RippleRock are proud to offer a series of courses beginning the week of 16^th Feb 2015.  Each of the courses tells a story in its own right delivering value to those who attend; together the courses are trilogy, exposing attendees to a variety of practices, techniques and concepts for the Agile practitioner.

• Certified ScrumMaster course, this CSM course includes graphical recording to provide a visual record of your learning experience.  With Mark Summers and graphical artist Stuart Young.  Includes the Visual Artistry workshop for free. (19-20th February 2015) +free visual artistry workshop - £950+VAT

• Visual Artistry Workshop.  Learn how to use visual artistry as a tool to initiate projects, enhance learning and have fun with your teams.  With Graphical artist Stuart Young, supported by Agile Coaches Helen Meek and Mark Summers. (18th February 2015) - £400+VAT

• Certified Lean Kanban Foundation.  Learn all about Kanban, once again your experience will be captured graphically.  With Helen Meek and Stuart Young.  Includes the Visual Artistry workshop for free. (16-17th February 2015) +free visual artistry workshop - £950+VAT

• CSM, Visual artistry workshop and Certified Kanban course - £1600+VAT (5 days)

Certified Lean Kanban Foundation with Graphical Recording

Instructor: Helen Meek, AKT

A Certified Lean Kanban course is designed to teach Kanban with a focus on the role of anyone wanting to adopt Kanban. In order to enhance the learning experience the interactions and learnings will be captured graphically by a visual artist. During the course this will be used to reflect on what is being taught and it will serve as a permanent output that you will be sent after the course.   

Kanban is a set of practices and principles that bring the benefits of Lean theory to organisations. 

Benefits include; increasing the flow of value, visualising and establishing an optimum workload for the team's capacity, reducing waste, creating better organisational alignment and building a culture of engaged workers. 

The Kanban method focuses on making incremental, iterative changes that evolve business processes into more efficient and manageable work streams while avoiding the risks associated with complex change programmes. 

This interactive 2-day workshop, accredited by the Lean-Kanban University, provides a thorough grounding in the principles and practices of Kanban.

About Helen Meek 

Helen is an outgoing and driven coach and trainer who is passionate about working with Individuals, teams and organisations on their road to agility. Helen has working with many varied organisations and teams in many different industries and brings this vast wealth of experience and knowledge to her training and coaching. 

Helen has a holistic approach to coaching operating with individual team members, whole teams, leaders, managers and executives across technical and non-technical departments.  You will often find her working with clients on rolling out enterprise level Kanban or Scrum. 

Helen is proud to be an Accredited Kanban Trainer with the Lean Kanban University and runs regular classes publicly and privately.  Not forgetting her roots Helen is a regular trainer for Agile and Scrum. 

Helen is a great believer in sharing her knowledge and encouraging other to do the same and enjoys growing the Agile and Kanban communities. She has many achievements under her belt including: 

• Founding the Agile Coaching Exchange (ACE) and Kanban Coaching Exchange (KCE) user groups. 
   
• Active speaker and participation at the Scrum Gatherings, XP,  Lean Kanban and Agile Business
  Conferences
   
• Being an organiser for the first ever European Scrum Alliance Coaching Retreat

Helen is an authentic coach with many years of real, practical experience and war wounds from her own Agile journey. This is what makes Helen the ideal coach, trainer and leader.

Agenda
 

Agile and Lean Principles

• Kanban and the Agile Manifesto
• Agile Principles 
   

Kanban Overview

• Little k and Big K - the kanban technique and method
• Revolutionary vs Evolutionary Change
• Principles of the Kanban Method
• Core Practices of the Kanban Method
• Depth of Implementation
• When is Kanban typically used? 

Visualising the Workflow Work Items 

• Identifying Work Item Types
• Modelling the Process
• Demand Analysis
• Kanban Boards 

Kanban Simulation

• Team-based realistic simulation of using a Kanban system in action 

Limiting Work in Progress 

• Little's Law
• Limiting WIP
• Input Queues
• Output Buffers
• Setting WIP Limits 

Managing Flow 

• Cumulative Flow Diagrams
• Measuring Flow
• WIP as an indicator of Lead Time
• Identifying Problems
• Removing Bottlenecks 

Making Process Policies Explicit 

• Classes of Service
• Cost of Delay
• Scheduling Policies
• Service Level Agreements 

Feedback Mechanisms 

• Empirical Feedback
• Feedback Within the Team
• Feedback Between Teams 
• Feedback from Manager to Team Member 

Kaizen - Collaborative Improvement 

• Improvement Cycles
• Rhythm and Cadence

Who Should Attend
 

This course is useful for anyone who wants to be successful using Kanban within their organisation. As such, it will benefit anyone who is involved in using Kanban or considering using Kanban. It will be helpful both to those new to Kanban and those who have explored Kanban but who now want to consolidate their knowledge in a practical setting. 

