Project Management Professional (Agile) Study Guide

Project Management Professional (PMP)
Agile Practice Guide
Introduction to Agile
 This part of the course covers the “Agile Practice Guide”
 Agile ways of working

o An intro to Agile
o Life of cycle selection
o Creating an Agile environment
o Delivering in an Agile environment
o Organizational considerations
 Two types of work in a project

o Definable work has clear procedures that have proved successful on similar projects in
the past
o High-uncertainty work requires subject matter experts to collaborate
and solve problems to create a solution
 For example, Twitter was the product of multiple iterations of an original project
called “twttr”
 What is Agile?
o Agile addresses the new demands placed on the delivery of software
 Agile ways of working

o Waterfall development is linear
o Agile Development iterative approach is a quicker way to get something out in the
market
 Time-based things are broken down into time instead of by stages
 Collection techniques different agile techniques are combined to arrive at a finished
product
 Scrum is similar to agile but there are many agile frameworks that are not considered
scrum
 Agile needs to have a holistic perception

o Vision
o Roadmap
o Releases
o Non-IT situations
o Project work
o Flow-based work
 Ways of working
 Scrum is an agile framework used to address complex adaptive problems, while productively and
creatively delivering products of the highest possible value
o Transparency - significant aspects of the process must be visible to those responsible for the
outcome
-1-
https://www.DionTraining.com © 2020 v1.0
Dion Training Solutions, LLC is an Accredited Training Organization for ITIL® and PRINCE2® by PeopleCert on behalf of Axelos. ITIL®, PRINCE2® and PRINCE2 Agile® are registered trademarks of AXELOS
Limited, used under permission of AXELOS Limited. The Swirl logo™ is a trade mark of AXELOS Limited, used under permission of AXELOS Limited. All rights reserved.
o Inspection - Scrum users must frequently inspect Scrum artifacts and progress toward a Sprint
Goal to detect undesirable variances
o Adaptation - an adjustment must be made as soon as possible if one or more aspects of a
process deviate outside acceptable limits
 The Scrum Team

o Product owner is responsible for maximizing the value of the product.
o Development team is a cross-functional, self-organizing team that consists of members who
have everything they need to deliver a working product without depending on others outside the
team
o Scrum master is responsible for ensuring the Scrum process is upheld and works to ensure the
team adheres to practices and rules
 Scrum artifacts
o Product backlog is an ordered list of everything that is known to be needed in the product and
is the single source of requirements for any changes to be made to the product
o Sprint backlog is the set of Product Backlog items selected for the Sprint
o Shippable increment is the sum of all the Product Backlog items completed during a Sprint and
the value of the increments of all previous Sprints
o Scrum Events
 Sprint is a time-boxed event with a duration of one month or less in which work is
performed
 Sprint planning is a time-boxed event with a duration of 8 hours or less per month in
which the plan for the sprint is collaboratively created by the team
 Daily scrum is a time-boxed event with a duration of 15 minutes or less each day in
which the status of work completed and to be completed is discussed
 Sprint review is a formal meeting held to inspect the Increment and adapt the Product
Backlog
 Sprint retrospective is used to create a plan for improvements to implement during the
next sprint
-2-
KANBAN
 Kanban visual management system that limit the number of work items in circulation
 Kanban practices
o Visualization
 Everyone knows what is being worked on
o Limiting ‘work in progress’ (WIP)
 Work on our capacity
o Managing the flow
 Waste is removed as quickly as possible
o Making policies explicit
 A team can make better decisions if it has proper policies in place
o Implementing feedback loops
 Quantitatively assessing this will directly affect what will subsequently be delivered
o Improving collaboratively and evolving experimentally
 Allows for the discovery of better processes and better methods of doing things
 Scrumban is an application of Kanban where the underlying process is based on Scrum.
LEAN STARUP
 Lean Startup is used to develop business practices and products quickly

