PRINCE2 Agile – using PRINCE2 not just for waterfall projects: Webinar with Andrew Kell

In this webinar, Andrew Kell explores how PRINCE2 can be used in an agile context on projects. Watch the YouTube video below or download the pdf presentation (Using PRINCE2 on agile projects).

Or, view the transcript of the webinar or download the audio file.

Andrew Kell leads a webinar where he explores the integration of PRINCE2 with agile methodologies.

He starts with an overview of projects and agile, comparing linear waterfall and iterative/incremental agile approaches. He delves into the key principles of PRINCE2 and how it evolved into PRINCE2 Agile by combining PRINCE2 and agile.

PRINCE2 Agile is defined as guidance on how to implement agile within a PRINCE2 environment. To achieve success, PRINCE2 Agile must meet specific objectives, such as ensuring high quality.

Andrew highlights five key features of PRINCE2 Agile: agile behaviours, frameworks, focus areas, techniques, and concepts. He explains the importance of transparency, collaboration, rich communication, self-organization, and exploration in PRINCE2 Agile.

He also discusses commonly used agile frameworks with PRINCE2 and their relative popularity. In the focus areas, Andrew highlights five key considerations.

He also mentions key agile techniques for applying PRINCE2 in an agile environment. Finally, he covers key agile concepts.

About Andrew Kell

Andrew is a seasoned professional with three decades of experience in agile and project management.

He has held various positions, such as project manager, business analyst, developer, consultant, trainer, agile coach, and business systems manager. Andrew has been using agile methodologies since 1994 across multiple industries.

Andrew considers himself an Agile pragmatist, recognizing that while agile can bring success if executed correctly, it can also fail if not implemented correctly.

PRINCE2 Agile courses

PRINCE2 Agile is a project management certification developed by AXELOS, released in June 2015, in response to the growing demand for a project management method incorporating agile tools and practices.

PRINCE2 Agile combines PRINCE2’s strong governance and control with the flexibility of agile, providing a comprehensive approach to project management that can be applied across industries.

PRINCE2 Agile qualifications come in two levels: Foundation and Practitioner. Foundation-level training provides students with a basic understanding of PRINCE2 in an agile context, while the Practitioner level focuses on its practical application in real-world situations.

Both levels are valuable for those interested in using PRINCE2 Agile in project management.

The PRINCE2 Agile courses offered by agileKRC are often taught by Andrew Kell.

For more information on PRINCE2 Agile courses, click the links below.

PRINCE2 Agile courses
PRINCE2 Agile Foundation courses
PRINCE2 Agile Practitioner courses

Transcript

Here’s the full transcript of the video.

00:00:00 Sevcan Yasa: Andrew, would you like to start now? Yeah OK, OK perfect.

00:00:02 Andrew Kell: Let’s make a start.

00:00:04 Sevcan Yasa: So, thank you everyone for joining, just a quick start.

00:00:09 Sevcan Yasa: I’m Sevcan and I’m the marketing executive at Knowledge Train. Knowledge Train is a training provider and owns AgileKRC which specifically focuses on agile.

00:00:20 Sevcan Yasa: Just before I head over to you Andrew, I would like to mention that at the end there will be a Q&A session. So, if you have any questions, you can always pop it down in the chat and Andrew will answer them at the end, Andrew over to you.

00:00:34 Andrew Kell: Thanks, Sevcan welcome everyone. Good afternoon, a couple of bits and pieces. It’s quite nice to see some familiar faces popping up in the participant list.

00:00:45 Andrew Kell: Even people who’ve been on some of my courses have come back for more. Extraordinary. So welcome to the afternoon’s session just to explain how it’s going to work, and my plan is to talk for about 40 minutes or so and then we’ll have a Q&A session. And obviously, it’s an agile session, so we will finish on time at 5 o’clock or by 5.

00:01:07 Andrew Kell: In terms of the Q&A session, if people think of questions during the session, please pop them in the chat if I think they’re relevant to address at the time, I’ll pick them up immediately.

00:01:16 Andrew Kell: Otherwise, we’ll address them at the end of the session, so just use the chat for those please. Also, I’m going to suggest that if you want to share any of your experiences about the subject matter with me or with the other participants again, please use the chat for that as well.

00:01:31 Andrew Kell: I will endeavor to keep an eye on it as we go through the material. Those of you who have been on my courses will know that multitasking is not necessarily my strength.

00:01:41 Andrew Kell: I’m also going to make a confession this is the first time I’ve used this platform in anger, so apologies if I screw anything up. Hopefully I won’t, Sevcan on hand to sort of help me out if I do get a bit stuck, so let’s have a look at what we’re going to cover.

00:01:55 Andrew Kell: And by the way, I’ve noticed that my location in the participant list is down at Newcastle. Not that it matters, but I’m not in Newcastle, I’m in Surrey, so I’m absolutely nowhere near Newcastle it doesn’t not that it matters – I couldn’t work out how to change it.

00:02:08 Andrew Kell: So, what are we going to spend talking about over the next 40 minutes or so. I’m just going to find my slides, there we go.

00:02:15 Andrew Kell: I’ll start with a very quick introduction. Obviously not everyone in the group has come across me before, so I’ll just give you a very quick introduction, a little bit of my background. We’re then going to talk about some of the real basics to do with projects and agile.

00:02:28 Andrew Kell: Obviously, I don’t know what people’s experiences are in terms of projects or PRINCE2 or agile, or even PRINCE2 Agile. So, we will go through some of the real basics.

00:02:37 Andrew Kell: We’ll also discuss some of the real basics of PRINCE2 again and how it relates to agile, and hopefully also in that session we’ll do a little bit of myth busting.

00:02:46 Andrew Kell: There are a lot of preconceptions and sometimes prejudices about some of this subject matter, and we’ll try and bust some of those myths.

00:02:53 Andrew Kell: Also, I’m going to attempt to answer the question is an agile project an oxymoron, you know? Does that sentence actually make sense?

00:03:02 Andrew Kell: Clearly I think it does, by the way, but we’ll talk about that, then we’ll talk about what PRINCE2 Agile is, what it is, what it isn’t, but also where it fits into some of the other Agile approaches that I’m sure quite of you guys are familiar with.

00:03:16 Andrew Kell: We’re then going to talk about something called the hexagon and this is PRINCE2 Agile’s version of the traditional time, cost, quality, scope, triangle that I’m sure quite a few of you are familiar with, so we’ll go through PRINCE2 Agile’s hexagon.

00:03:33 Andrew Kell: Then we’re going to talk about the elements of PRINCE2 – again an introductory overview. We’ll discuss the PRINCE2 Agile’s, targets, behaviours, frameworks, focus areas, techniques, and concepts.

00:03:47 Andrew Kell: Then I’m going to talk very briefly about a concept that I think is mine, actually. Which is something that I call ‘agile by stealth’ which will probably be the title of my book whenever I get around to writing it, which I probably won’t.

