Agile Software Development, The Cooperative Game

Course design: Alistair Cockburn

What we call “Agile” is an attitude giving priority to efficiency in the process, and maneuverability with respect to changing requirements, technology and team. Having the agile attitude does not yet make for a successful project. The team needs a certain understanding of core practices: incremental scheduling and staging, reflecting on its working style every few weeks, concurrent development, paying attention to the strong points of humans without building on their weaknesses, among others.

This workshop, based on the award-winning book, Agile Software Development, consists of a mixture of lecture, exercises, and discussions. These are constructed to give attendees a sense for how it feels to be doing some of the key practices as well as what how it feels not to do them. The techniques reviewed are valuable in carrying out any kind of project, not only agile ones.

Audience: Anyone interested in an alternative to rigorous, process-centric software development processes.

Because the issues cover all aspects and stakeholders in the development process, this workshop is recommended for business executives, project managers, business analysts and developers alike.
Duration: 1 Day.
Course Level: Beginner to Intermediate.
Location: Taught on location, by request.
Cost: £2,500 plus travel for the first 10 people.
£100 for each additional person.

Course cost includes a copy of the Agile Software Development.
Class size: 16 - 24 people.
Contact: Andy Pols via email at andy@pols.co.uk, or phone on +44 (0)7769 904930.
Outcomes: Attendies will learn the following:

  • What software development consists of, and how considering software development as a cooperative game of invention and communication sheds light on common project failure and winning strategies.
  • The characteristics of human cooperation and communication, and how those shed light on program documentation, UML and offshore development.
  • The role of trust, amicability and goal alignment in a project team.
  • The role of individual talents and personalities; how to adjust for them.
  • The speed of the project is the speed at which ideas move between team members; harness this idea with office layout and information radiators; avoid or handle offshore development.
  • How to adjust different projects for their specific characteristics.
  • How and when to reflect on what is happening to the project while it is in motion.
  • How to understand incremental development and keep it under control.
  • What concurrent development looks like in practice and how to think about it.
  • Named agile methodologies: XP, Scrum, Crystal - how they take advantage of the core properties of the cooperative game principles, how they differ from each other and how to extract and combine them.
Room Setup: The ideal setup is with chairs grouped around tables (in groups of 4/5) with each table having their own flip chart.

The day is very full. Depending on where the group gets more deeply focussed, some of the topics may get more or less emphasis. We always tune the workshop to the topics of most interest to the class.

Site Map | design by twothirty