o Experimentation
o Iterative product releases
o Fail fast, learn fast
o Validated learning
 Minimum Viable Product
o A version of a product that allows the team to collect the maximum amount of validated
learning with the least amount of effort
 Tests fundamental business hypotheses known as leap-of-faith assumptions
 Allows companies to quickly determine if an idea is really viable and worth continued
investment
 Does not necessarily need to go into operational use and may be done as an
experiment
 Continuous Development
o Produce something quickly, release it into production, and gain feedback in order to
iterate the next version
 Lean startup is extremely agile with releases occurring up to several times per day
-3-
 Frequent releases can be dangerous to the security of your information systems
 Split Testing (A/B Testing)

o Different versions of a product are created and offered in order to observe differences in
behavior between customer groups.
o Testing should occur at the same time to minimize variables during the test
 Build-Measure-Learn
o Idea, build, product, measure, data, learn
UNCERTAINTY AND RISK
 Using the agile approach is best for complex projects that require a lot of changes
 Uncertainty increases project risks
 Project rework is not easy in the waterfall approach
 Type of projects, low uncertainty to high uncertainty
o Simple
o Complicated
o Complex
o Chaotic
-4-
SELECTING A LIFE CYCLE
 Predictive
o Traditional approach (waterfall method)
o Linear and sequential
 Iterative
o Allows feedback which will then be used as basis for future iterations
o Spiral
 Incremental
o Provides finished products to deliver to customers
 Agile
o Hybrid of iterative and incremental
 Non agile approaches – predictive

o Waterfall
o Serial
o Linear
o Sequential
o Plan-driven
PREDICTIVE LIFE CYCLE

 Predictive life cycle- serial in nature as it works in a linear fashion
o You need to know your requirements going in, and the scope is fixed at the onset
o All the activities are done once, from the first phase to the last
o A single-delivery mechanism is implemented
o Aims to manage cost
o The predictive life cycle requires a high-certainty around all the requirements of the project.
-5-
ITERATIVE LIFE CYCLE
 Allows feedback on partially completed products which will then be used as basis for future
iterations
o Best suited for projects with dynamic requirements
o Also follows a single-delivery mechanism
o Aims to arrive at the correct solution
INCREMENTAL LIFE CYCLE
 Incremental life cycle provides finished products to deliver to customers

o Also focused on dynamic requirements
o Activities are performed once for each increment
o Produces smaller products at more frequent intervals
o Aims to deliver the products to the customers fast, which provides immediate value to
the stakeholders
AGILE LIFE CYCLES
 Leverages aspects of iterative and incremental life cycles
 Combine smaller chunks of work in incremental with the spirals in iterative
 Iteration based agile

 Increments (which continually repeat)
 Requirements
 Analyze
 Design
 Build
 Test
-6-
DETERMINING SUITABILITY
 Model for suitability of agile approach
 Assess organization in three main areas

o Culture
 Buy-in to approach
 Trust in team
 Decision-making powers of team
o Team
 Size
 Experience levels
 Access to the customer or business
o Project
 Changes
 Criticality of product or service
 Incremental delivery
HYBRID LIFE CYCLE

 Hybrid life cycle
o Takes the best of all approaches as it uses a predictive approach for the elements of the project
that are known and an adaptive approach for the elements that will become apparent over time
o It uses some agile approaches but with a predictive mindset
-7-
 Approach
o Largely predictive approach with agile components (example: satellite organization)
o Largely agile approach with predictive components (example: Dion training)
 Agile is great for incremental projects and products, while those that require fully completed products fit
better with predictive approach
TAILORING APPROACHES
 Agile does not follow a “one-size-fits-all” approach
 It should be tailored and modeled for a specific product and needs
 Project factors and tailoring options

