AgilePM® Agile Project Management Foundation - Online Classroom (exam included)

AgilePM® Agile Project Management Foundation - Online Classroom (exam included)

Join the Agile Revolution!

Agile project management takes the ideas from Agile software development and applies them to project management. Agile methodologies generally promote a project management process that encourages stakeholder involvement, feedback, objective metrics and effective controls.

Course Overview

Why is AgilePM® so popular?

Agile project management qualifications are rising fast! Whilst agile development methods such as Scrum dominate the software industry, they are gaining popularity in other industries too. As more businesses adopt agile, they are seeking dedicated agile project management methods to help them. Individuals with agile project management certifications can therefore command a premium in the jobs market.

There are 6 key factors why AgilePM® is proving to be popular:

• It provides governance and agility. Based upon the Agile Project Framework (APF) which was established over 20 years ago, AgilePM® blends both corporate governance aspects with key agile concepts and is specifically aimed at project managers. The authors of the APF were the DSDM, one of the founding signatories to the agile manifesto.
• Never compromise quality. Never compromising quality is an underlying principle of AgilePM®. This is helped by agreeing high-level acceptance criteria throughout the full project lifecycle.
• Risk management. A starting point in AgilePM® for understanding risks is the Project Approach Questionnaire. This enables a shared understanding of project risks and how to mitigate them.
• Goes beyond product development approaches. Whereas common agile methods such as Scrum offer product development approaches, they do not address project management. AgilePM® goes further than Scrum by offering an agile project management approach.
• Clear roles and responsibilities. AgilePM® assigns clear roles and responsibilities to individuals from the business, user, technical and management areas so that effective stakeholder collaboration can be achieved.
• Incorporates popular agile practices. Key agile practices such as MoSCoW, timeboxing and iterative development are incorporated into AgilePM® to support effective product development.

Changing requirements

Agile approaches recognize that users often don’t fully know their requirements when projects start and therefore, they will likely change during the project. Whilst changing requirements can often be problematic in more traditional project management approaches, agile approaches embrace changes in requirements. On agile projects time and cost are normally the fixed elements but the requirements and scope of the project are variable. Agile therefore is better at delivering on time than more traditional project management approaches. Agile approaches focus on incremental and iterative releases of products to users and customers, each iteration or incremental release giving the user yet more functionality. Agile can therefore deliver products early to users and this helps users better understand and refine their requirements after a period of use. AgilePM® is the world’s leading certification in Agile Project Management. The qualification balances robust governance with a collaborative culture that inspires innovation and improves competitive advantage.

Learning Objectives

The objective of the Agile Project Management Foundation course is to discover and explore these components, principles and processes. The Foundation level is also required to be able to go on to the successive qualification levels.

The aim of the Agile Project Management Practitioner course is to ensure and confirm, with an exam pass, that a candidate is able to start and apply the method in many cases of real life projects.

What will you learn?

• You learn to apply the underpinning philosophy and principles of Agile in a project situation
• To appropriately configure the lifecycle of an Agile project to a given scenario
• To produce and evaluate the content of Agile products produced during an Agile project in a given scenario
• To apply the following Agile techniques in a project situation: facilitated workshops, MoSCoW prioritisation, iterative development, modelling and timeboxing
• To identify the Agile techniques to be used for a given situation within a scenario
• To understand the roles and responsibilities within an Agile project and correctly determine the appropriate personnel to fulfil these roles within a given scenario t
• To understand the mechanisms for control of an Agile project that are specific to an Agile project
• To understand in outline how to test, estimate and measure progress in an Agile project
• To describe the Agile approach to managing requirements and identify action to rectify problems with requirements within an Agile project from a given scenario.

Course Content

Fundamentals of Agile Project Management

• What is Agile? The main approaches within Agile. Introduction to the basic concepts of AgilePM and its history, along with its eight underlying principles.
• Benefits of Agile project management
• When to use Agile project management
• Risks and benefits of Agile
• Preparing successful Agile projects
• The basic principles of Agile project management
• 'Instrumental Success Factors' (ISF), Agile process and products. This session reviews three key aspects of Agile (DSDM), starting with how ISFs help to bring about a successful outcome. It goes on to look at the process model that supports the methodology and the products produced throughout the project.

The Agile Project Management Process

• The framework for the Agile project
• Setting up the Agile project lifecycle

Products and deliverables

• Focus on governance, business value and solutions
• Agile project teams
• Agile, roles and responsibilities; presents the recommended roles and responsibilities.
• Agile, empowerment of the project team
• Agile, group structures

Techniques in Agile Project Management

• Workshops
• MoSCoW Prioritisation (This session looks at techniques such as the MoSCoW principle and the concept of Timboxing in an agile project)
• Iterative Development
• Daily stand-up meetings and other methods. A detailed look at the concept of daily stand-ups and how AgilePM uses different techniques to improve project communication.

Project management and control

• Planning and Control. This session examines how Agile reacts to change rather than following a plan and explores planning, testing and tracking and control concepts. The sessions continues by outlining the Agile approach to planning and quality throughout the lifecycle.
• Agile, needs inventory
• Agile, planning
• Agile, risk management
• Test, quality and project maintenance
• Agile, estimation and measurement
• Agile, configuration management

Exam Information

AgilePM Foundation exam

• 50 multiple-choice questions per section
• 25/50 points needed
• 40 minutes
• Closed book