What's the deal with Agile?

Agile training has become pretty popular here at Babsim over the last couple of years, so I wanted to take some time to discuss some of the current understanding of what Agile methodology is.

Agile software development is a group of software development methods based on iterative and incremental development, where requirements and solutions evolve through collaboration between self-organizing, cross-functional teams. It promotes adaptive planning, evolutionary development and delivery, a time-boxed iterative approach, and encourages rapid and flexible response to change. It is a conceptual framework that promotes foreseen interactions throughout the development cycle. The Agile Manifesto^[1] introduced the term in 2001.

Here is a look at the Agile Extension to the BABOK Guide by the IIBA. PMI also goes into detail about Agile techniques here.

Now that we’ve got that down, let’s take a look at what Agile course offerings we have that can fit in with your organization.

Agile Practices for Managers

This course introduces managers to management principles in an Agile environment. Students learn the paradigm shifts that occur when organizations move from traditional environments to Agile environments. Students learn the different management dimensions to examine the organization, and the appropriate techniques which should be used to assist and support Agile teams to successful implementations.

Improving Customer Satisfaction and Creating Better IT Solutions: Agile requirements and Development

This two-day workshop provides an introduction to those agile methods. Rather than detailing one of those methods as a reputed “cure” for every organization and situation, it provides an overview of several methods with the goal of allowing participants to pick and choose among the methods to identify those that will work for them.

Agile In-Depth Experience

Learn about iteration planning, product roadmap and backlog, estimating practices, user story development, and iteration execution.

Agile Certified Practitioner PMI-ACP Prep Course

The purpose of this course is to prepare the students for the ACP^SM certification exam. The class begins with an overview of Agile approaches. It includes Scrum, XP, Agile Earned Value, Kanban, and hybrid approaches to implementing Agile on projects. The class also reviews Agile tools techniques such as story prioritization, backlog management, Agile estimation, personas, TDD, Information Radiators, and other tools. The class ends with a practice quiz to simulate the experience of taking the ACPSM exam. Although the class is intended for those with some Agile experience who wish to prepare for the certification exam, those experienced project managers with are curious about Agile and want an introduction.

XP: Acceptance Test Driven Development

The Testing & Refactoring Workshop offers a comprehensive, hands-on introduction to evolutionary design and automated testing. Over the past decade, practices like Test-Driven Development (TDD) and Refactoring have helped many teams significantly improve development speed, code quality and responsiveness to changing requirements. This workshop explores the foundations of TDD, microtesting and automated refactoring with the help of various patterns, strategies, tools and techniques.

3/13/13-3/15/13 and 3/27/13-3/29/13

-Matt