Course Description

Is your team treading water using waterfall? Do you feel trapped in an agile framework? Would you like to find solutions to the problems you’ve been wrestling with? Are you looking for ways to enhance your team’s agility?

Break free from your old ways by choosing a way of working that fits your team’s context. Find strategies to improve your processes and strengthen your team with the Disciplined Agile tool kit.

Disciplined Agile Scrum Master is a nine-lesson, instructor-led course that shows you how to use Disciplined Agile (DA) to improve your team’s way of working. In just two days, you’ll become familiar with foundational agile and lean practices that DA supports, practice using the tool kit to solve problems, and learn how to build high-performance teams. Filled with activities, animations, supplemental reading, and more, this course will prepare you to take the Disciplined Agile Scrum Master (DASM) exam and, equally important, start using Disciplined Agile immediately.

Learning Objectives

Describe the significance of the Disciplined Agile Mindset

• Describe what Disciplined Agile is
• Define the principles of DA
• Describe the promises of DA
• Describe the guidelines of DA
• Describe how DA is an agnostic hybrid of approaches that leverages strategies from a variety of sources.

Describe what business agility is and how it is core to value proposition of Disciplined Agile

• Define business agility
• Identify the full range of business agility

Define the eight DA principles and how they are core to what sets Disciplined Agile apart from other agile frameworks

• Recognize the importance of making Delight Customers a priority
• Describe how Being Awesome is important for building a great agile team
• List the 5 levels of awareness (Enterprise Awareness)
• Identify how different contexts require different strategies – teams need to be able to own their own process and to experiment to discover what works in practice for them given the situation that they face. (Choice is Good)
• Identify how DA provides guardrails helping you to make better process choices, not strict rules that may not even be applicable given the context that you face. (Pragmatism Over Purism)
• Identify the potential factors to consider regarding the context of a given situation faced by a team. (Context Counts)
• Identify that the large number of strategies the DA toolkit supports to Optimize Flow.
• Explain the importance of organizing around products/services

Determine which situations each of the DA life cycles is best applied

• Describe how DA supports a variety of lifecycles
• Identify the 3 phases of the DAD delivery cycle
• Describe the Agile life cycle and identify when to use
• Describe the Lean life cycle and identify when to use
• Describe the continuous delivery Agile life cycle and identify when to use
• Describe the continuous delivery Lean life cycle and identify when to use
• Describe the exploratory life cycle and identify when to use
• Describe the program life cycle and identify when to use
• Describe the business agile and business lean life cycles
• Identify how to choose a life cycle and who chooses

• List the 5 steps for choosing your WoW
• Analyze a team’s context using the spider chart
• List factors impacting context when choosing a team's WoW
• Select best-fit life cycle using the decision tree

• Compare and contrast agile and waterfall
• List the benefits of being agile
• Outline the agile iterative way of working
• List and define the artifacts and ceremonies of agile

• Compare and Contract leaders to managers
• Identify roles that can be leaders
• Describe potential, primary and secondary roles on DA teams

• Describe the 5 Primary DA roles
• Describe the responsibilities of the 5 primary DA roles
• Describe why each of the 5 primary DA roles is important

• (motivate the team, use effective conflict resolution and communication methods, sense and respond to team emotions, demonstrate how to keep options open during brainstorming sessions, articulate respect)

• Define Inception
• Identify the process goals associated with the Inception phase

• Explain what it means to be goal driven
• Define process blade and how process blades are used inside DA
• Describe the purpose of a goal diagram
• Describe how to read a goal diagram
• Describe the process goals of DAD
• Rank and select process goals according to their relevance to the phase and the team’s context
• Identify key practices for the team try using goal diagrams

• Define user stories
• Describe how to write and estimate a user story using different techniques
• Identify acceptance criteria and the definition of done
• Indicate how to effectively plan iterations

• Define Construction
• Identify process goals associated with the Construction phase

• Identify key practices for the team try using goal diagrams

• Describe how to demonstrate an iteration
• Understand how to obtain and receive feedback

• Identify the causes of waste and delays
• Describe how to minimize waste through value stream mapping
• Describe the push and pull methods of moving work
• Describe the Kanban approach to managing work in process
• Explain how to build and validate quality into the delivery process

• Explain cost of delay
• Describe how to realize value
• Explain the importance of delivering incrementally
• Contrast MBI with MVP
• Describe the Transition phase and why it is important.
• Define Transition
• Identify process goals associated with the Transition phase

• Identify key practices for the team try using goal diagrams

• Define Ongoing phase
• Identify process goals associated with the Ongoing phase

• Identify key practices for the team try using goal diagrams

• Define “standard work” and its use as a baseline for continuous improvement
• Explain the benefits of explicit workflow
• Describe how to use Kaizen loops and PDSA techniques for continuous improvement
• Define the options for cross-team learning: "community of practice" and "center of excellence"

• Describe how Lean takes a system view rather than a team view
• Contrast Lean aspects of knowledge work with work in the real world, including sources of waste and delay
• Describe aspects of regular work that affect quality and efficiency, including sources of waste and ways to improve

• Describe how resiliency supports lean thinking
• Explain when to build workflow according to resiliency outcomes