o Demand pattern
 Steady
 Sporadic
o Process improvement is required by the level of team experience
 Junior team - frequent retrospective
 Senior team - larger interval
o Flow of work
 Make work visible using Kanban boards and experiment with limits for the various areas
of the work process in order to improve flow.
o Quality of product
 Use test-driven development practices to detect product defects
o More than one team is needed to build the product
 Learn about agile program management or formal scaling frameworks to craft an
approach that fits the project context.
o Project team members are inexperienced in the use of agile approaches
 Train team members in the fundamentals of the agile mindset and principles and
providing workshops on the team’s chosen approach
CREATING AGILE ENVIRONMENTS
 Managing a project using an agile approach requires that the project team adopt an agile mindset
 Agile mindset a way of thinking and behaving underpinned by the four values and twelve principles of
the Agile Manifesto
o How can the project team act in an agile manner?
o What can the team deliver quickly and obtain early feedback to benefit the next delivery cycle?
o How can the team act in a transparent manner?
o What work can be avoided in order to focus on high-priority items?
o How can a servant-leadership approach benefit the achievement of the team’s goals?
-8-
SERVANT LEADERSHIP
 Servant Leadership is the practice of leading through service to the team to enable the highest
possible team performance
 Purpose, people, process

o Promoting self-awareness
o Listening
o Serving those on the team
o Helping people grow
o Coaching vs. controlling
o Promoting safety, respect, and trust
o Promoting the energy and intelligence of others
 Service Leaders
o Facilitate
o Remove organizational impediments
o Pave the way for others’ contribution
 The four values of the agile manifesto

o Individuals and interactions over processes and tools
o Working software over comprehensive documentation
o Customer collaboration over contract negotiation
o Responding to change over following a plan
 Servant leader responsibilities

o Educate stakeholders around why and how to be agile
o Support the team through mentoring, encouragement, and support
o Help the team with technical project management activities
o Celebrate team successes and support and bridge building activities with external groups
ROLE OF THE PROJECT MANAGEMENT

 The value of project managers is not in their position, but in their ability to make everyone else
better
 In an agile environment, cross-functional teams coordinate their own work
 The person assigned by the performing organization to lead the team that is responsible for achieving the
project objectives
 In an agile environment, project managers are servant leaders
-9-
TEAM COMPOSITION
 Agile teams are built around motivated individuals
 Agile Roles
o Cross functional team member
 Team members with all the skills necessary to produce a working product
 I-shaped person
 Has specializations in one domain, but rarely contribute outside of that domain
 T-shaped person
 Supplements their expertise in one are with supporting yet less developed skills
in associated areas and good collaboration skills
o Product owner
 Responsible for guiding the direction of the product
o Team Facilitator
 Servant leader
 Ultimate goal is to increase workflow

o People are more likely to collaborate
o Teams finish valuable work faster
o Teams waste much less time because they do not multitask and have to re-establish
context
 Attributes of successful agile teams

o Dedicated people
 Increased focus and productivity
 Small team, fewer than ten people
o Cross-functional team members
o Develop and deliver often
o Deliver finished value as an independent team
o Integrate all the work activities to deliver finished work
o Provide feedback from inside the team and from others, such as the product
owner
 Colocation or ability to manage any location challenges

o Better communication
o Improved team dynamics
o Knowledge sharing
o Reduced cost of learning
o Able to commit to working with each other
 Mixed team of generalists and specialists

o Specialists provide expertise and generalists provide flexibility in assigning tasks
- 10 -
o Team brings their specialist capabilities and become generalizing specialists, with a
focus specialty plus breadth of experience across multiple skills
 Stable work environment
o Depend on each other to deliver
o Agreed-upon approach to the work
o Simplified team cost calculations
o Preservation and expansion of intellectual capital
TEAM STRUCTURES
 Self-organizing
 Self-managing
 Cross-functional teams
TEAM WORKSPACES
 Teams need a space in which they can work together and collaborate
 Writing down ideas enhances brainstorming sessions and promotes team creativity
 Geographically-distributed teams need virtual workspaces
 Workspaces should promote visibility and increase team collaboration
DELIVERING IN AGILE ENVIRONMENTS

