Agile for All

For many companies, agile practices have brought vast levels of improvement to their traditional IT functions. Companies are now exploring the possibility for similar improvements to the other parts of their organization by scaling up their agile teams. In this course, you will learn how to introduce agile practices to your organization, make the decision to scale up your agile teams, smooth the way for agile scaling, adopt the principles of a business agile mindset, and establish an agile transformation model.

In changing markets, leadership matters. And for businesses adopting agile thinking, appointing a strong product owner who maximizes the value of a business's products is essential. Employing a product owner can help businesses increase their agility, allowing them to adapt to change and enhance the value of their products. In this course, you'll learn about the role and responsibilities of a product owner in an agile enterprise, and the qualities necessary for effective product ownership. You'll also learn the best strategies for empowering product owners and removing obstacles that impede their success.

Both the economy and technology are changing rapidly. Agility is needed for an organization to adapt to change, and agile thinking must be fostered and realized across the organization. In this course, you'll learn about agile enterprise and its benefits, factors for its successful implementation, and key steps involved in its creation. You'll also explore ways to overcome common obstacles to enterprise agile, and to select appropriate planning tools for an agile organization.

Agility in today's business environment is essential, and changing to an Agile enterprise can propel your business forward. With Agile thinking, you can adapt to each change as it occurs. In this course, you'll learn about the benefits of building Agile capabilities in your organization, as well as the best practices and the right conditions for doing so. You'll also learn about the leadership styles necessary for agile success. Finally, you'll explore how to measure the success of and overcome challenges to your organization's Agile transformation.

Organizations adopt Agile business practices in order to provide their customers with better products more quickly. Building a product roadmap helps support an organization's Agile practices by clearly identifying the "why" behind their product development activities. In this course, you will learn the purposes of an Agile product roadmap, the advantages for building an Agile product roadmap, the steps for building an Agile product roadmap, the best practices for building an Agile product roadmap, and the different types of Agile product roadmaps you can build.

Rapid advances in digital technology are compelling businesses to change and adapt the ways they operate. Developing agile thinking will help ensure your organization doesn't get left behind, unable to compete in a market that is constantly changing. In this course, you'll learn why it's important for organizations to cultivate a culture of agility and the characteristics that distinguish an agile mindset from a fixed mindset. You'll also learn how to encourage and build an agile enterprise, and how doing so will help your business flourish. This course also covers how developing and supporting an agile mindset can benefit both your corporate culture and your business success.

Agile projects use short work iterations and incremental development of products that focus on business priorities and customer value. In this course, you'll learn about Agile concepts that are fundamental when managing projects, including the four Agile values and twelve Agile principles. This course also covers the five phases of the Agile project management model, and introduces you to the most common Agile methodologies and frameworks. Finally, this course introduces key activities for managing Agile projects, including creating a product vision and project charter, and best contract and documentation types. This course is one of a series in the Skillsoft learning path that covers the objectives for the PMI Agile Certified Practitioner (PMI-ACP)(r) exam. PMI-ACP is a registered mark of the Project Management Institute, Inc.

Properly estimating and prioritizing project requirements is critical when planning projects. When managing Agile projects, you need to be able to map out the work necessary for your product release. In this course, you'll learn about vital Agile planning activities including creating personas and wireframing. This course also covers the most common Agile estimation techniques used when managing projects such as story points, wideband Delphi, and affinity estimation. This course also covers requirements prioritization methods and other Agile project management activities you perform when completing your release plan. This course is one of a series in the Skillsoft learning path that covers the objectives for the PMI Agile Certified Practitioner (PMI-ACP)(r) exam. PMI-ACP is a registered mark of the Project Management Institute, Inc.

Wouldn't it be great if projects managed themselves once you got them started? But this isn't the case. Successful Agile project management involves adequate scheduling and monitoring, which helps identify any adjustments that need to be made, and ensures effective time management. In this course, you'll learn about managing projects with Agile project scheduling activities like setting work in progress limits and implementing project buffers. This course also covers recommended project time management processes for monitoring and tracking progress at both the iteration and project levels. This course also introduces you to key risk management and product quality, testing, and integration strategies you can use when managing Agile projects to help ensure your project creates and maintains the intended value as it progresses. This course is one of a series in the Skillsoft learning path that covers the objectives for the PMI Agile Certified Practitioner (PMI-ACP)(r) exam. PMI-ACP is a registered mark of the Project Management Institute, Inc.