00:03:59 Andrew Kell: But if I did, that’s what it’s going to be called. And then hopefully that’ll be round about 4:40, maybe, maybe between 4:40 and 4:45 and then we’ll have to have time for a Q&A session. I’m hoping to fit in a couple of polls if we have time. Certainly, one or maybe two polls as we go through.

00:04:15 Andrew Kell: So that will give you a chance to have some of your inputs. Sevcan I’ve just noticed that someone has raised their hand, but I have no way of telling easily who that was or what it’s about, so.

00:04:27 Sevcan Yasa: Yeah, it’s Susanna.

00:04:30 Andrew Kell: OK.

00:04:30 Sevcan Yasa: Would you like to write in the chat if that’s the case.

00:04:32 Andrew Kell: Yeah, that’s what I was going to suggest.

00:04:32 Sevcan Yasa: OK.

00:04:34 Andrew Kell: So, whatever it is you’re trying to raise Suzanne. If you could pop that in the chat, that would be the easiest way of dealing with it.

00:04:41 Andrew Kell: So, let’s go back to the slides starting with an introduction to me, apologies to those of you who have been on one of my training courses because you’ve heard all of this before.

00:04:50 Andrew Kell: I have over 30 years. Oh I really didn’t like writing that on a slide, but I do have over 30 years of experience in lots of different roles. I’ve worked as a developer. I’ve worked as an analyst both the systems and the business analyst actually; I’ve worked as a project manager. I’ve been a consultant, I’ve done, worked as a trainer.

00:05:09 Andrew Kell: As I know, some of you know I do currently work as an agile coach, and I’ve also had a role as a business systems manager. I’ve worked for lots of different organizations.

00:05:18 Andrew Kell: I’ve put a little list of them down at the bottom of the slide. I won’t read them out. You can look at those for yourselves. I’ve been using agile again, terrifying amount of time effectively now for 28 years in the 1990s and I know some of you will know this already. We weren’t calling it agile we were calling it RAD. RAD stands for Rapid Application Development.

00:05:39 Andrew Kell: But I was a RAD developer in the 90s and then obviously agile came along in 2001 and I’ve been working in agile in various different roles you know, for a very long time now. I’ve been an independent consultant since 2009. So, for 13 years now, I’ve worked for myself. I’ve worked for agileKRC since 2011, so I’ve been working with these guys for 11 years. Running other courses and doing some agile coaching.

00:06:06 Andrew Kell: I would describe myself as an agile pragmatist. I don’t think I’m an agile evangelist. I’m very keen on agile. I hope that will come across in this session.

00:06:17 Andrew Kell: But I know that agile isn’t a silver bullet. You know it’s not a magical way of making things easy. It’s not necessarily a cheap way of doing things. It’s not necessarily an easy or quick way of doing things. It’s a way of doing things, and if you get certain things right agile works really well and I’ve seen agile work brilliantly on, you know in all sorts of different environments.

00:06:37 Andrew Kell: I’ve also seen agile fail. Spectacularly. And if you don’t get certain things right, agile really struggles, so you know sentences like ‘we’re going to use agile for everything’ in most companies don’t really make sense, so I like to think of myself as an agile pragmatist. I’m also and some of you will know this already very fond of a cheese joke, and I’m known for two things on the courses that I run one is endlessly talking about agile and the other is cheese jokes now some of you will have heard some of my cheese jokes before, and there are some very well-known cheese jokes, so I’m actually going to pop a little cheese related question in the chat.

00:07:14 Andrew Kell: Which I’d like you to think about during the webinar. This is a slightly more obscure cheese joke. And if you think you know you’ve worked out the answer, pop it in the chat, and if no one’s got it, I’ll tell you what the answer is at the end of the session.

00:07:29 Andrew Kell: So the question is in the chat. How would you describe eating a whole Greek cheese?

00:07:35 Andrew Kell: So that’s something to think about in the background, hopefully while also still listening to me by the way.

00:07:41 Andrew Kell: So, it’s not one of the ones I use on my courses, so if you’ve been on my courses, you probably won’t have heard that joke before. So that’s an introduction to me.

00:07:48 Andrew Kell: Let’s talk about projects and I’m sure again I’m not going to assume any particular degree of knowledge.

00:07:57 Andrew Kell: That’s not the answer, Emily. That’s the answer to a different cheese question, I like the answer it’s not the answer I’m after.

00:08:02 Andrew Kell: I’m not going to, you know I’m not going to assume a certain level of knowledge in the audience about any of the subject matter, so we’ll start with some real basics.

00:08:10 Andrew Kell: Projects are typically complicated, they’re unique, they’re temporary, and a project should always end.

00:08:18 Andrew Kell: I mean, I’ve certainly worked on projects in the past that felt like they were never going to, but they should always be an end point on a project and projects by definition need project management. They need a great degree of control, they need planning. They typically need you know things to be recorded and documented.

00:08:34 Andrew Kell: You know the level to which you need those things will depend on the project and the context and the company you work for and what your regulatory requirements are and governance needs are. So that’s a little bit about the project.

00:08:46 Andrew Kell: Agile as agile has been around since 2001 when the Agile Manifesto and the original 12 agile principles were published and Agile is a way of doing things. I always describe it as a mindset. An agile mindset is a phrase I use all the time. So, when we work in an agile way, we’re very flexible, you know, a lot of agile methods or approaches are not recipe books. They’re designed to be tailored and adapted to what you’re working on.

00:09:16 Andrew Kell: They’re also flexible in terms of handling change, and I always ask at the beginning of sessions, you know when people are joining in ‘Do you work on projects where you don’t get change?’ and I don’t think I’ve ever had a positive answer to that question, by the way, so we all work on projects where things change, so there’s no point in pretending things don’t change.

00:09:36 Andrew Kell: Let’s accept that things are going to change and when they change, we’ll try and deal with them. So that’s an aspect of flexibility.

00:09:43 Andrew Kell: Agile approaches are highly collaborative, so they typically involve working in teams, and those are cross functional teams where you’ve got very strong representation from the customer as well as the more technical people involved as well as people from the management side all working together collaboratively.

00:09:59 Andrew Kell: Agile is very value driven, very strong focus on understanding what value means to the customer and trying to deliver that to those people.

00:10:07 Andrew Kell: Also, we deliver solutions incrementally in a pure waterfall approach, we deliver the solution at the end. In what is commonly referred to as a ‘Big Bang’.

00:10:20 Andrew Kell: That’s getting close Mark, that answer I’ve just spotted in the chat so we’re getting in the right direction.

00:10:27 Andrew Kell: So, we deliver solutions in agile incrementally rather than doing it at the end. And that gives us the ability to deliver early value to the customer, so that aligns with value driven when we develop solutions, we do it iteratively and we invite feedback from the customer on a very frequent basis and we show people what we’re doing and we try and find out whether we’re getting it right or not, and if we’re getting it wrong, that’s not necessarily a bad thing as long as we’ve found out quickly and that’s iterative development.

00:10:55 Andrew Kell: And just at the bottom of the slide I’ve put the agile is used in both a BAU Business As Usual environment where we do lots of ongoing, sort of work, typically updating things that already exist, but it’s also used in a project environment and certainly over the last at least 10 years there’s been an increase in the use of agile in the project environment, probably longer than that actually thinking about it, I’ve also popped on the slide you know, just quite a few images appearing on my slides.