 Project Charter
o A document issued by the project sponsor which authorizes the project manager to apply
resources to activities related to the project
 Team Charter
o Focused on creating the team norms and an understanding of how to work together
- 11 -
 A team charter doesn’t necessarily need to be a formal document
 Chartering ideas for social contract

o Team values
o Working agreements
o Ground rules
o Group norms
RETROSPECTIVES
 Retrospective
o A technique that allows the team to learn about, improve, and adapt its process
o is a time for the team to learn from previous work and make small improvements
o At regular intervals, the team reflects on how to become more effective, then tunes and adjusts
its behavior accordingly
BACKLOG
 Backlog is the ordered list of all the work for the team
 Epic a very large-scale requirement that is not yet defined well-enough to be worked upon
 Refinement Meeting allows the product owner to present story ideas to learn about potential challenges
or problems in the stories
o If the product owner is unsure of the dependencies, a request can be made for the team to spike
the feature in order to understand the risks
- 12 -
DAILY STANDUPS
 Daily Standup allows teams to micro commit to each other, uncover problems, and ensure
smooth workflows.
o Iteration-based
 What did I complete since the least standup?
 What am I planning to complete between now and the next standup?
 What are my impediments (or risks or problems)?
o Flow-based
o What do we need to do to advance this piece of work?
o Is anyone working on anything that is not on the board?
o What do we need to finish as a team?
o Are there any bottlenecks or blockers to the flow of work?
 Daily standup antipatterns

o Turin your standup into a status meeting
o Solving problems as they become apparent
DEMONSTRATIONS AND REVIEWS
 As a general guideline, demonstrations for a working product are performed at least once every
two weeks
 Do a demonstration for a working product, or a review to show what you have been working on
o Demonstration generally uses something that is functional
o Review allows to see people what you are working on
PLANNING FOR ITERATION
 Each team’s capacity is different, just like how each product owner’s typical story size is different
o Effort vs. results
o The goal is to reach 100% capacity
 Teams cannot predict with 100% certainty what they can deliver as they cannot know the
unexpected
BEST PRACTICES
 Continuous Integration
- 13 -
o Perform frequent incorporation of work into the whole and determine if product still
works as intended
 Test at all levels
o Employ system-level testing for end-to-end information and unit testing for the building
blocks
 Acceptance test-driven development (ATDD)

o Get together and discuss the acceptance criteria for a work product
 Test-driven/behavior-drive development (TDD, BDD)

o Write automated tests before writing/creating the product
 Spikes (timeboxed research or experiments)

o Learn some critical, technical, or functional elements of a product through research
and/or experiment.
 Teams cannot predict with 100% certainty what they can deliver as they cannot know the
unexpected
AGILE CHALLENGES
 Agile pain points

o Unclear purpose or mission for the team
 Agile chartering for purpose: vision, mission, and mission tests
o Unclear team context
 Agile chartering for context: boundaries, committed assets, and prospective
analysis
 Unclear requirements
o Help sponsors and stakeholders craft a product vision
 Too much product complexity

o Instill among the members of the team the idea of maximizing the amount of work not
done
- 14 -
 Inaccurate estimation
o Use relative estimation with the entire team to estimate
 Team struggles with obstacles

o A servant leader can help clear these obstacles
 Defects
o Consider the technical practices that work for the environment
 Technical debt (degraded code quality)

o Refactoring, agile modeling, pervasive testing, automated code, quality analysis,
definition of done
MEASURING RESULTS
 Traditional projects are commonly measured either by percentage or by budget
 In an agile environment, time and money are fixed factors
 Agile favors empirical and value-based measurements
 Story Points
o Points assigned to a user story based on the amount of effort involved during its
completion
o Burndown chart
 How much work is left
o Burnup chart
 How much work has been completed
 Velocity
o The sum of all story points for the features completed in a given iteration
 Lead time
o Total time it takes to deliver an item from the time it is added to the board to the
moment it is completed
 Cycle time
o Time required to process an item
 Response time
o Time that an item waits until work starts
- 15 -
ORGANIZATIONAL CONSIDERATION
 Project agility is more effective and sustained as the organization adjusts to support it
 Project leaders are expected to navigate organizational dynamics skillfully
ORGANIZATIONAL CHANGE
 Working in an agile way is more effective if the whole organization works in the same manner
 A PMI publication that describes a comprehensive and holistic approach for successfully
introducing meaningful change
o Models for describing change dynamics
o Framework for achieving change
o Application of change management practices at the project, program, and portfolio
levels.
 Drivers for change management