Agile projects are only successful if the Agile team is cohesive, productive, and engaged. When managing projects for your organization, you must encourage active involvement to ensure your team has a clear understanding of project requirements and stakeholder expectations. In this course, you'll learn about team leadership and the characteristics of effective stakeholder engagement when managing Agile projects. This course also introduces you to some important Agile project management tools and techniques, such as team development strategies and developmental mastery models. Finally, this course covers effective communication tools and the benefits of using facilitation techniques like Agile games to foster collaboration and cooperation in the Agile team. This course is one of a series in the Skillsoft learning path that covers the objectives for the PMI Agile Certified Practitioner (PMI-ACP)(r) exam. PMI-ACP is a registered mark of the Project Management Institute, Inc.

Project managers are leaders and as such, they are responsible for their team's performance. As Agile leaders, they must create Agile teams. In this course, you'll learn about Agile principles and Scrum frameworks, and the various events and tools that support team performance, like Sprints and Sprint Planning, the Daily Scrum, Sprint Review, and a Sprint Retrospective. You'll also explore concepts such as adaptive planning, product vision, product roadmaps, storymaps, and backlog refinement, as well as information radiators, iteration, and task boards.

Project leadership is Agile leadership. Agile projects use short work iterations and incremental development of products that focus on business priorities and customer value. In this course, you'll learn about fundamental Agile concepts that are essential to managing projects, including the Agile values and Agile principles. This course also covers the phases of the Agile project management model, and introduces you to the most common Agile methodologies and frameworks. Finally, this course introduces key activities for managing Agile projects, including creating a product vision and project charter, and the best contract and documentation types.

Properly estimating activities and effective time and resource management are critical when planning projects. In this course, you'll explore common Agile estimation techniques used when managing projects, like story points and ideal days, identifying any adjustments that need to be made, and completing your release plan. You'll explore setting work in progress limits and implementing project buffers. This course also covers recommended project time management processes for monitoring and tracking progress at both the iteration and project levels. Finally, you'll learn about key Agile exam concepts such as muda or waste, the Kanban system, work in progress, Little's Law, and process cycle efficiency.

Change is always happening. Effective team leadership means managing teams through the ongoing transition processes that facilitate change. Removing obstacles that can hinder the productive teamwork required to make these transition processes smooth is essential. In this course, you'll learn about types of resistance and obstacles to change and how to overcome them in a collaboration. You'll also learn about how to overcome barriers to introducing change at your organization. Finally, you'll learn effective approaches for communicating change when working on a team.

A key challenge for managers is motivating and engaging employees during times of organizational change. To survive and grow in volatile markets, organizations have to embrace change; they have to innovate and adapt. However, because change involves uncertainty, it's stressful, and it can impact employee motivation and productivity - just at a time when an organization needs everyone to pull together and give their best efforts. In this course, you'll learn change management techniques to help you recognize and manage employee stress, as well as your own stress, during periods of change. You'll also learn about common reactions to change, and strategies for managing change to enable you to engage, motivate, and support employees.

All organizations must go through some type of change in order to adapt to new market forces. Adapting to change, whether it involves new processes, strategies, or personnel, is never easy, but is a vital aspect of a company's long-term success and resilience. In this course, you'll learn about key outputs of a change initiative, such as success factors that improve an organization's flexibility and make it more resilient. You'll explore how to identify stakeholder groups needed when adapting to new processes, and the roles they play in changing operations. You'll also learn how to evaluate the three keys to sustainable change: discomfort, vision and proper skill level.

When adapting to change, effective planning is key. If planned and carried out properly, a change initiative can enhance an organization's flexibility and resilience in the face of future disruptions. In this course, you'll learn tools for adapting to new processes, such as change charters and guiding coalitions. You'll discover how to interpret stakeholders' influence and input and how they can help when changing your organization's strategy. You'll also learn best practices for creating codes of change that will enable to successfully adapt and become more resilient.

By facing change deployment challenges head on, you can help your organization successfully adapt to the change, increasing its flexibility and resilience. In this course, you'll learn methods for adapting to change that involve effective ways of communicating the change to different groups. You'll learn how make the process of changing more comfortable, so that your workforce can reinforce their skills and become more resilient. You'll also explore training and performance management techniques you can use when your employees are adapting to new situations.

Change can be disruptive, but adapting to change can also open new possibilities. A changing work situation can create a period of uncertainty while you adapt. A clear understanding of what organizational change is can help build your resilience and flexibility. In this course, you'll find out what can trigger organizational change. You'll explore common responses to change and the stages of reacting to change that people go through when dealing with organizational change. You'll learn why it's important to be resilient when adapting to change, and how to prepare yourself to get the most out of change.

