Helping Leaders Understand their Role in Enabling Agility

Professional Agile Leadership Essentials™ (PAL-E) is a hands-on, activity based class in which managers and leaders of agile teams gain a strong understanding of how to best support, guide, and coach their teams to create the conditions for great agility.

The course also includes a free attempt at the globally recognized Professional Agile Leadership I (PAL I) certification exam.

Course Overview

Being an agile organization requires senior leaders, middle managers, and agile team members to change the way that they organize their work, manage that work, and measure the results of the work. Agile teams cannot do this on their own; they need help from the entire organization. Changes in the way that people think and work are required driving improved results by having everyone’s goals and ways of working aligned.

In this two day class* attendees develop a deep understanding of the role that leaders play in creating the conditions for a successful agile environment. Leaders and managers are critical enablers in helping their organizations be successful, yet the role of leaders and managers in an agile organization can be quite different from what they are used to. This workshop uses a combination of instruction and team-based exercises to help participants learn how to form and support agile teams to achieve better results, and how to lead the cultural and behavioral changes that organizations must make to reap the benefits of an agile product delivery approach.

View the different Focus Areas covered within this class and others.

*When offered in-person, this course is generally delivered over two consecutive days. When offered as a Live Virtual Class, the course may be broken up into more, shorter days.

Course Learning Objectives

• Understand how agility can help you improve your organization’s performance
• Learn the challenges teams face during an Agile transformation and how to remove impediments
• Discover the shift in management style that a leader must make when going from traditional to agile ways of working
• Understand the leader’s role in “self-managing” teams
• Learn how to assess and foster the team’s agile maturity
• Discover how to connect values (personal, team and Scrum values) and clear goals to develop high performing teams
• Identify how to measure the benefits and impacts of agility in your organization

Note that this course is not an introduction to the Scrum Framework or to using Scrum. Attendees will get the most from this course if they have been previously introduced to Scrum.

Who Should Attend this class?

The Professional Agile Leadership Essentials course is designed for managers and those in leadership roles who are responsible for the introduction and establishment of Agile methods and techniques in an organization.

• Leaders sponsoring an Agile transformation or involved in the adoption of Agility in their organizations
• Managers or leaders responsible for developing people on Scrum teams
• Leaders of one or more Scrum Teams including Scrum Masters, Product Owners and other leaders on Scrum Teams

Course Topics

• Theory and Principles
• Improving Value Delivery
• Value – The “What”
• Culture – The “Who”
• Professionalism – The “How”
• Scaling

Premise of this Course

Becoming an agile organization is a profound transformation that requires senior leaders, middle managers, and agile team members to change the way that they organize their work, manage that work, and measure the results of the work. Agile teams cannot do this on their own; they need help from the entire organization. The changes for all involved are profound, but so are the results when everyone’s goals and ways of working are aligned.

Professional Scrum Certification

All participants completing the Professional Agile Leadership – Essentials course will receive a password to attempt the Professional Agile Leadership I (PAL I) certification assessment. PAL-E class participants who attempt the PAL I assessment within 14 days of receiving their free password and do not score at least 85% will be granted a 2nd attempt at no additional cost.

PMI PDU Credits

Students of Scrum.org courses are able to claim Project Management Institute (PMI) PDU credit: 14 PDUs after attending a two-day Professional Agile Leadership Essentials (PAL-E) course. Please note that PMI PDUs are earned for course attendance and not for passing a Scrum.org assessment. Students can claim PDUs under PMI’s “Education courses provided by other third party providers” category. You can claim your PDUs online at https://ccrs.pmi.org.  Find instructions here.

Schedule and Logistics

• Training will be online and begin at 9:30 AM sharp and will end around 4:00 PM on all 3 days. There will be a lunch break. (All times US Central)
• Students should login 5-10 minutes prior to start of each session to work through any technical issues.
• All students should be able to use Zoom and Mural.

Participation Agreement

• All students must complete the prework by the deadline to join the class.
• All students must behave in alignment with the working agreement co-created by all students in class.
• All students should keep their cameras turned on throughout the training.
• Any student who misses more than 30 minutes of the training will neither receive the certificate of course participation nor will they receive the free password for taking the assessment.

What Next?

SmoothApps offers the following additional training courses, which are available publicly and privately.

• Professional Scrum Foundations
• Professional Scrum Master
• Professional Scrum Product Owner
• Professional Scrum Developer
• Scaled Professional Scrum