Certified Agile Skills - Scaling 1™

Certified Agile Skills - Scaling 1™

Boost agile capacity and capability at any organization with a smart approach to scaling agile ways of working. This certification course is tailored to organizational leaders, managers, and anyone wanting to ramp up the results of their organization's agile investment. You'll learn from the brightest minds in agility and receive a two-year membership to Scrum Alliance upon successful completion.

• CAS-S1 is right for managers, leaders, and anyone who wants to scale agile delivery as one of the tools for executing enterprise strategy and building better products

• Scale flexibility, responsiveness to change, and customer focus across an enterprise

• Learn adaptive scaling patterns that evolve with your business

• Deliver customer solutions more effectively with cross-team collaboration

• React nimbly whenever changes, challenges, and new information arise

• Relevant and practical agile scaling skills and knowledge regardless of role, industry, or company size

• Understand the principles and patterns in scaling frameworks and how you can adapt them to your organization

• Use agile at scale to drive organizational strategy amid rapid market changes and disruption

I. What is scaling?

1. Scaling defined – what it is...and isn’t

2. The relationship between scaling and business agility

II. Why scale?

1. The Case for Scaling discussion:

   1. Why is your organization considering scaling?

   2. How will scaling help your organization to achieve its vision and goals?

2. The case for scaling: Reasons organizations decide to scale

   1. To achieve organizational vision and goals

   2. Improved flow, cross-functional relationships

   3. Increased capacity – delivery speed, effectiveness and quality

   4. Better management of complexity

3. The philosophy of this course and scaling: ScalED vs ScalING vs DEscaling

   1. “ScalED” vs. ScalING vs. DEscaling: Avoiding the “ScalED” mistake, while embracing DEscaling

   2. Five common approaches, and a recommendation:

      1. Principle-led

      2. Practice-led (frameworks), 

      3. Practice-led (methodology)

      4. Practice-led (toolbox)

      5. Pattern-led (using agile to become agile)

      6. Recommendation → principle-informed, pattern-led

   3. Scaling definitions matching exercise

III. What makes scaling so challenging?

• A. The Cynefin framework: Clear, complicated, complex and chaotic work, and how to approach each one
  1. Scaling (mass) production: Clear and predictable work benefits from SoPs, job aids and good practices

  2. Scaling product development, solution development and new service design: Complex, sometimes chaotic work.

• B. Optimizing the whole: Scaling and systems thinking

• C. Scaling Readiness: The environment and conditions for successful scaling

DAY TWO: 

Part Two: Using Patterns to Overcome Challenges at Scale

• Patterns: A flexible approach to scaling
  • A. Patterns defined

  • B. The benefits of patterns, the pains of anti-patterns

  • C. The common elements (attributes) of a pattern

  • D. The real world: Examples of patterns in action

• Frameworks and their relationship to patterns

  • A. What is an agile framework?

  • B. An introduction to a scaling framework

  • C. Recognizing patterns in frameworks and other things

  • D. Cautions & caveats on the use of frameworks

• Finding and Selecting a Pattern

  • A. An introduction to pattern libraries

  • B. Applying principles in pattern selection

  • C. Case Study: A scaling patterns and its use

• Logistical Scaling Challenges

  • What is a functional scaling challenge? A definition and an example

  • Grappling with complexity: Organizational challenges and functional scaling challenges

  • A scaling case study: pain points and challenges encountered when scaling.

  • Pattern selection activity: Select the pattern to overcome the challenge

DAY THREE: 

Part Three: Scaling Successfully and Sustainably

• Identifying and prioritizing scaling challenges
  • Identifying mistakes, anti-patterns and  challenges common when scaling

  • Organizational structure: Different structure, different challenges

  • Making challenges visible: inspecting impediments, systemic issues, value streams and value delivery to identify scaling challenges

  • It’s about results: scaling to improve value delivery

• Using scaffolds to work in a safer space

  • What is a scaffold? A definition and three examples

  • Growing and evolving: the lifecycle of scaffolds and patterns

• OCM (Organizational Change Management)

  • A word of caution: Why managing organizational change is essential

  • An iterative and incremental approach to change

  • Measuring the success of change

  • Building your team: Including the key players:  Leaders, Coaches, Change agents, Others

• Worked examples

  • Case Study: From Framework to Principle-informed, Pattern-based

  • Your organization: Building your backlog of scaling challenges

The course is suitable for anyone who is interested in Scaling Agility for large projects, teams or enterprises.

I would recommend the attendee has a base level of agile knowledge - Certified Scrum for example - But it is not essential.