Agile Bootcamp

Introduction

In today’s uncertain economic climate more and more companies are beginning to investigate the use of Agile methodologies to help them reduce software costs, deliver quicker and cheaper and ensure they can adapt to rapidly changing markets.

There is a shortage of trained and experienced Agilists at the moment which means that companies who want to leverage the power of agile are having to hire the services of consultant Agilists while training their own staff in parallel. How do we know this? Because we have been involved in agile programme set up around the country and had to recruit and train people for our own programmes.

As a contractor/consultant how do you get the skills in Agile methodologies to allow you stand out from the increasing agile aware crowd. How do you provide real value to your clients, while at the same time ensuring you are not losing income by taking off working days on training courses.

Magnetic Reason is now offering an Agile Bootcamp, specifically tailored for IT Contractors/Consultants, scheduled over a Saturday and Sunday. It provides you with a detailed introduction to Agile with a mix of theory and practical classes. Where possible the class is designed to be made upof developers, analysts, testers and project managers to provide a broad range of skills and allow the practical sessions to take on an element of life like experience.

There are 2 variants of the course, one for Java developers and one for .NET. Both courses look to use as similar tools (Nant and Ant, NUnit and JUnit etc ) thus ensuring that the majority of tools and skills learnt on one platform can easily be applied to the other platform.

Having been at the bleeding edge of agile adoption we know the pain that your organisation is going through. Our extensive experience of agile programme set-up (and rescue) has given us a unique insight into how to build agile teams by training and coaching not just recruiting.

Course Description

The ultimate aim of the course is to equip you with the practical skills to undertake an initial agile project, or join an existing agile project and be able to have an understanding of what you are facing.

The course will :

• Clearly define what Agile is, why it came about and what problems it solves.
• Highlight the problems with traditional methods.
• Enable you to communicate effectively with your business stakeholders.
• Provide you with the skills to capture, record and prioritise requirements.
• Show you how to develop, test and deliver high quality software, in a repeatable manner.
• Teach you how to accurately estimate and plan an agile project.
• Show you how to easily respond to change without significant impact.
• Demonstrate how to report progress clearly and precisely.
• Teach through example how to deliver real world applications using agile methods.

Benefits

• Weekend based so you don't loose paid for work days
• Taught by example, what you learn on day 1, you implement on day 2
• All instructors are themselves practicing Agilists, not trainers

Audience

• You work in traditional IT but want to work on agile programmes in the future
• You want the confidence to present yourself as an agilist and believe it!
• You want concrete techniques to apply and to follow, not just course notes
• You believe there is a better way of working, and want to know how
• You work in IT in an organisation that encourages learning

• For Organisations :-
• You want to me in a position to deliver software quicker, cheaper and with better quality
• You are unable to respond to change with your current methods
• You want to free yourself of the resource constraints that hamper many organisations
• You want to give existing staff an introduction to agile techniques
• You want to give existing staff confidence when you implement organisational change

Duration

2 Days

The course is run over 2 intensive days where we present the theory of Agile on day 1 and then apply it through practical exercises on the second day.

Prerequisites

The course has a high content of practical exercises. As such students should have a working knowledge of the language environment used to teach, either Java or .NET and be comfortable installing and configuring applications both via GUI's and the command line. Students should also be comfortable working with an IDE ( Eclipse/Visual Studio ) and have a working knowledge of XML.

Course Outline

Day 1

• Background to Agile
  • Traditional Software Development
  • The Vicious Circle
  • Seven Wastes of Software Development
  • Change is inevitable
  • Harsh Realities
  • Cost of Change
  • The "Shunt" Effect
  • Predictability
  • Traditional Challenges
• Overview of Agile
  • The Agile Manifesto
  • Agile Values
  • Value Realisation
  • Proven Metrics
  • Agile Thinking
  • Ten rules of Agile Development
  • Industry Perspective
  • Myth Busting
• Agile Planning Game
• Agile Analysis
  • Iteration Stories
  • Good Stories
  • Life of Story
• Agile Planning
  • Risk Based Priorities
  • Estimating
    • Planning Poker
  • Release Planning
  • Iteration Planning
  • The Planning Session
• Tracking Progress
  • Velocity
  • Burndown
• The Project Heartbeat
  • Planning
  • Standups
  • Iterations
  • Retrospectives

Day 2

• Test Driven Development
  • Iterative Development
  • Behaviour
  • Mitigate Risk
  • Agile Testing
  • Code & Tests
  • Multi Layered Testing
  • Seperation of Concerns
• Unit Testing
  • xUnit
  • Mock Objects
• Automation
  • xAnt
• Continuous Integration
  • CruiseControl
• FitNesse
• Selenium
• Metrics
  • Test Coverage
  • Code Quality

Cost

£800 + VAT per delegate. Contact us for onsite costs
There is a maximum of 8 delegates per course to ensure targetted coaching and training of all attendees

Further Information

To find out more about this course, enquire about the next scheduled course, or discuss booking an in house course, email us at info@magneticreason.com

Due to the amount of information to get through, please come prepared for an early start and late finish. The course runs 9:00am – 6:00pm each day, with plenty of coffee and lunch.

We also arrange for everyone to finish up at a local restaurant ( not included in the price ) to discuss the day’s activities and to quiz the trainers in an informal and relaxed environments.

Location & Timing

Scheduled Courses

Using specifically designed IT training centres through out the UK, Magnetic Reason will be hosting a number of training courses at regular weekends over the coming months. Classes are no more than 12 people and we look to create as much of a mix of skills as possible to ensure a full Agile Team is present during the training.

Contact us now for pricing and dates of training courses near you.

Onsite Courses

Alternatively we can come to you. You provide the facilities and the people, we provide the energy and the training. Again this can be scheduled over a weekend if project deadlines dictate, or during the working week.

To find out more about this course, enquiry about the next scheduled course, or discuss booking an inhouse course, email us at info@magneticreason.com or call us on +44(0)1484 866033