Certified Agile Leadership
Your Guides
Sanjiv Augustine: Author, Consultant, Entrepreneur and Trainer
Industry-leading Agile and Lean expert Sanjiv Augustine has transformed organizations through enterprise Agile methods for 25 years. Sanjiv has served as a trusted advisor to executives and management at leading firms including: Capital One, The Capital Group, CNBC, Comcast, Freddie Mac, Fannie Mae, Nationwide Insurance, Walmart and Samsung. Sanjiv is the chair of the Agile Alliance Agile Executive Forum, is a regular keynote speaker, and has authored several publications including Transitioning to Agile Project Management: A Roadmap for the Perplexed, The Lean-Agile PMO: Using Lean Thinking to Accelerate Agile Project Delivery and the books Managing Agile Projects (Prentice Hall 2005) and Scaling Agile: A Lean JumpStart. Get to know Sanjiv.
Arlen Bankston: One of the First Certified Scrum Trainers
Arlen Bankston was at the vanguard of the agile movement, beginning to practice within two years of the Agile Manifesto’s writing and soon developing one of the earliest Scrum Product Owner courses. He co-founded a premier Agile consultancy (LitheSpeed), and was among the first to explicitly blend lean systems thinking and userexperience practices with agile software development practices. An active executive for over 17 years, he continues to coach, speak, train and mentor to stay at the edge of ever-advancing lean and agile practices. Learn more about Arlen.
Bob Payne: Industry Leader, Podcaster, Trainer, Coach, Consultant
A Certified Scrum Trainer and early adopter of Extreme Programming, Scrum and SAFe, Bob Payne has worked exclusively as a Lean+Agile Transformation leader since 1999. He hosts the AgileToolkit podcast and has produced over 170 podcasts, recording a variety of industry leaders and Agile practitioners. Bob’s consulting and training style is built on years of Lean+Agile experience, a MSEE in Computer Architectures for Artificial Intelligence, and having grown up working in his family’s restaurant, so you can expect a blend of technical excellence and customer service.
Program Overview
The Scrum Alliance Certified Agile Leadership (CAL) program includes introductory education to bring awareness of the focus and journey of the Agile leader as well as an advanced path of validated learning and practice for the leader to continue the learning journey. An Agile leader is knowledgeable about agile values, approaches and practices. And they strive to find creative solutions through increased self-awareness, a growth mindset and team engagement. In an Agile organization, leaders must shift from directive approaches to ones that enable autonomy, mastery and purpose within the ranks of their employees. In the Certified Agile Leadership workshop, you will assess the current state of agility within your organizations and discuss the unique requirements of the agile leader’s role. During the workshop, develop short-term plans to drive better application of the agile mindset and techniques.
Which course is right for me?
Across all of our Agile leadership workshops, you will gain necessary experience to:
- Find creative solutions through increased self-awareness, a growth mindset and team engagement
- Develop short-term plans to drive better application of the agile mindset and techniques
- Confidently launch a plan to scale Agile methods within the organization
- Build highly engaged teams across distributed environments
- Launch an Agile Value Management Office which can map dependencies across silos
Our combination courses include CAL-E + CAL-O and CAL-E + CAL-T.
CAL-E:
The goal of this course is to bring awareness and understanding of the foundations of agile leadership. Exploring the way agile leaders think, focus, and behave allows the participants to begin their learning journey regarding what it takes to lead in today’s workplace.
Organizations today are striving to stay on top of rapidly changing business needs and are coming to understand that the need to respond and adapt quickly is becoming increasingly important. Business leaders are now required to shift the way that they think about their role as a leader, their relationship to their employees, and the culture of their organization. Agile leaders are needed to help their organizations thrive in a volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous (VUCA) world. (Via Scrum Alliance)
CAL-T:
The goal of this course is to create awareness about the changing dynamics in today’s world of work and equip leaders with the practices they need to effectively lead their teams. Agile teams require an alternative to the traditional leadership approaches of the past in order to achieve better outcomes and thrive in this VUCA world (as learned in the CAL-Essentials module).
This course will help participants understand how their natural dispositions might affect their team and how to influence the workplace empowering teams to thrive. Leaders will learn how to create a safe-to-fail environment while fostering a culture of transparency, inspection and adaptation to allow for experimentation and continuous learning within their teams. (Via Scrum Alliance)
CAL-O:
The goal of this course is to bring awareness to the practices and principles of agility and how they apply to businesses and organizations. Through analysis of case studies, assessment, discussion and evaluation, participants will gain insight into what practices will enable them to lead real change across their organization.