00:11:24 Andrew Kell: Mostly relevant, I’ve popped the Agile manifesto. I’m sure quite a few of you are very familiar with the Agile manifesto.

00:11:31 Andrew Kell: It’s been around since 2001. It has 12 agile principles that sit behind it. It contains 4 agile values. It’s probably the closest thing that exists in the world to a definition of what we mean by agile.

00:11:47 Andrew Kell: Now what the Agile manifesto does do is mention the word software and it has done since 2001.

00:11:53 Andrew Kell: What some organisations have done the Agile Business Consortium, for example, is they’ve replaced that word software with something like solution and if you tweak make that minor tweak to this manifesto, this is a set of values that applies to anything you do it doesn’t have to be to do with software, so that’s quite a nice adaptation of the manifesto that I’ve come across being used by some organizations.

00:12:14 Andrew Kell: So, a little bit about projects and agile. Again, I put this slide in just to show one of the clear differences between a waterfall project and an iterative and incremental project.

00:12:27 Andrew Kell: The waterfall project, very linear, very sequential, typically very structured and we don’t deliver something to the customer until the end of the project and an agile project we deliver the solution incrementally so they get something that they can start using for real earlier, so there’s your early value and when we develop those solutions, we do it iteratively and I always think of iterative as another word for cyclical.

00:12:50 Andrew Kell: So, when we develop something iteratively, we’re going around cycles of development, so I quite like this slide it just shows really simply the difference the major difference really between a waterfall approach and an agile approach, and I’m sure quite a few of you are familiar with this language already.

00:13:05 Andrew Kell: Well done, Chris. That is the right answer.

00:13:08 Andrew Kell: So, when you describe eating a whole Greek cheese, it’s a ‘fait accompli’.

00:13:13 Andrew Kell: Sorry about the pun and I was hoping that some wouldn’t get that quite so quickly.

00:13:19 Andrew Kell: Now let’s talk about PRINCE2 and then a little bit more about agile relating to PRINCE2. So PRINCE2 has been around since 1996, so a well-established project management approach in fact as PRINCE, it existed before that.

00:13:33 Andrew Kell: But as PRINCE2 it’s been around since 1996. There was a major update to PRINCE2 in 2009 and in 2009 they completely aligned PRINCE2 with agile and since you know for 13 years now, there’s been nothing in PRINCE2 that goes against doing things in an agile way, so it’s not a traditional. You know the waterfall project management approach. That is a very common misconception and I do get a lot of people on courses who talk about PRINCE2 clearly talking about it as a waterfall approach, so it’s not a waterfall project management approach. It can be used clearly to run waterfall projects, but it can also be used to run agile projects.

00:14:14 Andrew Kell: It’s also got this very strong reputation for being very, very bureaucratic. Those of you who know something about PRINCE2 will know that there are 26 management products in PRINCE2, so absolutely it could become very bureaucratic. Of course it could, but sometimes we need a high degree level of bureaucracy on complex, highly governed projects.

00:14:34 Andrew Kell: There’s also a bit of a misconception that PRINCE2 is very much a command-and-control style of management and that also is not true and one of the PRINCE2 principles we’re going to look at in a moment is managed by exception which is very much moving away from, you know very old school traditional command and control styles of management.

00:14:54 Andrew Kell: So, a little bit about PRINCE2 and I’m sure we’ve got quite a few PRINCE2 Practitioners in the group. Now PRINCE2 Agile has been around since 2015.

00:15:03 Andrew Kell: So, it’s been around for seven years now, so again, relatively well established.

00:15:08 Andrew Kell: It’s useful for any project. Again, it’s not designed just for IT projects you can use PRINCE2 Agile on any sort of project.

00:15:16 Andrew Kell: Agile is probably still predominantly used in software development, but over the last few years it’s very much moved away from that, and more companies are using agile on all sorts of different projects, and the PRINCE2 Agile view of Agile is that agile is a family of behaviours, concepts, frameworks or approaches, and finally techniques and we will go through each of those elements a little bit later on in the session.

00:15:42 Andrew Kell: So finally, a little bit on this slide about agile and one of the common misconceptions is that agile and scrum are the same thing and I think the reason for that is that scrum is the most widely used agile approach, so most people using agile, talk about sprints, they talk about product owners, they talk about backlogs, you know, they use all the Scrum language as I know some of you know there are lots of other agile frameworks and approaches, and we’ll have a quick look at some of those in a little bit.

00:16:10 Andrew Kell: Also agile is not a binary condition and this is something we’re going to explore in a moment in a bit more detail.

00:16:17 Andrew Kell: So being agile is not yes or no. It’s more about you know how much agile can we use on this bit of work that we’re doing. And there’s again, there’s a misconception that agile involves no planning, no control, no structure, no documentation, and again that is very much not the case.

00:16:36 Andrew Kell: Agile says you still need those things, but they need to be appropriate to what they are doing and yes we try and keep things as informal as we can and as flexible as we can and we try and agree things collaboratively rather than focusing on very, you know formal sign off, but we still need those levels of control and the more govern the environment you work in the more of that stuff you’re going to need.

00:16:59 Andrew Kell: So just hoping, hopefully trying to bust some of those myths that float around to do with all these subjects.

00:17:06 Andrew Kell: So, a very quick run through the PRINCE2 principles and I’m sure there are people in the group who are more than familiar with PRINCE2, but if we look at PRINCE2’s 7 principles they all align with agile.

00:17:18 Andrew Kell: There’s nothing in here that goes against agile, so the first one ‘Continued business justification’. We should always know why we’re doing this project, you know, and understand what business drivers are and have very clear goals, objectives and vision and they need to be clearly stated and defined so that we know why we’re doing this thing.

00:17:39 Andrew Kell: The second one, ‘Learn from previous experience’. In other words, learn as you go and we’ll see the term continuous improvement coming up on a later slide, so you know if we are getting things wrong, what can we change to make things better? So absolutely learn from previous experience.

00:17:55 Andrew Kell: Also make sure we have clearly ‘Defined roles and responsibilities’, and again that aligns very well with agile. You know, for example, Scrum has three clearly defined roles. There are other agile approaches like DSDM, which I know some of you will be familiar with that have a more significant set of 13 roles really well defined.

00:18:14 Andrew Kell: Let’s make sure we know who is responsible for what. ‘Manage by stages’ I think can be aligned with agile because you could replace the word stages with the word release or the word increment and then you make sure you treat those increments or releases as management stages within PRINCE.

00:18:32 Andrew Kell: The 4th one very much about you know the management style is we ‘Manage by exception’. So as a project manager you know we do need to be happy that everyone’s got very clear objectives.

00:18:43 Andrew Kell: But then when the development teams are doing their thing, we try and leave them alone as much as we can. It’s what we call hands off project management if they need help, we help them and if something happens that is described as an exception and we’ll touch on exceptions briefly in a moment when we talk about the hexagon, then we step in and help the team out.

