I am hosting a Professional Development Day for the Southwest Ohio PMI Chapter. This will be a full day event starting at 7:30am and ending at 5:00pm. In the spirit of transparency and in an effort to gain feedback on my approach, I have decided to blog about my proposed agenda.
Level-set on Agile Understanding:
I would like to start the day by offering my view of what Team Agility is and where it falls in the grand scheme of things. This will give the participants a common language to use throughout the day. My goal is to come to a mutual understanding of Team Agility within the first hour of the event. To make this a bit more difficult, I am going to also discuss some failure modes of agile adoption and explain how adapting the out-of-the-box methodologies and frameworks can help to alleviate some of the early pain of adoption.
Introduce Learning Model:
Once the foundation has been laid, I would like to build upon that by introducing a learning model. The two options that I am familiar with are Shu-Ha-Ri and the Dreyfus Model. Recently, I have found that having a good understanding of these learning models can greatly increase you likelihood of success when implementing a new process or introducing a new methodology. With this understanding of how humans acquire new skills based on their current level of understanding, we can adapt our approach to training, mentoring, and coaching to meet the specific needs of each team and/or team member.
Create Teams Based On Agile Experience:
Now, the real learning can begin. I will split the participants out into teams based on their experience with agile; beginners with beginners and practitioners with practitioners. This is a different approach than you typically see. However, based on the learning model introduced, this breakout will allow us to provide different levels of teaching, mentoring, and coaching, as well as, introduce different activities based on each participant’s experience level.
Run Workshops:
I am planning for the activities section to take up the largest portion of the session. Each activity will be introduced through a short lecture, followed by the activity. After each activity, we will have a short discussion about what we learned and how our learnings can be applied to our individual projects and/or organizations. The specific activities will be decided upon based on the background, level of experience, and expectations of the participants.
Panel Discussion and Case Studies:
The session will end with a small panel discussion. The goal of this discussion is to provide real life examples of how agile methods have been adapted to fit different organizations. This will also be an opportunity for the participants to ask questions and receive multiple points of view from agile practitioners.
If you have feedback, questions, or ideas that you would like to contribute to this event, please leave me a comment.
Here is the link to the event: http://www.pmi-swohio-chapter.org/index.php/events/icalrepeat.detail/2011/09/14/256/-/MDkyYmYxOWU5ODdkMGUwMTczYjQ3MDg5MGJiYjc1Y2Y=.html
Agile Sean 
Posted on September 9, 2011
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