Workshop Objective: If you’re dreading the next project—because you know it will be a disaster, or at the very least uncomfortable—it’s time to think about designing your next project.
We’re accustomed to thinking about designing products or tests, but projects? Is it really possible to design a project? Yes. Lifecycles, those idealized approaches to organizing projects allow us to design a project—just the way we want the project to unfold. This workshop is based on these books:
- Manage It! Your Guide to Modern, Pragmatic Project Management. When you're pretty sure you don't want waterfall, but you're not sure an agile approach will work.
- Agile and Lean Program Management. How you can use all the lifecycles for programs, even if you don't want an agile approach.
- Create Your Successful Agile Project for efforts who need an agile approach but the standard frameworks aren't working.
This workshop is especially useful if you are having trouble making agile work and you don't want to use waterfall, but you don't know what else to do. You have many other choices.
Workshop Overview: You will learn about the four major types of lifecycles, and when each is useful. We'll discuss how to combine lifecycles to design your project. We'll discuss how to help your project team see how to use the lifecycle you choose. We'll also discuss how to integrate lean approaches into the different lifecycles.
Target Audience: Project and program managers and their teams who want to succeed.
Prerequisites: Pre-work: measure your cycle time.
Workshop Duration: 5 “days” of 60-minute sessions. I only offer this as a virtual workshop.
Workshop Outline:
Session 1: Purpose of lifecycles. Summarize all the lifecycles. Assess your approach.
Session 2: Iterative approaches. How to plan, assess progress, replan. How to apply lean thinking and collaborative work. Risks with iterative approaches.
Session 3: How to use an incremental approach. How to plan, assess progress, replan. How to apply lean thinking and collaborative work. Risks with incremental approaches.
Session 4: How to combine approaches to customize your lifecycle. What to do in a program, when different teams want to use different approaches. How to apply lean thinking and collaborative work.
Session 5: What an agile approach is, why agility requires a culture change and where to start. Any remaining questions/issues/challenges.