00:19:04 Andrew Kell: The 6th one is ‘Focus on the definition and delivery of products’. So, we very much look at doing outcome based planning and outcome based measurement and we plan around actually delivering things to the customer which is what the customer is interested in at the end of the day.

00:19:20 Andrew Kell: And finally, ‘Tailor to suit the projects environment’ again, extremely aligned with agile tailor approach to suit the project you’re working on and the people you’re working with and the constraints you’ve got on that project.

00:19:32 Andrew Kell: So again, if we look at PRINCE2’s principles, nothing in there that goes anything against agile. Very, very aligned with Agile indeed.

00:19:40 Andrew Kell: So, here’s this question and I’ve got some interesting pictures on this slide.

00:19:44 Andrew Kell: Is the term Agile project an oxymoron? Can we have an agile project? Do agile projects exist so?

00:19:53 Andrew Kell: The key thing here is that binary thinking is not actually that helpful, so describing a project as agile or not agile.

00:20:02 Andrew Kell: That doesn’t tend to help because a lot of projects are in a bit of a grey area where they have a degree of suitability for agile, but perhaps also a degree of that doesn’t suit agile. Maybe there are bits of the project that suit agile and there are bits that don’t, so it’s actually quite healthy to think of it as a spectrum.

00:20:21 Andrew Kell: By the way, another quick question for you. Does any – and this is probably a bit age specific this reference.

00:20:27 Andrew Kell: Does anyone in the group recognise the picture at the bottom of the slide? If you do pop something in the chat and see if you can work out the relevance of it, by the way, it’s a little bit tenuous.

00:20:37 Andrew Kell: But agile, you should think of agile as, there we go. Someone’s comes straight in with the with rainbow, it’s a TV programme that some of you in the group will probably think of as a programme from the olden times it’s a few years ago now and it’s a slightly broad slanted reference to a spectrum. Just an interesting graphic, I thought.

00:20:58 Andrew Kell: So, the question you should ask yourself at the beginning of a project is how agile can this project be?

00:21:05 Andrew Kell: And a lot of projects end up being some sort of hybrid where you know there’s a degree of suitability for agile and a degree that’s not, and we often find ourselves blending agile and waterfall, now I suspect some of you will have heard this word. There is a word that that I’ve heard floating around called wagil W-A-G-I-L.

00:21:26 Andrew Kell: It’s not a word I particularly like, it’s a bit of a horrid word, but the concept makes complete sense. You know this concept of blending waterfall and agile, but as per the meme on the right, that’s not a simple thing to do and if you’re going to blend these two fundamentally different approaches and effectively cherry pick from each, you really need to know what you’re doing.

00:21:48 Andrew Kell: So, it’s healthy to think of, you know, projects in an agile context. That’s quite a nice expression I came across. So that’s sort of thinking about, you know this is not yes or no.

00:21:58 Andrew Kell: I’ve also put another picture in the top right-hand corner of the slide, some of you might recognise this. This is a focus area in PRINCE2 Agile called the Agilometer. It’s a word I sort of secretly, quite like actually, because it helps you understand how agile a project can be, we’ll revisit the Agilometer when we look at PRINCE2 Agile’s focus areas a little bit later.

00:22:19 Andrew Kell: The final question I’ve asked on this slide is there such a thing as an agile project manager and I must admit my view is that if you’re a project manager, you’re a project manager, and if you’re running an agile project, you’re still a project manager, you’re just running an agile project.

00:22:34 Andrew Kell: If you’re running a waterfall project, you’re running a waterfall project. So, I think the skill set you know broadly the same. You know there are some things you might want to specialize in if you’re looking at Agile rather than waterfall, but that’s my view anyway.

00:22:48 Andrew Kell: So, talking then about PRINCE2 Agile first of all, PRINCE2 Agile is not a methodology. I do have a copy of the PRINCE2 Agile Handbook on my desk. Of course, I do. It’s a fairly heavy, hefty old book, by the way. It’s not dissimilar in size to the PRINCE2 manual but this is not a methodology or a recipe book.

00:23:11 Andrew Kell: It’s basically guidance on if you’re going to apply agile within a PRINCE2 project environment. How can we do that? And the diagram that you can see in the top right-hand corner of my slide.

00:23:25 Andrew Kell: When I first came across this diagram, I didn’t work out, it was a cake by the way it’s a cake with layers, and when you know that it’s pretty obvious, but what we’re trying to do in PRINCE2 Agile is take the strengths of both and blend them together. So PRINCE2 is very strong at the sort of project direction and governance level. And obviously the project management level.

00:23:44 Andrew Kell: Agile is very strong in the product delivery area and to some extent in the project management area. And what we’re trying to do with PRINCE2 Agile is blend those two things together and take the best bits of both.

00:24:03 Andrew Kell: What does it consist of?

00:24:05 Andrew Kell: Ooh gone too far there we go.

00:24:07 Andrew Kell: Agile consists of a set of behaviours we’ll see what they are in a moment, yeah, I’ve just seen Hannahs comment in the chat.

00:24:16 Andrew Kell: Yeah, this session is going to be recorded and eventually it will be posted on I think agileKRC’s or Knowledge Train’s website so there will be a recording of this at some point. I don’t think it’ll be immediate, but there will be a recording.

00:24:29 Andrew Kell: So, we’ll go through the behaviours in PRINCE2 Agile in a moment.

00:24:32 Andrew Kell: There are also frameworks described in the manual. Not very many, and not in a lot of detail, and it does briefly mention some of the sort of IT only frameworks, but very very briefly. And we’ll look at what frameworks it does talk about in a few minutes’ time, There are also five focus areas, which again, we’ll look at shortly.

00:24:55 Andrew Kell: There are techniques. Again, the techniques are not covered in an enormous amount of detail, but quite a lot of the well-known agile techniques are covered in the book, and we’ll touch on some of those later.

00:25:04 Andrew Kell: There are also a set of concepts, and again we’ll see what those are later on. So that’s what PRINCE2 Agile is.

00:25:12 Andrew Kell: So, let’s have a look at this thing called the hexagon and I know a lot of you in the group will be very familiar with the old sort of time, cost, quality, scope, triangle.

00:25:24 Andrew Kell: I’ve always been slightly confused that you can turn something that’s got four elements into a triangle, but it’s always shown as a triangle.

00:25:30 Andrew Kell: What PRINCE2 Agile has introduced and I and I really like this actually is the concept of a hexagon.

00:25:36 Andrew Kell: Where we’ve actually got six things to consider, so the hexagon has six elements.

00:25:42 Andrew Kell: It has time, cost, benefits, risk, quality criteria, and scope.

00:25:48 Andrew Kell: And what the hexagon says is that there are two of these that we should probably fix time and cost, and a lot of you will know that in agile there’s a very strong focus on trying to fix time and cost. But with the others there’s probably going to be a degree of variability, because what we can’t do on almost any project you ever work on is fix all of them.

00:26:09 Andrew Kell: You know you can’t fix time, cost, benefits, risk, quality criteria and scope.