Business leaders are encouraged to shift their mindset, evolve and lead their organization in empowering employees and becoming agents of change. In this module, participants will gain tangible knowledge, skills, and techniques that will help them towards making organizational agility a reality for their companies. (Via Scrum Alliance)
CAL E+O
CAL Essentials for Organizational Leaders
During the workshop, agile leaders review different scaling frameworks and learn to break down barriers to enterprise agility and develop short-term plans to drive better application of the agile mindset and techniques. To this end, the workshop studies three key leadership factors: people operations, self-management and organizational transformation. Collectively, you will:
- Explore foundations of Lean & Agile leadership, focusing on what an agile organization entails and how leaders can build, guide, tune and support one.
- Understand patterns of scaling agility to broaden and deepen agile principles, practices and behaviors at an organizational level.
- Get to know the Business Agility Sparks®: specific areas to build whole business agility.
Features
- Certified Agile Leadership CAL-E and CAL-O Certification
- A personalized agile leadership plan
Who Should Attend
- Executives, middle management, and other leaders with organizational influence
- Leaders who support, lead, or interact with Agile teams
- Any leader sponsoring, requesting, or involved with an Agile adoption within their organization
What You Will Learn
Why agility is critical in today’s ever-changing environment:
- What makes our world more complex, unpredictable and/or volatile?
- Why are traditional management approaches failing in today’s volatile, uncertain, complex, ambiguous world, and how does agility help?
- How does a healthy agile approach support the complexity and uncertainty of work?
- How has management theory evolved over the years?
- What characteristics do organizations need to develop to be able to face today’s world and market challenges?
- What are the benefits of becoming a more effective leader?
What Agile leadership entails
- What mindset is required to effectively lead in conditions of high volatility and uncertainty?
- How can you most effectively drive leadership capability development?
- How should an effective leadership approach support improving interactions with others in a diverse cultural context?
- How can you improve your self-control and focus actions towards achieving leadership effectiveness
- How can you be self-aware in a way that improves situational adaptiveness and leadership effectiveness?
- How can an effective leadership approach be flexible and adaptive to different situations while being aware of the underlying cultural context?
- How can increased social awareness, or the awareness of the impact that behaviors have on the people around us, significantly improve our effectiveness when working with others?
How to be a great Agile leader
- Why is having a growth mindset for both personal and professional growth a critical part of effective leadership?
- How can you improve your ability to inspect and adapt your own leadership behavior to increase effectiveness?
- How can you take advantage of a more diverse range of voices to drive improved outcomes in highly complex environments?
- How can you coach, provide feedback, resolve conflict, and work through difficult challenges by integrating alternative perspectives and engaging others to improve outcomes?
- How can you decide when and how to use power or influence while avoiding over-influence and micromanagement?
Why leadership and culture is critical to enable organizational agility
- How does organizational culture impact agility in navigating challenges in today’s business environment?
- What is the relationship between culture and leadership mindset and behaviors
- How do various interpretations of the term “value” impact value creation?
- How are culture and the way value is interpreted related, and how does that relationship affect organizational outcomes?
- How do characteristics of organizations such as structure, policies and measures impact the culture of the organization?
What challenges leaders face when transforming organizations to agility
- What are key challenges to creating value flow when applying agile approaches across an organizational system?
- What are established organizational structures and/or patterns to scale agile practices, and how do they impact organization culture and creating value?
- What are some common governance policies and their influence on culture and creating value?
- What are key organizational metrics for alignment with agile values ?
- What proven tools and techniques exist to identify, understand and influence the culture within an organization?
How leaders can most effectively drive organizational change
- What is the importance of transparency and feedback loops for continual revision?
- How does organizational change impact people, and how can leaders more effectively involve them in the change process?
- How might change be approached differently based on existing organizational culture and the influence that culture has on speed, risk, and receptiveness to change?
- What are proven tools and techniques to assist an organization and its leaders through a change process?
- What does a real agile transformation look like, and how did the case organization address decisions around direction, alignment, structure and behavior?
- What are some impactful elements you can implement in your organization to launch the next phase of agility?
You will gain hands-on experience in:
- Identifying opportunities and gaps in your current Agile organization
- Defining and refining your role as a leader of Agile teams
- Developing a plan to improve your ability as an Agile leader
- Building a fast, collaborative organizational climate that takes full advantage of agility
- Crafting what agility looks like in end-to-end value streams
- Identifying opportunities and gaps in your current Agile adoption
- Clearly defining your role as a leader in an Agile organization
- Developing a plan to “steer from the edges” and enable team self-organization
- Creating concrete steps to improve your personal and organizational agility over the next quarter
You will have the ability to:
- Operate effectively as an agile team leader amid uncertainty, complexity and rapid change
- Design an end-to-end agile organizational value stream
- Develop short and long-term plans to drive better application of the agile mindset and techniques at an organizational level
- Adopt agility in both development and non-technology contexts
- Operate effectively as a leader amid uncertainty, complexity and rapid change
- Find creative solutions through increased self-awareness, a growth mindset and team engagement
CAL E+T
CAL Essentials for Team Leaders
During the workshop, agile leaders develop short-term plans to drive better application of the agile mindset and techniques. To this end, the workshop studies Why organizations adopt agile methods, What leadership’s role in a transformation entails, and How leaders can most effectively guide and support agility throughout a company.