Today in the Age of the Customer, competitive advantage has been redefined. Customers are in control. They have more choices than ever before resulting in sky-high expectations. The only source of competitive advantage is the obsession with understanding, delighting, connecting with and serving customers. Organizations need people who are customer obsessed. People who are so interested and committed to the people they are creating and designing for that they are willing to spend time, take risks and admit that they personally might be wrong. People who are so customer obsessed that they never settle but are continually trying to understand what else they can do for their customers.

The ability to support a customer is keenly enhanced by a greater understanding of the customer's mood, communication style, and knowledge of the product or service in question. From the first moments of interaction, the customer will be giving cues in each of these areas. Interaction with customers requires planning, active listening, and a conscious effort to adjust your communication and support approach based on your customer's cues. In this course, you'll learn how to recognize and read customer cues, and how to use them to adapt your support strategy to each individual customer. You'll also explore how to overcome common pitfalls customer service agents face in assessing their customer's cues. This course was developed with subject matter provided by NueBridge (www.nuebridge.com) which has extensive expertise in customer experience and management across multiple industries around the world.

CSRs who can identify their customers' priorities are able to make the best decisions on how to serve the customer. A customer's priorities may be both explicit (stated clearly or obvious) and implicit (unsaid or unexpected). Understanding the scope and interdependence of these priorities allows you to better address each customer's implicit needs and help you deliver a higher level of service. In this course, you'll learn to distinguish customer priorities as either explicit or implicit, and to describe how speed influences customer perception. You'll also learn strategies to decrease the amount of effort the customer has to expend in getting issues resolved, methods to demonstrate your presence for customers in service interactions, and strategies to help you balance priorities during a customer service interaction. This course was developed with subject matter provided by NueBridge (www.nuebridge.com) which has extensive expertise in customer experience and management across multiple industries around the world.

Customer needs lie at the heart of every service interaction. In order to fully support the customer, we must be able to identify both their stated and unstated needs. Customer support professionals use a combination of skills to analyze beyond the stated requirements to uncover the full spectrum of customer needs. In this course, you'll learn the service advantages of being able to identify your customers' needs. You'll learn best practices for discerning both stated and unstated needs in a service interaction and how to avoid problems and pitfalls in needs exploration. You'll also learn techniques to help you exceed your customers' needs and you'll explore scenarios that put these practices into action. This course was developed with subject matter provided by NueBridge (www.nuebridge.com) which has extensive expertise in customer experience and management across multiple industries around the world.

Success is both an outcome and a mindset. Professionals who wish to provide a truly exceptional level of customer service approach each interaction with the right mindset and attitude. Without understanding how mindset impacts service ability, you compromise your potential and that of the organization, which ultimately results in a poor customer service experience. Focusing on your service mindset and attitude will ensure your professional values will manifest in each service interaction. In this course, you'll learn how moving to a different mindset can help you deliver outstanding customer service, and what key practices can help establish a good personal mindset for any service situation. You'll also learn to recognize how professional values manifest during customer service interactions, how to develop an attitude of a customer service professional, and what strategies demonstrate a customer-centric service mindset. This course was developed with subject matter provided by NueBridge (www.nuebridge.com) which has extensive expertise in customer experience and management across multiple industries around the world.

Customer service is customer engagement. And as a customer service representative, you don't often get to see happy, smiling customers, excited by their new service, new device, new outfit, or new opportunity. You get to see them when the new thing isn't working. Or isn't the right color. Or may not be billed correctly. And then you get to try to make them happy again. In this course, you'll learn proven techniques customer service professionals can use to boost their self-confidence, better engage with their customers, and demonstrate flexibility and efficiency in the problem-solving process. This course was developed with subject matter provided by NueBridge (www.nuebridge.com) which has extensive expertise in customer experience and management across multiple industries around the world.

Customer service is all about finding the right solution for every client. CSRs who can quickly determine the underlying causes and issues associated with a customer's problem are more likely to generate fast and effective solutions. In this course, you'll examine proven techniques to find the root cause of a problem, align a right-fit solution, and deliver a final resolution. You'll recognize how to arm yourself with the information you need before and during an interaction, and learn the solution steps in a process-based approach to customer service. You'll also learn approaches for addressing common obstacles encountered during customer service interactions, indications when a call should be escalated to a higher tier of service, and explore strategies to take customer service solutions to the next level. This course was developed with subject matter provided by NueBridge (www.nuebridge.com) which has extensive expertise in customer experience and management across multiple industries around the world.

