This course is being held at the Centre for Social Innovation (CSI Spadina). If you are traveling from out of town, we recommend the Hyatt Regency Toronto or the Hilton Garden Inn which are a few blocks from the venue.
Agile management is an often overlooked part of Agile. There is much information available for Agile developers, testers, and project managers, but very little for development managers and team leaders. However, when organizations adopt Agile software development, not only developers, testers, and project managers need to learn new practices. Development managers and team leaders must also learn a new approach to leading and managing Agile organizations. Several studies indicate that “old-style” managers are the biggest obstacle in transitions to Agile software development. Development managers and team leaders need to learn what their new role is in Agile software development organizations. This course will help them.
This course aims at people who are interested in becoming more effective leaders. Whether you're a manager, project manager, team lead or Agile team member, Management 3.0 will equip you with the tools to become a better leader.
Jason Little is an Organizational Change Coach, author and international speaker who is passionate about helping leaders be more effective in their daily work. Jason is a licensed Management 3.0 instructor, CSP, CSPO and Lean Startup Machine weekend winner.
Jason has worked with small organizations and enterprise organizations throughout his 17 year software and IT career and recently released Agile Transformation: A Guide to Organizational Change on Safari Books Online as well as Inform IT. He is also in process of writing his second publication entitled Lean Change: Evolving Change Management which is focused on applying Lean Startup techniques to organizational change.
1. Agile and Lean software development are the new golden standards for software teams. You'll learn about different Agile methods, popular best practices, the 7 dimensions of looking at software projects, challenges in Agile adoption around the world, and the contributions of managers and team leaders in Agile organizations;
2. People are the most important parts of an organization and managers must do all they can to keep people active, creative, and motivated. You'll learn the difference between extrinsic and intrinsic motivation, the 10 intrinsic desires, and common techniques for understanding what is important to the people in your teams, such as one-on-one meetings, personal assessments, the 12 most important questions, and 360 degree meetings;
3. Teams are able to self-organize, and this requires empowerment, authorization, and trust from management. You will learn how to make self-organization work, how to distribute authorization in an organization, the challenges of empowerment, how to grow relationships of trust, and several techniques for distributed control, such as the 7 levels of delegation, and authority boards;
4. Self-organization can lead to anything, and it’s therefore necessary to protect people and shared resources, and to give people a clear purpose and defined goals. You'll learn when to manage and when to lead, how to use different criteria to create useful goals, about the challenges around management by objectives, and how to protect people and shared resources from any bad effects of self-organization.
1. Complexity science and systems thinking are the cornerstones of an Agile mindset. You'll learn about causal loop diagrams, what complexity theory is, how to think in terms of systems, about Black Swans and Jokers, about the difference between complex and complicated, and the 7 principles of complexity thinking;
2. Teams aren’t able to achieve their goals if team members aren’t capable enough, and managers must therefore contribute to the development of competence. You'lll learn about skill levels and discipline levels, how and when to apply the seven approaches of competence development, how to measure progress in a complex system, the effect of sub-optimization, and several tips for useful metrics;
3. Many teams operate within the context of a complex organization, and thus it is important to consider structures that enhance communication. You'lll learn how to grow an organizational structure as a fractal, how to balance specialization and generalization, how to choose between functional and cross-functional teams, about informal leadership and widening job titles, and about treating teams as value units in a value network;
4. People, teams, and organizations need to improve continuously, in order to defer failure for as long as possible. You'll learn about approaches and strategies for continuous improvement, about the Red Queen’s Race, about the three drivers of improvement, about linear versus non-linear improvement, and how to perform an adaptive walk over a fitness landscape.
Each of the four topics includes at least one game or exercise where people put into practice the ideas of the course in groups of five. Sometimes the attendees play as different managers against each other. Sometimes they act together as one manager, sharing their thoughts while working on a problem. Every social activity ends with a debrief discussion period, so that people can relate what they’ve learned to their own situation, and bring up questions and experiences to be addressed by the whole group.
An open mind and a thirst for new ideas. No practical experience with Agile methods is necessary, though some familiarity with Agile principles and practices is useful.