00:26:13 Andrew Kell: Unless you could run a project in a completely sterile environment where there was no change, no resourcing challenges, you know, completely accurate estimates, etc.

00:26:23 Andrew Kell: So, and that’s not the real world, so we can’t do that.

00:26:26 Andrew Kell: So, we need to know in the real world where the wiggle room is.

00:26:30 Andrew Kell: You know where we have got some flex, so in agile we move towards the model where we try and fix time and cost.

00:26:37 Andrew Kell: You know we will fix elements of the other four, so there may be certain benefits that are fixed.

00:26:43 Andrew Kell: There may be certain elements of risks that are fixed.

00:26:45 Andrew Kell: There may be certain elements of scope that are fixed and in a lot of agile environments they talk about an MVP, which is non-negotiable, which has to be delivered.

00:26:54 Andrew Kell: Also, the quality criteria of what we deliver.

00:26:57 Andrew Kell: You know we will fix certain elements of that, but we’re not going to try and fix everything, so we need to understand where the give is.

00:27:05 Andrew Kell: And again, this is this is very project specific, so for every project you need to look at this hexagon and say OK for each of these six areas.

00:27:13 Andrew Kell: What tolerance do I have? And those of you who are familiar with PRINCE2 will know that that PRINCE2 talks about tolerance, so we should define tolerance for these six areas, and ideally in an agile project time and cost would have zero tolerance.

00:27:29 Andrew Kell: And to come back to the PRINCE2 principle of managed by exception.

00:27:32 Andrew Kell: Any prediction to exceed those tolerances would be described as an exception.

00:27:37 Andrew Kell: So that’s the PRINCE2 Agile hexagon I really like that.

00:27:41 Andrew Kell: So, what are the five targets?

00:27:44 Andrew Kell: I’ll explain the washing machine in a moment.

00:27:47 Andrew Kell: There are five targets defined by PRINCE2 be on time and hit deadlines again that’s a very key part of the whole agile mindset.

00:27:54 Andrew Kell: Protect the level of quality, first of all, understand what defines the level of quality and then protect it.

00:28:02 Andrew Kell: So don’t deliver things on time by cutting corners that you shouldn’t be cutting.

00:28:07 Andrew Kell: Third one is that we embrace change.

00:28:09 Andrew Kell: That’s a term you’ll find in across all sorts of agile approaches, so we don’t view change as a negative thing.

00:28:15 Andrew Kell: We know it’s going to happen.

00:28:16 Andrew Kell: When it happens, we’ll do something about it.

00:28:20 Andrew Kell: The 3rd, 4th one, once we’ve established a development team, try and keep that team as stable as possible.

00:28:27 Andrew Kell: A common cause of project failure is chopping and changing resources during development. Of course, it is, its common sense, so as much as we can, we keep the team stable if we have to change the competition of a team do it at a sensible boundary. You know, do it maybe at the end of a stage or increment or release if you have to do it at the end of a sprint or a time box don’t do it midway through a development sprint of course that’s going to cause problems.

00:28:51 Andrew Kell: Finally, and this is where the washing machine comes in, we accept that customers don’t necessarily need everything they ask for, and the reason I put a picture of a washing machine on this side.

00:29:02 Andrew Kell: Sevcan was asking me about this yesterday and that’s quite a good example of a washing machine, I think because if you look at the front of it, there are so many buttons and options and dials and you’ve probably got you know, 10s if not hundreds of different washing options.

00:29:18 Andrew Kell: Most of us use two or three, and if we built a washing machine using an agile approach, we would build a washing machine that only had two or three settings because that’s what customers actually need, and it would probably be a much cheaper washing machine, and I must admit I’d buy it. I’d buy it in a flash.

00:29:36 Andrew Kell: There are all sorts of real world things that are just over engineered like that agile could fix some of those things car interfaces, coffee machines, those sorts of things in my experience. And maybe it’s just me that I can’t use them.

00:29:48 Andrew Kell: So, let’s have a look at PRINCE2 Agile’s behaviours and again there are five behaviours in PRINCE2 Agile and we’re going to do.

00:29:57 Andrew Kell: We’re going to do a little poll on these in a moment.

00:30:01 Andrew Kell: I’ll just go, I’ll just read them out for now and then we’ll do a little poll and then we’ll talk about a little bit more.

00:30:06 Andrew Kell: So, there are five behaviours defined by PRINCE2 Agile. The first is Transparency, again a word I’m sure a lot of you are familiar with, then you’ve got Collaboration, you’ve got rich communication, you’ve got Self-organization or what the latest version of the Scrum Guide called Self-Management. And then you’ve got Exploration.

00:30:24 Andrew Kell: Now I know that not all of you will necessarily know what all those words mean. We’re going to go through them in a moment, but I’d like to just do a quick poll with the people in the group. I’d like to find out which of those five behaviours.

00:30:35 Andrew Kell: You think is the most important for project success.

00:30:40 Andrew Kell: So Sevcan if you’re there can we do that poll now.

00:30:47 Andrew Kell: Oh, there we go.

00:30:50 Andrew Kell: Oh, there we go.

00:30:51 Andrew Kell: Look at that.

00:30:52 Andrew Kell: Well, this is very exciting.

00:30:56 Andrew Kell: Very interesting to see if we get any sort of pattern with this.

00:31:04 Andrew Kell: Couple more votes still coming in.

00:31:06 Andrew Kell: It’s like the Eurovision Song Contest.

00:31:12 Andrew Kell: Ooh ooh couple more.

00:31:17 Andrew Kell: Think is that about it.

00:31:19 Andrew Kell: I think that’s pretty much everyone done.

00:31:22 Andrew Kell: I’m assuming that everyone can see those results.

00:31:25 Andrew Kell: Can anyone see the results Sevcan?

00:31:29 Sevcan Yasa: Not at the moment, but I’m going to show it now.

00:31:30 Andrew Kell: Oh can you share that with me?

00:31:34 Andrew Kell: I’m sorry. Perfect!

00:31:35 Sevcan Yasa: Yeah, everyone can see them now.

00:31:37 Andrew Kell: Oh brilliant, thank you.

00:31:38 Andrew Kell: I told you guys I wasn’t that familiar with this platform, so hopefully you can all now see the results of that poll that interestingly there is quite a clear winner. Almost half of you 42% have picked Collaboration. Second is Transparency, third is Rich communication. Interestingly, Self-organization and Exploration both have the same number of votes, just two people voted for those.

00:31:58 Andrew Kell: I don’t think there’s a right answer here.

00:32:00 Andrew Kell: I must admit if I was going to pick one, I and I promise you, I’m not just saying this, I probably would pick Collaboration because you know, I’ve experienced problems on projects in the past which have been caused by problems with Collaboration and then I think if you’re going to work effectively collaboratively, you’ve probably got to communicate well and Rich communication is a good way of doing that.

00:32:22 Andrew Kell: So, it’s interesting that those two get quite high votes.

00:32:25 Andrew Kell: Good thank you for that so to go back to my slides.