o Changes associated with accelerated delivery
o Changes associated with agile approaches
 Readiness for change

o Executive management’s willingness to change
o Organization’s willingness to shift the way it views, reviews, and assesses employees
o Centralization or decentralization of project, program, and portfolio management
functions
o Focus on short-term budgeting and metrics versus long-term goals
o Talent management maturity and capabilities
 Organization agility roadblocks

o Work is decomposed into different silos
o Procurement strategies are based on short-term pricing strategies
o Leaders are rewarded for local efficiencies rather than end-to-end flow of project
delivery
o Employees are specialized contributors with limited tools or incentives
o Decentralized portfolios pull employees simultaneously onto too many projects at
once
 Cultural compatibility approaches

o Visible and active executive sponsorship
o Change management practices (communication and coaching0
- 16 -
o Progressive pacing of the adoption of agile practices

o Incremental introduction of agile practices to the team
o Leading by example by using agile techniques and practices
ORGANIZATIONAL CULTURE
 Organizational culture runs along a continuum, from highly predictive plans to lean startup
mentality
 Safe work environment

o Safe
o Honest
o Transparent
 Culture assessment and change management is critical in the success and culture of your
organization
CONTRACTS AND PROCUREMENT
 The 4 values of the agile manifesto

o Individuals and interactions over processes and tools
o Working software over comprehensive documentation
o Customer collaboration over contract negotiation
o Responding to change over following a plan
 Contracting techniques
o Multi-tiered Structure
 The use of different documents in describing different aspects involved in a
project
- 17 -
o Emphasis on Value Delivered

 Milestones and payment terms can be structured based on value-driven
deliverables
o Fixed-price Increments
 Decomposing a project’s scope into fixed-price micro deliverables
o Not-to-exceed Time and Materials
 Limiting the overall budget to a fixed amount, allowing the customer to
incorporate new ideas and innovations into the project
o Graduated Time and Materials
 Shared financial risk approach
o Early Cancellation Option
 A customer’s right to cancel a project’s remainder, subject to a cancellation fee
o Dynamic Scope Option
 The customer’s option to adjust the project scope to fix the capacity of fixed-
budget contracts
o Team Augmentation
 Embedding the supplier’s services directly into the customer organization
 Agile contracts should be written to work in an agile way
BUSINESS PRACTICES
 Business practice consideration
 Cross-functional teams
 Establishing business rules between an internal team and an individual’s original
department
 Performance appraisals
o Should it be done by the project leader or by the department head?
SCALING WITH AGILE
 Scaling with Agile
 Framework
o Scrum of scrums
 Metascrum
 Two or more scrum teams are combined into a larger scrum team
o Scaled agile framework

 SAFe
- 18 -
 Focused on getting enterprise systems to work on different value streams

 Macro-view
o Large scale scrum

 LSS
 Organizes different development teams to extend scrum methods
 Divides the sprint planning into the “what” and the “how”
o Enterprise scrum
 Designed to apply scrum at the organization level rather than the product
development level
 Allows for “disruptive innovation”
o Disciplined agile
 DA
 Process-decision framework that integrates agile techniques into a
comprehensive model
 Six fundamentals principles

o People first
o Learning-oriented
o Full delivery life cycle
o Goal-drive
o Enterprise awareness
o Scalable
 The goal is to coordinate healthy agile teams to deliver value to customers
THE AGILE PMO
 PMO exists to shepherd business value throughout the organization
 Over time the organization might need to change
 The agile PMO