To understand the different feelings and cognitive processes a customer undergoes when dealing with your organization, you need a tool that can document every step of their experience. Customer journey mapping is one such tool, and is essential in helping you understand customer needs and define problems highlighted by their experiences. In this course, you'll discover how to create a customer journey map, a customer-centric problem solving tool that can enable you to brainstorm effective solutions to key customer pain points. You'll also explore how to recognize and prioritize specific actions to improve your customer focus while avoiding common mapping mistakes.

Your organization depends on its ability to win every customer interaction. User personas - detailed descriptions of archetypal end users - are the gateway to designing customer-centric products and experiences that address customer needs. Building user personas will help you develop products and services your customers truly want. In this course, you'll learn the essential elements of user personas and the business information to be gained from them. You'll also learn how to build a user persona, which data to include in a persona, and the qualities of an effective persona. And you'll discover what customer-centric design can tell you about your customer, and how it will benefit your business.

Today's customer is a new breed, often a digital native who spends much of their time online in the digital world. They have different priorities and expectations than generations of customers past. In this course, you will learn about meeting the needs and expectations of today's digital customers, including omnichannel and utilizing algorithm-savvy design. You'll also learn about wayfinding: ways to shape and influence their customer journey, as well as methods to individualize their customer experience (CX) through methods like digital body language. Finally, you'll learn about protecting and partnering in their data privacy and security.

If your organization creates a positive learning culture that focuses on developing people, it will not only weather difficult times better than most, but will flourish in an ultracompetitive global market. In this course, you'll be introduced to organizational learning and its benefits to your organization. You'll examine the role of training, knowledge management, and technology in developing employees, and learn about the pivotal role of the continuous learning. By exploring the essential elements and indicators of a self-development culture, the course prepares you to assess your current workplace and determine how conducive it is to learning. Developing talent will increase your competitiveness and create more satisfied, goal-oriented employees - which leads to a more profitable organization.

From the minor slip up to a full-blown catastrophe, failure is a part of life and business. It's part of your self-development, and it's part of developing talent. It should be embraced as an opportunity for continuous learning and growth. If you encourage organizational learning, you can start developing employees. And then those who embrace failure are more likely to achieve their goals. In this course, you'll learn how to embrace failure by developing an attitude of learning from setbacks. You'll learn about the cycle of success when developing people, and you'll also explore failure in greater detail, its potential benefits, as well as key strategies for embracing it.

Continuous learning is a response to the modern workplace: technology, staff and company direction change constantly. Continuous learners are able to adapt and obtain necessary skills and knowledge in a constantly changing workplace. Continuously learning provides you with a competitive edge in your job and in your career. In this course, you'll learn the behaviors that define continuous learning and their benefits. You'll also learn habits to practice to aid becoming a continuous learner, along with reading and learning agility strategies for encouraging life-long learning.

Effective learning is not about memorizing and reciting on a test, and it doesn't only exist in a formal educational setting. In this course, you'll learn some key strategies to boost your ability to explore, be inquisitive, and use all your senses to learn the way you prefer to learn.

Having a passion for learning and developing talent helps you stay engaged, motivated, and driven. New challenges require new ideas, new solutions, and new skills and knowledge. And this requires continuous learning and self-development. Being a passionate learner is crucial to staying motivated, engaged, and up to date. Therefore, organizations need to invest in developing employees. In this course, you'll learn about the characteristics of passionate learners. And you'll explore how to help develop a passion for learning in yourself and others.

The digital economy is revolutionizing the world of work. To stay relevant, individuals across all industries need to be open to continuous learning and developing talent. Through organizational learning, you can start developing employees by ensuring they are learning the necessary skills. In this course, you'll learn some of the key ways in which the world of work is changing and the skills that are in high demand. You'll also explore ways to choose what to learn in order to keep your skill set current, as well as develop people and encourage self-development. And you'll also explore strategies to help advance your career in the digital economy.

We all have individual talents and skills that make us unique in some way, but you may not be aware of your own skills or how to use them to achieve your personal and career goals. Central to reaching these goals is the ability to use continuous learning for self development. In this course, you'll learn what is meant by talent, skill, and personal development, why it's important to understand what talents you possess, and how to harness those talents through continuous learning. This course also covers techniques for identifying your unique capabilities, and outlines self-development tips you can use to fully utilize your key talents and skills.

Smart companies have learned that supporting continuous learning and self-development among employees reaps dividends in productivity and employee retention rates. As a manager, you're responsible for developing people, which includes developing talent in your direct reports. In this course, you'll learn about the benefits of developing employees and assessing how their development needs can be addressed through organizational learning. You'll then learn how to prepare for and conduct a development meeting that includes the necessary development plan characteristics and support for your employees.