00:32:28 Andrew Kell: There you go. Thank you.

00:32:30 Andrew Kell: Done it for me.

00:32:32 Andrew Kell: Back to the slides, just let’s talk about these, just very briefly.

00:32:35 Andrew Kell: I’m sure quite a few of you know what these words mean.

00:32:37 Andrew Kell: Transparency is about being very open, very honest about how things are going. It’s also about putting information about how the product is going somewhere very, very visible. You know, back in the olden days pre COVID when people were mainly in offices. A lot of agile teams would put information up on a wall where everyone could see it.

00:32:57 Andrew Kell: These days it’s more likely to be in some sort of collaborative working tool.

00:33:00 Andrew Kell: Collaboration is about working together, you know, to achieve something and aligns with one of the values in the Agile manifesto, we value customer collaboration above contract negotiation.

00:33:11 Andrew Kell: Rich communication is about, you know, trying to get people away from putting things in emails for example and I love the quote from Eliot Spitzer that you can see on the slide.

00:33:21 Andrew Kell: I’ve always really liked that quote, you know, and as a project manager, I would encourage people to speak to each other you know, to communicate verbally if they can.

00:33:30 Andrew Kell: If they want to confirm something if they have to put it in an e-mail so you know, try and think about the different channels that you use to communicate.

00:33:36 Andrew Kell: Self-organization or self-management is another term for the same thing is about letting the team self organise and come up with their own plans for how they’re going to develop things.

00:33:47 Andrew Kell: And Exploration is a key part of agile it’s encouraging people to be experimental and not be afraid to try things out and sometimes get things wrong.

00:33:57 Andrew Kell: And I know some of you will be familiar with the concept of creating something called a spike to explore something in a bit more detail. Again, a very agile behaviour.

00:34:06 Andrew Kell: So those are the five agile behaviours.

00:34:08 Andrew Kell: I’m just keeping a very close eye on the clock because like all trainers, I tend to talk quite a lot so I’m just keeping a very close eye on the clock.

00:34:15 Andrew Kell: I want to make sure we’ve got enough time for Q&A session and the next thing to talk about is frameworks, and there are many frameworks, approaches, methods, whatever you want to call them that are recognised as being agile.

00:34:29 Andrew Kell: You can see a list of those at the bottom of the slide.

00:34:32 Andrew Kell: I’m sure quite of you are familiar with some or most of those frameworks.

00:34:36 Andrew Kell: Some are more common than others.

00:34:38 Andrew Kell: The most popular worldwide, I believe, is Scrum and has been for a long time.

00:34:42 Andrew Kell: I think Scrum is the most widely used agile approach, probably closely followed by Kanban I would say perhaps worldwide.

00:34:50 Andrew Kell: Some of them are only or mainly applicable to IT, and I’ve put a little asterisk next to the ones that I think are predominantly applicable to software development, but that implies that quite a few of them are not necessarily just about software development.

00:35:04 Andrew Kell: And I’ve also highlighted in red the three that are specifically covered in the PRINCE2 Agile manual.

00:35:13 Andrew Kell: So there is a copy of the Scrum Guide in the PRINCE2 Agile Manual because Scrum would be the most common approach used by development teams to do product development.

00:35:22 Andrew Kell: There’s also quite of information about Kanban, especially the Kanban method, which some you might be familiar with.

00:35:28 Andrew Kell: It also talks about Lean Startup, which is where the original MVP term came from.

00:35:33 Andrew Kell: Some of the others are mentioned in passing, but there’s not a lot of information about those, but they are in the book.

00:35:42 Andrew Kell: Let’s look at the focus areas. So, there are five focus areas in agile.

00:35:47 Andrew Kell: First of all, there is this tool called the Agilometer.

00:35:52 Andrew Kell: I quite like that word because it sort of tells you what it does, and in the agilometer, which is basically the diagram on the top right-hand side of the slide.

00:36:01 Andrew Kell: There are six areas that you should look at and there are sliders that you basically apply to understand how suitable your project is for agile.

00:36:10 Andrew Kell: What it can also do is if you are going to use agile on your project, it can help you understand where some of the areas of risk might be, so are we going to struggle to communicate and work collaboratively.

00:36:21 Andrew Kell: Because we’ve got a global team that’s working in, you know, three different time zones for example, that you know is going to make it more difficult to do those two things.

00:36:29 Andrew Kell: So that’s something we should think about doing something about, you know, do we have wide acceptance of agile?

00:36:34 Andrew Kell: Do we have the right environment to use agile in? Are we going to be able to develop iteratively and deliver incrementally? And finally, is there flexibility on what we deliver to the customer?

00:36:45 Andrew Kell: If there’s no flexibility and everything has to be delivered at the same time, for example, then that’s almost certainly not suitable for an agile approach, so the agilometer is quite a nice little tool provided by PRINCE2 Agile, some of you in the group might be familiar with a similar tool known as the Project Approach Questionnaire, which is one of the other agile approaches which some of you might have come across.

00:37:09 Andrew Kell: Also, there’s a strong focus on requirements and making sure that we’ve got you know well defined requirements.

00:37:15 Andrew Kell: Again, in my role as an agile coach, I do work with lots of teams that struggle with requirements, and we’ll talk a little bit very briefly about user stories in a few minutes time.

00:37:26 Andrew Kell: Also, Rich communication actually comes up in two places in this, so it comes up again in the as a focus area. You know making sure that we’re using, you know, sensible channels for people to communicate with, and we’re trying to get away from those push channels like e-mail as much as we can and use perhaps more visual forms of communication.

00:37:44 Andrew Kell: Also, we try and release things frequently to the customer as frequently as makes sense.

00:37:51 Andrew Kell: You know, it might make sense to deliver something to the customer at the end of a sprint or a time box, or we might need a number of sprints or time boxes to actually release something to the customer.

00:38:00 Andrew Kell: But we try and make those as frequent as we can so that we’re frequently delivering value to the customer.

00:38:06 Andrew Kell: The final focus area is agile contracts and I’ve put at the bottom of the slide, I don’t know whether you guys can read the detail on that a little diagram that I extracted from the PRINCE2 Agile course I’ve worked on both sides of agile contracts as both the supplier and the customer, and I know how challenging they are because we can’t put detailed deliverables in the contract so you know and we and we shouldn’t have things like penalty clauses in an agile contract and that makes it very challenging, so that’s another one of PRINCE2 Agile focus areas, and it gives you some quite good guidance on putting together an agile contract.

00:38:41 Andrew Kell: What else have we got?

00:38:43 Andrew Kell: So, techniques and there are lots of techniques or practices that are considered to be agile.

00:38:50 Andrew Kell: I put together quite a long list of them on this slide, very widely used user stories which originally came from XP back in the 90s, used by most agile teams in my experience I always describe user stories as a simple difficult technique because the format is very straightforward.

00:39:09 Andrew Kell: It’s actually quite a challenge to write really good user stories in my experience.

00:39:13 Andrew Kell: It’s a real skill, Retrospectives and again, terminology I’m sure quite a few of you have come across before.

