Agile Coaching Certification Part 1: Facilitating Agile Practices : with Ahmed Sidky and Marsha Acker

Who Should Attend/Prerequisites

This course is targeted towards Certified Scrum Masters, Agile Team Coaches, Project Managers or anyone who is leading agile teams. This course is a foundational course for those interested in obtaining the Agile Coaching Certification from the International Consortium for Agile (ICAgile).

Pre-Requisite

Since this class is not about the mechanics of agile we highly recommend the Fundamentals of Agile course.

Class Size Limit: 20 (Minimum 8)

Course Overview

You are tasked to coach your team through a group estimation, project charter, or story writing workshop. There will be more than 40 people in the meeting. You only have 2 hours to generate an outcome with consensus. Have you considered the following?

• What question your agenda trying to answer?
• Do you have your meeting organizing tools prepared?
• How you will design your agenda to meet the desired outcome?
• Do you know what tools will you use to move the group towards consensus?
• How will you handle the disagreements that arise from competing priorities?  

Team-work and face-to-face communication are the foundations of agile.  A 10 person team can spend an average of $63,000 per release just participating in meetings – iteration planning, daily standups, release planning, demonstrations and retrospectives. Often these meetings don’t result in any value for the team or team members.  So how do you ensure that your meetings are productive, valuable, and engaging for everyone involved?

The overwhelming majority of agile training today is focused around the mechanics of agile practices (i.e. daily standups, project charters, ) while in reality it’s the dynamics of executing those practices in a group setting that is more challenging. The skills and tools needed to successfully execute these practices are not learned only by trial and error. There are professional disciplines for facilitation and coaching skills that provide you with the essential skills required to become an effective coach. This class blends those professional disciplines of facilitation and coaching with the agile values, principles and practices and provides the foundational skills and tools needed to equip agile coaches with the necessary skills and tools to successfully adopt the agile values, mindset and practices within your team. 

A Journey with Certifications

The International Consortium for Agile (ICAgile), in collaboration with various thought leaders for the Agile industry, have defined a roadmap for facilitation and coaching skills that lead to an ICAgile Expert Coach designation. Recognizing that the journey through the roadmap is more than one course, there are topic certifications that are earned along the way when a defined set of learning objectives are met. The ICAgile Expert Coach designation is obtained once all the topic certifications within a track are completed.

The two topic certifications with the ICAgile Facilitation and Coaching track are:

• ICAgile Team Facilitation Certification
• ICAgile Coaching Certification

This course has been accredited by ICAgile to cover all the learning objectives of the Team Facilitation Certification. Therefore, all participants of this course will earn the ICAgile Team Facilitation Certification upon completion of this course.

Participants are eligible to earn 21 Agile Professional Development Units (Agile PDUs) upon successful completion of the class.

Agenda

The Mindset and Role of an Agile Coach

·         Facilitation vs. Coaching

·         Development Path for Agile Coaching

·         The Agile Team Facilitation Stance

·         Facilitation Skills Self-Assessment

Agile Team Practices

·         Chartering

·         Release Planning

·         Iteration Planning

·         Retrospectives

·         Daily Standups

Facilitation Skills

·         Active Listening

·         Levels of Listening

·         Asking Powerful Questions

·         Giving and Receiving Feedback

·         Conflict Management

·         Handling Dysfunctional Behavior

Facilitation Tools and Techniques

·         The Facilitation Process

·         Planning the Group Session

·         Designing for Collaboration

·         Conducting the Session

·         Documenting and Evaluating the Session

Facilitating the Agile Practices - Simulations

·         Facilitating Remote Teams

·         Day to Day – Inside an Iteration

·         Choosing the Level of Facilitation Intervention

·         Modeling the Agile Mindset

·         Chartering

·         Planning

·         Retrospectives

Cost:

$2070.00 per attendee.