o Value-driven
 Agile PMO is Value-Driven, so any project should deliver the right value
 Needs to strive to deliver what is needed, when it is needed, and need to focus
on what the customers want as well
o Invitation-oriented
 An Agile PMO is Multidisciplinary
- 19 -
 Needs to be well-versed in different competencies
o Center of Excellence
 Facilitate organizational learning
 Provide product owner training, guidance on acceptance testing, and how to
evaluate and give feedback on systems
 Retrospectives, training team members, create agreements, conducting lessons
learned meetings, and more
ORGANIZATIONAL STRUCTURE
 Structures and considerations to think about

o Geography
o Horizontal vs vertical or something completely different
o What is the size of your project deliverables
o How are you going to allocate people to your projects
o Is your organization procurement heavy or do you build things yourself
CONCLUSION
 In this course, you were introduced to PMI’s Agile Practice Guide
 We covered five different areas

o An intro to agile
o Life cycle selection
o Creating an agile environment
o Delivering in an agile environment
o Organizational considerations
 I hope you enjoyed the course, and my teaching style
 If so, I hope to see you in one of my other great courses, too!
- 20 -

Project Management Professional (Agile) Study Guide

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

Project Management Professional (Agile) Study Guide

Uploaded by

Document Information

Original Title

Copyright

Available Formats

Share this document

Share or Embed Document

Sharing Options

Did you find this document useful?

Is this content inappropriate?

Copyright:

Available Formats

Project Management Professional (Agile) Study Guide

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

Project Management Professional (PMP)

Agile Practice Guide

 This part of the course covers the “Agile Practice Guide”

 Agile ways of working

 Two types of work in a project

 Agile ways of working

 Agile needs to have a holistic perception

 The Scrum Team

 Scrumban is an application of Kanban where the underlying process is based on Scrum.

 Lean Startup is used to develop business practices and products quickly

 Minimum Viable Product

 Frequent releases can be dangerous to the security of your information systems

 Split Testing (A/B Testing)

UNCERTAINTY AND RISK

SELECTING A LIFE CYCLE

 Non agile approaches – predictive

PREDICTIVE LIFE CYCLE

ITERATIVE LIFE CYCLE

INCREMENTAL LIFE CYCLE

 Incremental life cycle provides finished products to deliver to customers

AGILE LIFE CYCLES

 Leverages aspects of iterative and incremental life cycles

 Combine smaller chunks of work in incremental with the spirals in iterative

 Iteration based agile

 Model for suitability of agile approach

 Assess organization in three main areas

HYBRID LIFE CYCLE

 It should be tailored and modeled for a specific product and needs

 Project factors and tailoring options

CREATING AGILE ENVIRONMENTS

 Purpose, people, process

 The four values of the agile manifesto

 Servant leader responsibilities

ROLE OF THE PROJECT MANAGEMENT

 In an agile environment, cross-functional teams coordinate their own work

 In an agile environment, project managers are servant leaders

 Ultimate goal is to increase workflow

 Attributes of successful agile teams

 Colocation or ability to manage any location challenges

 Mixed team of generalists and specialists

 Geographically-distributed teams need virtual workspaces

 Workspaces should promote visibility and increase team collaboration

DELIVERING IN AGILE ENVIRONMENTS

 A team charter doesn’t necessarily need to be a formal document

 Chartering ideas for social contract

 Daily standup antipatterns

DEMONSTRATIONS AND REVIEWS

PLANNING FOR ITERATION

 Acceptance test-driven development (ATDD)

 Test-driven/behavior-drive development (TDD, BDD)

 Spikes (timeboxed research or experiments)

 Agile pain points

 Too much product complexity

 Team struggles with obstacles

 Technical debt (degraded code quality)

 Traditional projects are commonly measured either by percentage or by budget

 In an agile environment, time and money are fixed factors

 Agile favors empirical and value-based measurements

 Project leaders are expected to navigate organizational dynamics skillfully