00:39:19 Andrew Kell: You know, frequently looking at how things are going, what’s going well, what’s going badly.

00:39:25 Andrew Kell: What might we do differently now that will make things better so very aligned with continuous improvement.

00:39:32 Andrew Kell: Then Burn charts you know most commonly burn down charts in my experience, but there are also Burn charts as a visual way of showing progress in a team. Daily standups or daily scrums both terms mean the same thing. For me a really powerful part of Agile, just an opportunity for the development team to have a just a quick, you know 15-minute quick catch up.

00:39:55 Andrew Kell: Where are we?

00:39:56 Andrew Kell: What issues have we got?

00:39:57 Andrew Kell: Are we are we on track? And again, my view as an AgilePM is if you come across the development team who are resistant to doing daily standup then something’s probably wrong. By the way, in my experience, again, in the real world it might not actually make sense to do them daily, but that’s a that’s a slightly different conversation.

00:40:16 Andrew Kell: Also, time boxing and doing work in fixed chunks of time, very agile behaviour.

00:40:22 Andrew Kell: You know most development teams would call those sprints because that’s what they called in scrum.

00:40:27 Andrew Kell: Measuring flow and this aligns very well with the sort of Kanban approach, you know, measuring our productivity as a team as we go through, and some of you may have come across things like cumulative flow diagrams and things like that as ways of measuring that.

00:40:42 Andrew Kell: Also, you know, a very collaborative technique, workshops or facilitated workshops they’re called sometimes.

00:40:48 Andrew Kell: You know, not rocket science if it’s helpful, get people together in a room to thrash something out.

00:40:54 Andrew Kell: That’s not a very scientific definition of a workshop, but that’s what they are basically.

00:40:58 Andrew Kell: Also, a very widely used technique and the PRINCE2 Agile Handbook Manual does mention this is a prioritization technique called MoSCoW.

00:41:07 Andrew Kell: It’s been around since 1994, I think was when it first appears been around for donkey’s years but a very widely used technique by all sorts of agile teams. Again, I’m just keeping an eye on the clock trying to get through these as quickly as I can.

00:41:22 Andrew Kell: So, what are the concepts in PRINCE2 Agile?

00:41:25 Andrew Kell: Well, first of all, always prioritising what you do?

00:41:29 Andrew Kell: And part of the agile mindset is to prioritise everything basically and ask the question, is this actually important?

00:41:35 Andrew Kell: And I think MoSCoW is a really nice way of doing that and some of you will know I’m an enormous fan of MoSCoW.

00:41:41 Andrew Kell: Delivering solutions incrementally rather than doing it at the end of the project.

00:41:46 Andrew Kell: As we discussed earlier, not necessarily delivering everything, and it’s absolutely key that the customer understands that you know as I say, on agile project management courses, the shiny stuff in agile is a really easy sell.

00:42:02 Andrew Kell: Telling them that they’re going to get everything they ask for is a much more complex conversation, but you have to have that conversation at the beginning of the project.

00:42:09 Andrew Kell: They’ve got to understand that’s effectively, that’s the compromise that they’ve got to accept.

00:42:13 Andrew Kell: If they want the shiny bits, also when we develop solutions doing it cyclically and iteratively, and getting lots of feedback as we do it.

00:42:22 Andrew Kell: I’m not, I’m sure some of you have heard the expression fail fast, that’s how we fail fast.

00:42:27 Andrew Kell: You know, getting things wrong, learning from that and then getting them right is actually a very positive behavior.

00:42:34 Andrew Kell: So, I’m sure some of you have come across what are sometimes called the pillars of agile.

00:42:38 Andrew Kell: Two of which are Inspect and adapt so frequently and regularly inspect how things are going. Adapt your behaviour to make things better.

00:42:47 Andrew Kell: You know fundamental cornerstones of agile. Also, being very time focused and having a very strong focus on finishing things on time, he says looking at the clock, also Limiting Work In Progress, and I know some of you might be familiar with Kanban boards where you might have, you know WIP limits Work In Progress limits at the top of each column, and that limits the amount of work that the team can look at any one time, and therefore they should only then take on new work if they’ve actually got capacity.

00:43:20 Andrew Kell: And that’s all about smoothing flow, which is fundamental concept of the Kanban method, which I’m sure some of you are familiar with.

00:43:27 Andrew Kell: And then finally, a word that’s often thrown around in agile is the word Kaizen, which, broadly it’s a Japanese word that broadly translates as changed for the better it’s not a direct translation, but it means continuous improvement, you know change things if they’re not working to make them better.

00:43:44 Andrew Kell: The final thing, I’m going to talk about and I’m almost on time is my concept and I’ll keep this very brief but I know so if you if you’ve been on one of my courses before, we’ll I’ve heard me talk about this agile by stealth means looking at agile as basically being common sense, and when you boil agile down to what it’s really all about a lot of it just seems really obvious.

00:44:06 Andrew Kell: Of course, you should deliver on time and of course you should calibrate with the customer.

00:44:09 Andrew Kell: Of course, you should do that makes complete sense.

00:44:11 Andrew Kell: Of course, you should deliver value early if you can.

00:44:14 Andrew Kell: The problem with agile or one of the problems with agile is all the jargon.

00:44:18 Andrew Kell: You know we talk about sprints and backlogs and time boxes and iterations and all the language that are floating around.

00:44:26 Andrew Kell: Do we need all that jargon?

00:44:28 Andrew Kell: Sometimes you don’t even have to call it agile, you know you could actually say, well, let’s just try this little technique. Let’s not go blazing in and say this is agile we’re doing things agile, let’s try and almost sneak it under the radar, hence the graphic, by the way, and isn’t an agile project, isn’t it just a project that happens to have some agile features at the end of the day.

00:44:49 Andrew Kell: This is a subject I could go on about for some time, by the way, but I’m keeping my eye on the clock and I know I don’t have time to do that, so that’s I think pretty much the end.

00:44:59 Andrew Kell: Just before we do the Q&A session, which we have still just about got time for just what else is going on at Knowledge Train and AgileKRC, I won’t read all these courses out for you, but you know we run courses in all sorts of different areas relating to the subject matter, Agile courses, Project Management courses, courses that bring the two together.

00:45:19 Andrew Kell: If you’re interested in following up on any of those, then either get in touch with me or contact Knowledge Train using the e-mail at the bottom of the slide.

00:45:28 Andrew Kell: Enough of the sales pitch that brings us to the end of the story.

00:45:34 Andrew Kell: Bit of a whistle stop tour, it’s very hard for me to talk about this stuff in a short space of time, as some of you will know from previous experience now it’s time for any questions.

00:45:45 Andrew Kell: We’ve got 13 minutes left just under that anyone has.

00:45:52 Andrew Kell: Carmine long time no see.

00:45:55 Andrew Kell: It’s a few years ago that you came on one of my courses, so I’m looking at Carmine’s question in the chat indeed. ‘Constantly trying to prove myself… yeah, PRINCE2, PMP, MOR, Agile DSDM done with me exactly kind of working in cyber security.’

