Agile Development Foundation with Scrum plus Requirements Management and User Stories Training

This course is intended for those wishing to adopt Agile methods - either as a first introduction or after some experience of Agile practice. The course provides a practical introduction to Agile Software Development and specifically the Scrum method.

The course teaches the concepts of short delivery cycles, working with changing requirements and empirical process control. Students will learn how to deliver software in time-boxed iterations, hold Scrum meetings, manage work backlogs and prioritize work to satisfy business need. They will learn about the technical practices which make this possible, and how, in a changing environment, to communicate requirements.

After discussing the foundations of Agile and Scrum the courses takes a deeper look at requirements discover and management. This includes close examination of the Scrum Product Owner role and how Product Managers and Business Analysts fill this role.

Students learn how to write User Stories together with the prerequisite stakeholder, role and personas identification. The management of Agile projects and the importance of goals, vision and value management is explained and examined.

• Follow Scrum processes, fulfill roles and responsibilities
• Develop software in an Agile fashion using time-boxed iterations
• Understand Agile values and principles
• Participate in Scrum style meetings such as daily stand up, planning and retrospectives
• Identify development impediments and take action to remove
• Understand the technical practices common in Agile development and Scrum
• Complete exercises to simulate Agile development and practices in the classroom
• Follow a 10 step requirements cycle to generate business value
• Write User Stories, role descriptions, personas and identify stakeholders
• Know how to use a variety of requirements gathering techniques in an Agile setting
• Work with software testers to ensure product quality

Agile & Scrum Overview

• What is a Agile?
• Scrum and XP
• The relationship between Agile, Scrum, Lean and other methods
• Benefits of Agile and Scrum
• Empirical processes control
• Agile values and principles
• Self-organizing teams

Sprints and iterations

• Sprint cycle
• Planning
• Sprint Backlog
• Commitment
• Daily Scrum
• Sprint Reviews
• Retrospectives
• Demonstrations
• Release
• Velocity
• Sprint Goal
• Abnormal Termination

Technical Practices

• Test Driven Development (TDD)
• Refactoring
• Continuous integration
• Simplicity
• Design & Architecture
• Code Reviews
• Pair Programming
• Work breakdown
• Planning Poker

Project Management

• Risk management
• Burn down charts
• Cumulative flow diagrams
• Story estimation
• User Acceptance Testing
• Release Plans
• Product Roadmaps

Management Practices

• Retrospective facilitation
• Impediment removal
• Vertical teams
• Quality
• Visibility
• Definition of Done
• Prioritization

Roles

• Scrum Master
• Product Owner
• Team
• Stakeholders

Lean

• Lean thinking in Agile
• Key Lean concepts for Agile development
• Kaizen continuous improvement
• Just-In-Time
• Lean approach to Quality

Common Problems and Resolutions

• Blocks and impediments
• Wagile and ScrumBut
• Fake-Agile

Requirements

• Product Owner role and relationship to Business Analysts and Product Managers
• Product Backlog
• 10-Step approach to requirements
• Customer involvement
• Project Objectives and Vision
• Stakeholders, Roles and Personas
• User Stories: Epics, Features and Tasks
• Value management

Requirements discovery

• User interviews
• Focus groups
• User groups
• Win/Loss analysis

Upcoming Dates & Locations