As I've mentioned, Diana Larsen and I are putting on our Art of Agile training courses in a few weeks. (Specifically, The Art of Agile Planning is on October 11th & 12th, and The Art of Agile Delivery is on October 13th-15th. Register Here.) Someone recently asked me for a detailed outline for the courses, and I thought you might be interested in seeing it too.

Both of these courses have a heavy emphasis on hands-on work. I can't stand boring lectures. We also include plenty of opportunities for open discussion and questions.

We always review and refine the course prior to delivering it (and even while we're delivering it!) so these outlines are subject to change.

The Art of Agile Planning

Monday: Iteration Planning

• Introduction to Agile
• Overview of Agile Planning
• Stand-Up Meetings
• The Iteration Lifecycle
• Task Planning
• Creating Stories
• "Done Done"
• A Complete Iteration
• Velocity & Estimation
• Making Commitments & Using Slack
• Technical Debt & Process Improvement

Tuesday: Product and Project Planning

• Retrospectives
• Product Management
• Adaptive Planning
• Minimum Marketable Features (MMFs)
• Scheduling MMFs
• Release Planning
• Tracking and Reporting
• Projects vs. Products
• Purpose & Vision
• Wrap Up

The Art of Agile Delivery

This course is structured around four hands-on iterations, in which participants form cross-functional teams (with customers, programmers, and testers) and create real, working software from scratch. The course is designed to be taken by both programmers and non-programmers; we split the group when appropriate.

Wednesday: Core Skills

• Introduction to Agile
• Overview of the Iteration
• Test-Driven Development
• Refactoring
• Customers' Role
• Incremental Requirements
• Customer Examples
• Pairing
• Automated Builds
• Iteration #1

Thursday: Lessons Learned and Advanced Topics

• Meeting Commitments
• Implications of "Done Done"
• Continuous Integration
• Iteration #2
• Defect Prevention
• Testers' Role
• Exploratory Testing
• Keeping Costs Low
• Simple Design
• Incremental Design and Architecture
• Collaboration on Cross-Functional Teams
• Collective Ownership

Friday: Bringing It Together

• Iteration #3
• Troubleshooting Clinic
• Transitioning to the Real World
• Iteration #4
• Lessons Learned
• Closing

Register for The Art of Agile Planning here, and for The Art of Agile Delivery here. Use the code SAODISC for a discount. The courses go together nicely if you're interested in both--use the "Register Both" button for an additional discount.