In this workshop, you will:
- Explore foundations of Lean & Agile leadership, focusing on what constitutes a great agile team and how to best support them as a leader.
- Understand patterns of agile team excellence to broaden and deepen agile principles, practices and behaviors at the team level.
Features
- Certified Agile Leadership CAL-E + CAL-T Certification
Who Should Attend
- Team leaders such as ScrumMasters and Product Owners, agile transformation leaders and managers within agile environments
- Leaders who support, lead, or interact with Agile teams;
- Any leader sponsoring, requesting, or involved with an Agile adoption within their teams.
What You Will Learn
Why agility is critical in today’s ever-changing environment:
- What makes our world more complex, unpredictable and/or volatile?
- Why are traditional management approaches failing in today’s volatile, uncertain, complex, ambiguous world, and how does agility help?
- How does a healthy agile approach support the complexity and uncertainty of work?
- How has management theory evolved over the years?
- What characteristics do organizations need to develop to be able to face today’s world and market challenges?
- What are the benefits of becoming a more effective leader?
What Agile leadership entails
- What mindset is required to effectively lead in conditions of high volatility and uncertainty?
- How can you most effectively drive leadership capability development?
- How should an effective leadership approach support improving interactions with others in a diverse cultural context?
- How can you improve your self-control and focus actions towards achieving leadership effectiveness
- How can you be self-aware in a way that improves situational adaptiveness and leadership effectiveness?
- How can an effective leadership approach be flexible and adaptive to different situations while being aware of the underlying cultural context?
- How can increased social awareness, or the awareness of the impact that behaviors have on the people around us, significantly improve our effectiveness when working with others?
How to be a great Agile leader
- Why is having a growth mindset for both personal and professional growth a critical part of effective leadership?
- How can you improve your ability to inspect and adapt your own leadership behavior to increase effectiveness?
- How can you take advantage of a more diverse range of voices to drive improved outcomes in highly complex environments?
- How can you coach, provide feedback, resolve conflict, and work through difficult challenges by integrating alternative perspectives and engaging others to improve outcomes?
- How can you decide when and how to use power or influence while avoiding over-influence and micromanagement?
Why leadership is important for agile teams
- What are the challenges that traditional team leaders are facing in today’s volatile, uncertain, complex, ambiguous (VUCA) world and why a new leadership approach is needed to guide teams toward better outcomes?
- What are the advantages of cross-functional teams with shared values over knowledge silos?
- How can leaders’ behaviors influence the way a team operates and organizes work?
- How does the culture of an organization impact team effectiveness?
- How can a leader help foster a culture that values transparency, inspection, and adaptation?
What leaders must do to enable agile teams
- What are the crucial characteristics of a high-performing team?
- How can you as a leader help increase the level of employee engagement and team performance?
- What is servant leadership and how can it enable teams?
- How can you establish shared accountability at the team level?
- How can you help understand team members better and help them grow individually?
How leaders can most effectively help teams perform at their optimal level
- How can leaders help members of their team grow professionally
- What are some common challenges and barriers to becoming a high performing team and how can a leader help the team overcome those challenges?
- How can leaders help a team align their values and goals with those of the organization
- What does a high performing team look like in a real case study?
- How can leaders best facilitate collaboration across their teams?
- How have other organizations empowered their teams to enhance trust and collaboration
- What are common challenges an organization might face when undertaking an agile approach beyond a single team?
- What are effective patterns for increasing trust and collaboration between multiple teams?
- How can leaders measure alignment with an agile mindset and how they impact behaviors and results across teams?
Influencing agile teams effectively as a leader
- What is the relationship between coaching and influencing vs. consulting and advising?
- What are the core competencies for great agile coaches and leaders?
- What are the differences between Coaching, Consulting, Mentoring, Training, and Facilitation, and when should each be used?
- How can leaders help individuals recognize areas of weakness and create positive change for themselves?
- What are key team coaching techniques and how can they help a team’s journey to high performance?
- What are proven approaches to successfully influencing upwards in your organization?
You will gain hands-on experience in:
- Identifying opportunities and gaps in your current Agile adoption
- Clearly defining your role as a leader in an Agile organization
- Developing a plan to “steer from the edges” and enable team self-organization
- Creating concrete steps to improve your personal and organizational agility over the next quarter
- Identifying opportunities and gaps in your current Agile teams
- Clearly defining your role as a leader of Agile teams
- Developing a plan to “steer from the edges” and enable team self-organization
- Building dynamic Agile teams supported by a collaborative climate
You will have the ability to:
- Operate effectively as a leader amid uncertainty, complexity and rapid change
- Find creative solutions through increased self-awareness, a growth mindset and team engagement
- Develop short-term plans to drive better application of the agile mindset and techniques
- Operate effectively as an agile team leader amid uncertainty, complexity and rapid change
- Help your agile team members to grow and develop
The Online Experience
2 8-hour online training days are fun and exciting as you learn with fellow professionals from around the world.
