Agile Project Management Bootcamp

Whether in government or private industry, project managers face a huge challenge when confronted with continually-changing requirements. How can you plan when the things keep changing? Traditional project management approaches suggest that we take a snapshot of the requirements as a baseline, and then use change control in an attempt to minimize the impact of any shifting requirements. Sometimes, however, these changes are a reality that the project sponsor has to accommodate. The new Agile Project Management methods help deal with these situations.

Participants in this one-day workshop will learn the techniques of Agile Project Management through simulations and examples from real-world projects that used these methods to control changing requirements.

Learning Objectives

To provide experienced project managers with advanced understanding of the principles and techniques of agile project management, so that they will be able to identify situations where agile techniques may add value and begin to apply the techniques to reduce overall project risk on high-change projects.

Course Outline

  • What is Agile and What's In lt for Me?
    • The Evolution of Systems Development Lifecycles (SDLCs)
    • Iterative and Incremental Development
    • The Agile Philosophy
    • Which Projects Are Suited to Agile Methods?
  • Common Agile Methods
    • An Overview of the Scrum Method
  • Agile Estimating and Planning
    • Agile Requirements Management
    • Agile Scope Change Management
    • Rolling-Wave Planning & The 3-Levels of Agile Planning
    • Agile Estimating Approaches
    • Agile Fast Tracking
  • Metrics and Status Reporting
    • Project Schedule and Financial Status Tracking & Forecasting
    • Iteration Schedule and Financial Status Tracking & Forecasting
  • How to Determine if a Team is Agile

Who Should Attend

This course introduces some advanced variations on basic project management practices. While anyone can attend, project managers with some experience managing IT projects or new product development projects will find the material more applicable to their day-to-day work.

Course Materials

Students of this course receive a course workbook including printouts of all course presentation materials, a copy of the best-selling book Managing Agile Projects by Kevin Aguanno, and a DVD version of Scrum in Under 10 Minutes.

Testimonials

"Great agile boot camp on Wednesday! Very practical, tangible, credible, and realistic."
- Caroline Smith, IT Project Manager, Armstrong World Industries, Inc.

"I participated in your Agile Bootcamp in Garwood, New Jersey last Wednesday with several colleagues. We all really enjoyed the day and felt that your personal experiences and excellent presentation skills made the material really come alive. We are in educational publishing, but are conceptualizing a big project right now that could really benefit from agile processes. Thanks again for a really well-executed training. It was time-well-spent."
- Glenn Mathes, Senior Sponsoring Editor, ELT, Cambridge University Press

"It was a pleasure attending your training today at the PMI-NJ event at the Westwood. The presentation was very good eye opening and encouraged me to try to adopt Agile. I have used an Agile approach before and was reluctant to use it again due to some known challenges. I have decided, after attending today’s session, to try it again and focus more on making it more successful and I am sure it will."
- Alaa Abdrabou, North Americ Business Consulting

"Just wanted to say that you put on a great presentation over the past two days. Being somewhat new to my position, this camp was not only very informative but it gave me some motivation to look at implementing the Agile methodology in some of the projects that I have just begun working on."
- Mark Caulfield, Senior Business Analyst, TD Asset Management

"Thanks again for two really great days of instruction – I will recommend that co-workers take the course next time it’s offered in Toronto."
- Barbara Campbell

"I learned a lot from your class! I will definitely be applying a lot of what you taught in my future projects."
- Mark Vella, AccelorMittal Dofasco

"I wanted to thank you for a very informative seminar!! 'The Agile All Day Boot Camp' in New Jersey last week was terrific."
- George Brinker

Other anonymous feedback from the above session held for PMI New Jersey in September 2013:

- "Content was useful & general enough to apply to everyone but indepth enough to provide solid methodology."

- "Exactly what I hoped for. I brought 5 colleagues & it was completely worth it!"

- "Excellent program & presenter. Would look for him again."

- "Very informative & gave very useful examples to demonstrate new concepts."

- "Kevin was informative and enjoyable. Loved his stories!"

- "This bootcamp was excellent, it helped me understand many aspects that I need on a daily basis"

- "Nice job. I'm a beginner with Agile. This provided me with the knowledge I need to take back to work. My company is just starting to use Agile."

- "Great workshop. I was very familiar with the materials as I've been assigned to Agile projects for almost three years, but seminar still very helpful!"

- "Excellent workshop. It met beyond my expectations"

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Feedback from a session hosted by the PMI Nova Scotia Chapter:

- "Great presenter, very good presentation, great take away materials."

- "Excellent! What a comprehensive snapshot of agile project management in a day!"

- "The material was comprehensive and informative."

- "The course gave a broad overview of all the pieces relevant to the PM and explained well how they translate into traditional PM roles and tasks."

- "It was a very thorough presentation at the project manager level. Well done."

- "The instructor took the time up front to determine the group's goals and made sure to refer to them at the end if not covered."

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"I participated in your Agile Boot Camp session at this year’s PM World conference. It was a very interesting day that gave me a good insight into the Agile methodology."
- Peter McLaughlin, Sr. Project Manager, CGI

"I really enjoyed the 'Agile Boot Camp' at the Project World Conference last week. Thanks for the succinct presentation of this topic. Looking forward to using this tool in my projects. "
- Sid Fernandes, Project Management and Continuous Improvement Leader, Celplast Metallized Products Limited

"Liked having exercises to help demonstrate method and process."
- Robin Dicks @ Project Summit Boston (2014)

"Great workshop -- Learned a lot!"
- Lisa Contacos @ Project Summit Boston (2014)

"This was an excellent workshop! The delivery by the instructor was outstanding. I learned a lot."
- Vilte Karosas @ Project Summit Boston (2014)

"Very helpful + provided a good foundation of agile methods."
- Julie Celata @ Project Summit Boston (2014)

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Feedback from a session delivered in September 2014 to employees of the public health unit of a major municipality:

- "Enjoyed it. Great concepts."
- "Found it very helpful."
- "Found the course very informative and relevant to my work. Thank you."
- "Instructor was very knowledgeable!"
- "This course puts my work into perspective."
- "Presenter was very knowledgeable."
- "I enjoyed the session."

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"I thought the workshop was excellent, and certainly opened my eyes to how much is involved in Agile and seeing that I certainly need more training!!"
- Doug Thacker