The Professional Agile Leadership Essentials^TM (PAL-E) is a hands-on workshop that uses a combination of instruction and hands-on exercises to help managers and other leaders who work directly with agile teams understand how to best support, guide, and coach their teams to improve their agile capabilities.

Becoming an agile organization is a profound transformation that requires senior leaders, middle managers, and agile team members to change the way that they organize their work, manage that work, and measure the results of the work. Agile teams cannot do this on their own; they need help from the entire organization. The changes for all involved are profound, but so are the results when everyone’s goals and ways of working are aligned.

The workshop provides a foundation for the role that leaders play in creating the conditions for a successful agile transformation. Leaders and managers are critical enablers in helping their organizations be successful, yet the role of leaders and managers in an agile organization can be quite different from what they are used to.  This workshop uses a  combination of instruction and team-based exercises to help participants learn how to form and support agile teams to  achieve better results, and how to lead the cultural and behavioral changes that organizations must make to reap the benefits of an agile product delivery approach.

NOTE: This course is delivered over four consecutive days as an online Live Virtual Course. Day timings are per the course description but are usually 9am to 12:30pm (UK Time zone)

What Will You Learn?

To succeed in a changing world, organizations need to become more agile, more responsive to customer needs and market changes. This workshop will equip leaders and managers to help their organizations change by providing participants with:

• An understanding of how agility can help you improve your organization’s performance
• An understanding of how you, as a manager or leader, can help your organization achieve the benefits of agility
• An understanding of how culture and values influence your organization’s ability to reap the benefits of agility
• Practical skills for helping to guide and coach agile teams, and to help them remove impediments
• An understanding of how to measure the benefits and impacts of agility in your organization

View the different Focus Areas covered within this class and others.

Who Should Attend

The Professional Agile Leadership Essentials course is designed for managers and those in leadership roles who are responsible for the introduction and establishment of Agile methods and techniques in an IT organization/division.

What’s Different About Live, Online Course Delivery?

Delivering any training course online requires a different set of technology and skills than an in-person course does. For example:

• Exercises have to be re-written or replaced while training objectives are still maintained
• Delivery style has to be adapted for an ‘audio/video delay’ environment
• Audience engagement has to be achieved in different ways
• Technology must be simple enough for students to use, powerful enough for the trainer to use, and invisible enough not to impede learning

Addressing this new environment requires a deep investment. Even before Covid-19 affected the way training is delivered, Derek had invested hundreds of hours in creating online video courses. The experience of doing this has helped enormously in re-providing his in-person course as a live, online, course.

As a result of the global lockdown, and the demand for training delivery online, Derek attended online courses delivered by experts in the field, to learn the craft of online delivery. He then devoted additional hundreds of hours to converting his in-person course before even thinking about live, online delivery.

What Does the Course Offer?

As well as the course content, delivered as described above, there are exercises, quizzes, puzzles and simulations where delegates work as part of small teams within virtual breakout rooms to cement the information and techniques taught

After the course, delegates receive a .PDF document of the material and the exercise outcomes.

What Equipment is Needed?

• A computer, or tablet, with audio, video and microphone (please use a headset or earphones to avoid feedback)
• A fast and secure internet connection
• An excellent browser (Google Chrome works best, Internet Explorer does not work)
• If you can, download and install the Zoom application

What Will You Receive?

All participants completing the Professional Agile Leadership – Essentials course will receive a password to attempt the Professional Agile Leadership I (PAL I) certification assessment. PAL-E class participants who attempt the PAL I assessment within 14 days of receiving their free password and do not score at least 85% will be granted a 2nd attempt at no additional cost.

Fourteen Professional Development Units (for PMI Project Management Professionals)

Course materials (in .PDF format)

Agenda

Course Outline

Here’s your course outline:

• Theory and Principles
• Improving Value Delivery
• Value – The “What”
• Culture – The “Who”
• Professionalism – The “How”
• Scaling

Your Trainer – Derek Davidson

Derek has been applying agile ways of working since before the Agile Manifesto. In 1999, he started with Extreme Programming. Later, he began using and then went on to earn his Professional Scrum Trainer licence and his Certified Scrum Trainer licence. At time of writing, he is the only person in Europe dual licenced as both a CST and a PST.

During his twenty years as an agilist, Derek has lived by the motto ‘Practicing what I teach’. He spent considerable time applying Scrum as a contractor and consultant, in the role of both Product Owner and Scrum Master. He brings these experiences with him to every course that he teaches.

Before becoming an agilist, Derek spent 18 years working with the Armed Services. He learned the art of leadership at the Royal Air Force College Cranwell and applied those lessons over the rest of his career working with senior leadership in the Armed Services, Government and Commercial sectors.

Between the Armed Services and becoming a Scrum Trainer, Derek has worked at all levels in the software industry from programmer to CTO. More recently, he has been working with non-software teams, especially internal audit.

This rich set of experiences and knowledge uniquely qualifies Derek to teach Scrum and to help you make the best investment in your Scrum journey.