Conducting an Agile Project Health Check: New Perspectives for PMOs, Risk Managers, and Auditors

Have some projects in your organization adopted agile development methods?  Are you struggling to find out how you should be assessing the health of these projects?  If so, then this 1-day course is for you.

Aimed at the Project Management Office, Risk Managers, and Auditors, this course provides a high-level, business-focused overview of agile management methods and then goes on to answer questions such as:

• Planning & Documentation

• What happened to the Gannt Chart, resource plan, work breakdown structure (WBS) and financial baseline?
• Where are our other standard documents?
• How come the plan keeps changing?
• How were the estimates prepared?
• Can these agile methods work on fixed-price projects?

• Metrics and Control

• How can I get my standard Earned Value (or similar) metrics from this project?
• How else can I measure productivity and the accuracy of the team’s estimates?
• How do I know whether or not the team is on track for the current iteration?
• How do I know whether or not the entire project is going to hit its completion date?
• How are the financial and schedule forecasts prepared and can we trust them?
• How is scope managed?  How does agile avoid the negative effects of scope creep?
• How is work authorized?  Where are the sign offs?
• How do I know if we are being agile enough?

• Enterprise Issues
• How do we ensure that enterprise-wide standards are being followed?
• What about interlocks with other dependent projects?
• How are shared resources managed?

The cost of this course is $499 per person, which includes all of the bonus materials described above, plus continental breakfast, lunch, and coffee/tea throughout the day.

Agenda

09:00    Introduction and Class Overview
09:20    Overview of Agile Management Methods
10:20    Agile Documentation
10:45    Break
11:00    Agile Requirements Management (User Stories and Backlogs)
11:45    Backlog Prioritization
12:15    Agile Estimating with Story Points and The Planning Game (Lunch Provided)
13:00    Project Scheduling (Release Plans)
13:30    Break
13:45    Planning Iterations (Iteration Plans, Sprint Backlog)
14:15    Agile Metrics and Control (Burndown Charts, Velocity)
14:45    Agile Contracting (**Sample Contracts in Course Book**)
15:15    Agile Health Check Tool
16:15    Class Wrap Up
16:30    Class Complete

Course Materials

In addition to the training, you will leave with:

• A course workbook including copies of all presentation slides and handouts
• The Agile Health Check assessment tool to use for assessing your own projects.  A $99 value.
• A downloadable MP3 audiobook of What’s that Smell?  Early Warnings of Agile Project Issues by Kevin Aguanno.  A $19.95 value.
• A downloadable MP3 audiobook of Are You Agile, or Are You Fragile? by noted agile guru Scott Ambler.  A $19.98 value.
• A copy of the best-selling book Managing Agile Projects edited by Kevin Aguanno and containing chapters by many of the gurus who invented the agile methods.  A $39.95 value.
• The Agile Estimating & Planning Resource Kit (CD-ROM) a $49.95 value.

The total value of these bonus materials is over $225!