Managing Agile and Other Projects – Skills, Approaches and Methods
THIS COURSE HAS BEEN CANCELED
Fall 2016 Course
Date: Monday & Tuesday, November 28 & 29
Time: 8:30 am – 5:00 pm
Decision date: Friday, November 18, 2016
Early Registration Date deadline: November 11
Before Early Registration Date:
Members $415
Non-members $430
After Early Registration Date:
Members $430
Non-members $455
WHERE: Crowne Plaza Hotel
15 Middlesex Canal Park Drive
Woburn, MA 01801
USA
Phone 781-245-5405
email sec.boston@ieee.org
Fax 781-245-5406
If paying by check, the check must be received before the appropriate dates for Early Registration and Decision Dates.
Make Checks payable and send to:
IEEE Boston Section
One Centre Street, Suite 203
Wakefield, MA 01880
Speaker: Robin Goldsmith, President, GoPro Management
Course Overview:
Despite claims to the contrary, even Agile projects need to be managed in order to succeed. That doesn’t—and never did—mean the project manager dictates every little action; but every project must know what to do, how to do it, what it takes, and how to make sure it gets done well. Agile methods help but are not sufficient and can create challenges. This intensive interactive seminar workshop shows how to manage projects to deliver the results their customers want, on time and in budget. This course helps improve project teams’ credibility by better knowing what they’re doing so they deliver as promised. Each section of the course shows how to make sure that an additional Critical Success Factor is present and addresses both Agile and other project formats. Case study exercises provide practice applying the techniques and learning how to avoid common pitfalls.
Participants who attend this course may also want to attend “Making You a Leader.”
* How lack of credibility often unknowingly affects project success and ways to earn credibility.
* Recognizing and avoiding common, often overlooked pitfalls to on-time, in-budget, quality projects.
* Using Agile and other development life cycles to jumpstart projects confidently and quickly.
* Defining scope so it doesn’t creep and building essential transitions to the workplan for achieving it.
* Methods for reliably estimating the time, effort, costs, and resources required.
* Controlling risks and balancing conflicts in the real world of both task and resource constraints.
* Tools and techniques to catch and correct problems early so project promises are kept.
WHO SHOULD ATTEND
This course has been designed for business and development specialists, product owners, scrum masters, managers, analysts, and other project participants.
Course Schedule
CRITICAL PROJECT SUCCESS FACTORS
Importance of credibility to project success
Characteristics of successful projects
Factors that really cause projects to fail
Agile’s view, why no project manager
Superworker to supervisor to superfluous
Establishing credibility, managing by facts
Overcoming Parkinson’s Law
Projects succeed/fail in the first 15 minutes
PROJECT LIFE CYCLE
Mapping project management/development
Why we get impossible deadlines/budgets
Traditional and iterative, Agile models
Project management deliverables
System development deliverables
Proactive Testing developer’s advantage
ANALYST/DESIGNER ROLE
Establishing achievable project scope
Internal & external customers/stakeholders
Strategic and management alignment
Identifying project risks
Requirements, design, user stories, ATDD
Make vs. buy
JAD, facilitation, and customer partnering
High-level conceptual design roadmap
ESTIMATING TIME, EFFORT, RESOURCES
Understanding causes of poor estimates
Applying multiple estimating strategies
Work breakdown structure, controlling risk
Measuring deliverables, function points
User story sizing, backlog grooming
PERT and weighted averages risk reduction
Cost/benefit analysis and communication
SCHEDULING TO MEET DEADLINES
Productive time scheduling practicalities
Time management techniques
Dependency networking and CPM
Coordinating multiple projects/resources
Sprints, releases, strengths and issues
Managing resource-constrained projects
Working within Brooks’ Law
Negotiating commitments and resources
CONTROLLING PROJECT COMPLETIONS
Monitoring against budget and schedule
Time boxing, burn down charts
Earned value measure of completion
Assuring quality and preventing errors
Automated tools, Kanban boards
Reporting to stakeholders, management
Key to advancement