In terms of roles, the course is suitable for: 

• Product and Project Managers
• Development Team Members (Architects, Designers, Coders, Testers, etc.)
• Business Analysts
• Scrum Product Owners & ScrumMasters who want to enhance their Lean / Agile skillset. 
• Participants on this course should gain sufficient knowledge about the Kanban Method and related topics to: 
• Lead or guide a team in their adoption of Kanban - from initial visualisation and the design of kanban systems through to evolutionary change
• Answer questions and support the team in day-to-day operation
• Help teams to identify and resolve hindrances to flow
• Take measurements and create meaningful metrics that helps the team
• Evolve process and practice according to team needs in a meaningful way
• Connect with the Kanban community for the sharing of practical experiences and the development of new ideas and techniques

Visualisation/ Artistry Workshop

Instructor: Stuart Young

 Enriching a workshop, meeting or presentation with engaging visuals needn’t be an exclusive art. Join Stuart Young of Illustration Station for an intensive and enjoyable visualisation and artistry one-day workshop. Build your confidence and leave the session with your own unique toolbox jam-packed full of reusable images, tricks and methods. 

Leave your inhibitions behind you and remember anyone can draw!

 The Workshop:

Don’t expect to find a table, slide-deck or even sit down for longer than 2 minutes! There will be plenty of interaction to keep you on your toes. 

We will be spending a short amount of time talking through the theory of live visualisation before undertaking a variety of exercises to build your confidence when writing or drawing in front of a crowd. If you are familiar with Scrum or Agile we will discuss how techniques can be applied during ideation sessions and retrospectives. 

Whilst listing the key areas that will be covered during the day, at the beginning of the session all attendees will have the opportunity to build a backlog and write down something they wish to take away from the workshop. The group will then collectively prioritise each topic making sure that the session is perfectly tailored for all. 

Most importantly there will be plenty of time for self-discovery so that you can build a bank of images and ideas that work for you. No one should go home empty handed.

Certified ScrumMaster with Graphical Recording

Instructor: Mark Summers

A Certified ScrumMaster course is designed to teach Scrum with a focus on the role of ScrumMaster.  In order to enhance the learning experience the interactions and learnings will be captured graphically by a visual artist.  During the course this will be used to reflect on what is being taught and it will serve as a permanent output that you will be sent after the course.  Here’s what people are saying about Mark’s Certified ScrumMaster course:

Scrum is an Agile management framework, for delivering value, reducing risk and driving continuous improvement.  The framework is simple in its mechanic’s but can be difficult to apply as it requires a shift in team culture.  Therefore in this course you will not only learn the mechanic’s, but you will apply Scrum as it was intended so that you have the best chance of being able to do Scrum in your organisation.  

Day 1 

Through a series of exercises and discussions, attendees will have a base understanding of Scrum and the principles on which it is based.  By the end of the day attendees can expect to: 

• Have a definition of what Scrum is
• Understand how Scrum is underpinned by the Agile Manifesto and Agile principles
• Understand the difference between a defined approach and empirical approach to process control
• Understand where Scrum is applicable
• Understand the Scrum Roles
• Dived deeper into the Role of the ScrumMaster
• Have experienced Agile delivery
  

Day 2

The second day is explores the Scrum Rhythms, Rituals, and wRitings in more depth, and introduces some of the more common practices used by Scrum teams.  By the end of the day attendees can expect to have: 

• Have learnt new tools for Product Backlog Refinement
• Created Agile requirements with User Stories
• Understood how to apply the concept of Done and its importance
• Learnt how to do Sprint Planning
• Understood how a team works inside a Sprint
• Experienced Sprint Reviews and Sprint Retrospectives
• Understood Release Planning and how to track progress
• Explored patterns behind scaling Scrum and working with distributed teams 

Upon course completion, students will be qualified and ready to pass the Scrum Alliance certification exam.  This online exam is required to become a Scrum Alliance Certified ScrumMaster.  Also included in the fee is a two-year membership in the Scrum Alliance, where additional member only material and information is available.

About Mark

Mark’s passion for Scrum stems from his experiences of seeing the difference it can make to people’s work lives.  Scrum brings people together to create innovative, valuable solutions to people’s problems, and that can be a lot of fun.  Mark has been working with individuals, teams and throughout organisations to help them embed Scrum since 2006.  Mark is both a trainer and a coach; therefore the stories are based on implementing Scrum in lots of different environments. 

Mark is working to support the development of a new breed of leaders inside organisation, who can support and nurture Agile teams.  Mark is an active member of the Scrum community, regularly speaking at Agile conferences and organising events.

 Agenda 

• An overview of Scrum
• Empirical Process Control and complexity
• What is Agile
• The Scrum Roles
  • ScrumMaster
  • Product Owner
  • Dev Team
  • Agile Simulation
• Scrum wRitings (Artefacts)
  • The Product Backlog
  • Definition of Done
  • Sprint Backlog
  • Burndowns
• Scrum Rythms
  • The Release
  • The Sprint
  • The Day
• The Rituals of Scrum
  • Sprint Planning
  • Daily Scrum
  • Sprint Review
  • Sprint Retrospective
  • Scaling and Distributed Scrum
     

Who Should Attend

Anyone performing the ScrumMaster role.

Anybody involved in a Scrum environment, be it new or if you are just looking to improve.

The course may appeal to

• Managers
• Testers
• Developers
• Product Managers
• CIO
• CTO
• Other leaders