learn how to deal with the common objections about using Agile. They will make you chuckle as well.
Objections like:
- If waterfall works – why not keep doing it?
- Agile doesn’t allow for long-term planning
- Business wants “fixed priced” contracts
- My team is not co-located
- How do I work with non-Agile parts in the organization?
- and more….
Click Here to view recording.
WEBINAR – 5 Secrets to Uncovering the “Hidden” Job Market
I know Kevin well and he is the real thing when it comes to this topic and getting your job search on track. .
On this call he talked about 5 key topics:
- The biggest block that’s likely keeping you and your search in low-gear right now and wasting precious time (and how to bust out of your rut)
- 5 things recruiters have begged him not to share with you that can keep you from having your job search sabotaged without you even knowing it
- Why your resume is not as critical a factor in getting the interviews (or the job) as you think
- 3 immediate ways you can make your job search lean-and-m