Practical Agile Program Management

We're running an Advanced Scrum Master course 29-30 November 2016 in Vancouver, BC, Canada. You can see the official course outline and learning objectives here - but what does it all really mean? With many organization in Vancouver and worldwide talking about being "Agile" in today's workplace, for those that are not Agile experts/practitioners yet,

you may be wondering - what is in it for me?

As an SASM (SAFe Advanced Scrum Master) certified consultant and trainer, advocate of correctly and appropriately applied Agile (alas, Agile is practiced extremely poorly by most and it is the most misunderstood and misapplied management paradigm in modern times!) I thought I'd offer some insight from a plain English perspective as the title and terms may not do the 2-day course justice.

Why SAFe Advanced Scrum Master?

Firstly, we'll provide an insight/overview of SAFe (Scaled Agile Framework enterprise) which is essentially an all-inclusive, modular (apply which bits are appropriate, feasible and desirable for your organization/its context) freely available knowledge base re how to apply proven practices re Lean, Agile and Flow at scale across various parts and, ideally, entire organizations - from strategy formulation to team execution or "concept to cash" as we typically say. This is the de facto, proven framework for applying Lean-Agile principle at scale. Scrum and other methods from the agile family alone do not scale beyond the team level. SAFe does. SAFe is used by >65% of the fortune 100 companies and is growing in terms of adoption year over year at a rate of 185%.

If you don't know what SAFe is, attend this course.

Second, Scrum Master. Again, not a role that is fully understand with the difference between Project Manager vs Scrum Master being the source of much debate. Well, the role is much more than that and we articulate a role that is key at both team and program execution layers.

If you're a Scrum Master (certified or otherwise) there was no career path until now. Attend this course to raise your game re practical tips and techniques for better team execution but also equip yourself to drive large programs (teams of teams) and/or transformation type initiatives.

If you're a Project Manager, Program Manager, Team Manager, Development Manager or similar level role in a business and/or IT context, attend and understand how your role could be significantly enhanced by the processes, principles, practices, techniques and behaviors shared in this course.

If your organization is talking about Agile or, indeed, has started down an Agile adoption path, attend this course and enable yourself to lead and win.

If you are a Change Agent or Change Manager, come and see what modern practices are being applied and understand how you need to adjust and enable accordingly. And for PPM / Change Consultants, make sure you are up to speed with proven management practice in lean-agile enterprises.

It's quite the paradigm shift on one hand but I'd sum up as saying that its more empirical/pragmatic and frankly "common sense" (yes, we know that's not that common but this actually helps make it so!). We don't care much for method debate (theory & politics), but we're all about results and outcomes (value).

So, the question really is, do you want to do the right things, in the right way, have a toolkit that enables you to deal with typical scenarios (see this post for example of scenarios we'll tackle in the course) and bluntly, do you want to WIN! - in your role, profession and

workplace?