Agile Project Management

What is Agile Project Management™?

• Agile Project Management (AgilePM) is the training course and qualification certified and accredited by the APMG
• Unlike PRINCE2® that focused on governance, Agile Project Management is all about the “doing”
• AgilePM explains how an agile project is managed
• Agile Project Management clarifies the different management styles needed to deliver successful agile projects
• Developed by APMG with the DSDM Consortium, Agile Project Management it is based upon the proven principles of DSDM Atern
• PRINCE2® and Agile Project Management complement each other

Benefits of Agile Project Management

• It works at the project management level
• It provides a full management structure including roles, responsibilities and a lifecycle
• It can work with any size of project
• It suits stand-alone project teams
• It is fast paced and can react to changes much faster than PRINCE2
• Project staff can get working on the project activities much quicker
• There are only 19 documents to manage rather than 47 with PRINCE2
• Language used can easily be recognised by PRINCE2 teams
• Real world examples of major programmes being saved by Agile i.e. FBI database

Agile project management – principles

Agile project management – Techniques

• Prototyping – using show and tell techniques to create example solutions helps people with different perspectives focus on an accurate solution
• Facilitated workshops –assembling all stakeholders to hear and discuss project requirements and help to find the potential solutions to be delivered
• Modelling –approaches to developing the solution using images, mock-ups, A/B testing etc and involving the business or customer as much as possible
• Timeboxing – controlling the project by breaking the project down into small timeboxes which each have clear objectives and deliverables.
• MoSCoW (M = must; S = should; C = could; W = won’t have this time) – prioritisation technique to reach a common understanding on the importance of each requirement.

What do people say about the course?

“I am an independent contractor and wanted Agile Project Management qualification to differentiate myself from all those ‘project managers’ that had PRINCE2”

“We wanted to become a more Agile organisation and I needed the qualification in order to convince others I knew what I was talking about”

“I have done PRINCE2 and MSP® but found the up-front planning was too slow for the current fast changing business environment – Agile Project Management addresses these concerns”

“I needed a business focused Agile approach and not one heavily focused on IT – and I found it with this course”

“This course fits well with the Change Management qualification and definitely helps me with my transformational role”

Agile project management qualifications:

Foundation

• 1 hour multiple choice paper intended to test your knowledge and not trick you
• 60 questions, 30 correct answers (50%) are required for a pass
• Closed book exam (which means you can’t refer to the manual during the exam)

Practitioner

• 2 hour objective based testing exam which involve advanced reasoning skills
• 4 questions with 15 marks per question and you can find out which areas you did strongly on
• 30 marks (50%) of the marks are required for a pass
• Open book (can use manual to confirm your answers but is mostly a back-up for your existing knowledge)

Are qualifications important?

Agile is growing in importance as a core qualification requirement for many project management roles – and not just IT project management. Examples of what you might see in an agile job description:

“Bridge the gap between technical and business functions to get the most out of the product development team”

“Drive Agile Methodology throughout the project/teams – ensuring the development teams are practicing  agile principles of prioritisation, team accountability, collaboration and visibility”

“Ability to provide leadership to business analysts and collaborate with customers and develop strategies and solutions of high business value”

“Lead highly skilled multi disciplinary teams, define project needs and feed these into the supply demand process”

“Organising and facilitating project planning, daily stand-up meetings, reviews, retrospectives, sprints and release planning”

The numbers of people taking the Agile Project Management qualification has doubled in each of the last three years. This growth is faster than that for PRINCE2 and is serving as a differentiation on your CV.

Why choose Agile Change Management Limited?

Pass rates: – at 100% success rate for both Foundation and Practitioner levels, you can be certain of passing if you follow our process. We show you how to make the best use of available time to pre-course revision then how to apply your real-world to the exam questions. All our delegates are inspired to put the extra effort in and it is their work that delivers the 100% pass rate.

Recognised experts: – As recognised experts in qualifications and delivery or agile project management, delegates get the ‘real-world’ application of the method and not just a qualification. Trainers are highly experienced in Agile and other project management approaches so they can offer real world experience and a detailed assessment of the advantages and challenges of using Agile and how to align it with other methods

Thought leadership: — Melanie Franklin is the author of Agile Change Management due to be published Spring 2014. She is also an accomplished speaker on the subject and has developed many agile environments for clients over the past five years.