Some answers to online training FAQs from our students:
- We host our virtual training on Zoom with interactive components on Mural
- We take breaks almost hourly
- No special tech skills are required, though basic familiarity with computers is a must
- We understand you may have family at home in this unique time; disruptions are expected and welcome
- Our maximum student:instructor ratio for the best online experience is 25:1. Most trainings are smaller than this, and in most trainings we have a second technical host supporting our students
- Certification fees are included in the tuition
Certified Agile Leadership II
CAL II
The CAL II is an experiential workshop for leaders with advanced agile practice.
Driving Business Agility through Agile
2 Days + 4 Hours
This two-day, interactive workshop focuses on building a culture of innovation and expanding the Agile mindset and methods to all teams and departments. We will focus on agile leadership in the pandemic crisis from both an organizational and personal perspective. We will explore new organizational models for rapid value delivery, feedback and customer outcomes. You will also explore your personal leadership style and learn how to apply it for the best outcomes in an agile organization.
A rich combination of discussions with peers, lecture, videos, micro-exercises and more ensure that participants are engaged and learning. Dive into case studies and intense enterprise-focused Lean & Agile methods. Learn alongside other leaders, craft your Agile leadership strategy to deliver faster results, higher quality, and unparalleled innovation. Learn what has and hasn’t worked in real world whole-company transformations, encompassing not just software development but also changes to HR, finance, marketing and more.
This session is aimed at helping you create a personalized plan that you can put directly into action following the workshop.
You will learn
You will learn:
- What business agility means and requires
- How to create a strong flow of value by expanding agile principles to your entire organization
- How to create end-to-end Value Stream teams that operate with an entrepreneurial mindset
- How to pilot incremental funding and agile budgeting
- How to jumpstart Lean Portfolio Management at your organization
- How agile product organizations look in practice, and how to build your own
- Structural patterns for aligning departments and organizations to deliver optimal value
- How design thinking, Lean UX and related techniques apply at all levels
- How to lead from your center with personal presence and situational leadership
You will gain hands-on knowledge in:
- Assessing your organization’s Agile maturity beyond the IT function
- Using the whole team to drive product design
- Prototyping and testing ideas before funding them
- Getting feedback through real-life usage and empirical data
Additional Information:
- Gain a practical agile leadership toolkit that makes complex situations manageable
- Cutting edge guidance on the application of agility across all facets of a business, not just software development
- Learn from expert mentors with decades of direct leadership agile experience
- Case studies of the successes and failures of agile in organizations like yours
Agenda
Agenda
- What is Business Agility?
- Flow, Feedback and Continuous Learning
- Business Agility – the Strategic Impact
- Business Agility through Disruption at Haier
- Your Business Agility Challenge
- The Business Agility Spark Framework Introduced
- Three Essential Shifts: Right, Left and Up
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- A New Model
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- Exercise: Your Personal Leadership Development Plan
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- Essential Spark: End-to-End Value Stream Teams
- Conway’s Law
- Whole Stable Teams
- Project to Product Model
- End-to-End Value Stream Teams
- Essential Spark: End-to-End Value Stream Teams
- Exercise: End-to-End Value Stream Team Design
- Essential Spark: The Agile VMO®
- Melting the Frozen Middle
- The Agile VMO Approach
- Portfolio Prioritization
- Budgeting and Incremental Funding
- Manage the Flow
- Exercise: Agile VMO Design
- Tapping your Personal Leadership Style
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- The Six Basic Leadership Styles
- Key Leadership Style Transitions
- Exercise
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- Essential Spark: Lean Discovery
- Lean – The System that Changed the World
- The Lean Startup
- Lean Product Development
- Discovery, Refinement and Delivery
- Driving Value Flow across Teams
- Design Thinking
- Essential Spark: Lean Discovery
- Exercise: Lean Canvas
- Workshop Wrap-up with Personal Action Plan
Any questions about this training? Contact our team.
Hear from the trainees:
It was great to do it with my core group. – This was a nice thought provoking two days. – Learnt new materials especially about agile leader role
This class was high energy and the instructor was amazing. Best training class ever.
The CAL course itself was a good opportunity to take away some good leadership nuggets as well as a crash course in scaled agile options.
The experience they share with rollouts that they have executed as partners is very valuable. I learn best with a story from an implementation or when applying the concepts to our company’s situation in class.
Instructor Augustine was amazing, engaging, and extremely personable. I never felt tired and he had my attention 100% of the time.