00:46:09 Andrew Kell: Well, that’s an interesting one.

00:46:12 Andrew Kell: Oh, I know I give his answer all the time, don’t I?

00:46:15 Andrew Kell: But it sort of it depends on where you want to go, doesn’t it?

00:46:19 Andrew Kell: Agile Programme management would potentially be an option. SAFe might be another one.

00:46:27 Andrew Kell: I mean obviously I could mention PRINCE2 Agile.

00:46:29 Andrew Kell: You’ve got PRINCE2, so PRINCE2 Agile would be another one to look at.

00:46:33 Andrew Kell: I don’t know if you guys know this, but there is a three-day PRINCE2 Agile course and there’s a PRINCE2 Agile Practitioner qualification that you do at the end of it, so that’s another one to think about.

00:46:44 Andrew Kell: Other than that, I guess potentially SCRUM.

00:46:46 Andrew Kell: You know if you’re working with people who are using Scrum, then Scrum Master or something like that would be would be a good one to have.

00:46:53 Andrew Kell: That wasn’t a very helpful answer, was it?

00:46:58 Andrew Kell: It depends on where you want to go, basically, Carmine.

00:47:06 Andrew Kell: Right were there any, I’m just scrolling up the chat.

00:47:09 Andrew Kell: Were there any other questions that popped in the chat, have I missed any?

00:47:14 Andrew Kell: Well done to Chris for getting the cheese question right, by the way.

00:47:22 Andrew Kell: OK. So, Christian has just put a comment in the chat how can agile be used to manage a program with multiple projects running simultaneously?

00:47:31 Andrew Kell: OK. So first of all so PRINCE2 is obviously designed for running projects, individual projects. AgilePM is the same AgilePM which is based on DSDM which Carmine has just mentioned, is also based on running projects there is an Agile Programme Management handbook which does go up to that next, you know that container for multiple related projects.

00:47:53 Andrew Kell: I’m going to be honest with you Christian it’s challenging because in a program with multiple projects, you’ve very often got projects that are quite agile and projects that are not very agile.

00:48:04 Andrew Kell: You know, if you’ll again use a software example you’ve got, you know, building the infrastructure typically done in a more waterfall way, building the GUI, the front end, done in a more agile way.

00:48:15 Andrew Kell: No, there’s no easy answer to that question Christian it’s challenging.

00:48:19 Andrew Kell: It absolutely can be done, the two approaches that look at that are Agile Programme Management but there’s also SAFe.

00:48:26 Andrew Kell: I don’t know when you’re familiar with SAFe – Scaled Agile Framework for the enterprise.

00:48:31 Andrew Kell: Which, yes, if you’re in that space Christian, I feel your pain, it is a very strange space to be in, but it might be worth having something like SAFe. Potentially. Scaled Agile Framework for the enterprise.

00:48:43 Andrew Kell: That again takes it up to the programme and then the portfolio level actually.

00:48:48 Andrew Kell: Good, so I’ve got a bit cranky. Sorry, talking too much.

00:48:52 Andrew Kell: Are there any other questions from anybody in the group.

00:49:08 Andrew Kell: So, Emillia’s posted a question about the qualifications. So, there is yes, uh, nicely done Chris.

00:49:17 Andrew Kell: So there is a foundation level qualification PRINCE2 Agile and I did make a note of what the format was and then I’ve thrown the post it away that’s gone well. My recollection is that it’s 50 questions in an hour and it’s not a 50% pass mark. Sorry I was expecting this question so I wrote it down and then I’ve lost the post it that’s really stupid of me.

00:49:44 Andrew Kell: I know that the foundation one is an hour’s exam and I think it’s 50 questions and I think it’s a 60% pass mark or something like that. The practitioner one is a 2 1/2-hour exam. Also 50 questions I think it’s a 56% pass mark and it’s a scenario-based object. It’s a 60. Thank you Beina.

00:50:03 Andrew Kell: Thank you very much.

00:50:04 Andrew Kell: It’s a I think it’s a scenario-based exam.

00:50:08 Andrew Kell: If you’ve done PRINCE2 or AgilePM or MSP

00:50:12 Andrew Kell: The format of the exams is very similar actually to those, so there’s a foundation level, which is for most people generally pretty straightforward, and there’s a practitioner level which I would say is a quite challenging exam like they all are.

00:50:25 Andrew Kell: Sorry, that was a slightly vague answer hopefully that makes sense.

00:50:29 Andrew Kell: Who was it, was that. I’ve scrolled down too far, Emillia.

00:50:35 Andrew Kell: Oh, that’s a good question.

00:50:36 Andrew Kell: I’ve just seen a question from Chris.

00:50:39 Andrew Kell: I’m not the right person to answer that, but I believe that when you pay for the cost of the course, it includes the cost of the exam.

00:50:45 Andrew Kell: I’m 95% sure that’s true Sevcan, you might be able to confirm that if you’re there.

00:50:53 Sevcan Yasa: Yes, that should be the case.

00:50:54 Sevcan Yasa: What I am going to do is, uh, for both Emilia and Chris Dodds, I’m going to send them emails just about more information. Would that be OK for both of you?

00:51:02 Andrew Kell: Good idea.

00:51:07 Andrew Kell: Done, yeah.

00:51:08 Andrew Kell: Yeah, that would be a good idea to confirm that you got the others. Just to come back to Chris’s question any, any course that has an exam as part of the course of the exam fee generally, part of the course fee as far as I know, and I think is that have I missed any questions Sevcan, or have I got them all so very small chat box I’m looking at.

00:51:36 Sevcan Yasa: Yeah, it definitely is. I think that should be all, let’s just say.

00:51:43 Andrew Kell: In which case does that mean I’ve finished early?

00:51:50 Sevcan Yasa: Yep, OK.

00:51:51 Andrew Kell: So very unlike.

00:51:54 Andrew Kell: I could have spent more time talking through my slides in the end.

00:51:58 Andrew Kell: I don’t know if you’ve seen Carmine’s comment in the chat Sevcan.

00:52:00 Sevcan Yasa: Yes, I’m just writing her name down and which course are you interested in?

00:52:11 Sevcan Yasa: Agile, perfect OK.

00:52:14 Andrew Kell: Well, we can offer quite a few of those.

00:52:17 Andrew Kell: Yeah, and Chris has asked for the same thing.

00:52:18 Sevcan Yasa: Chris yeah, I’ve written Chris’s name down.

00:52:21 Andrew Kell: Programme yeah, so Agile Programme Management potentially for coming here, by the look of it.

00:52:31 Andrew Kell: Good so if there are any other questions, please put them in chat.

00:52:36 Andrew Kell: Otherwise, guys, I think we’re basically done.

00:52:39 Sevcan Yasa: Yep, I am quickly going to put a feedback poll, just so you can quickly answer 6 simple questions.

00:52:51 Sevcan Yasa: I would really appreciate it and I really hope everyone learned something new today and I can see that many people found it very interested, which I’m glad, and I’m sure Andrew’s glad about that.

00:53:02 Andrew Kell: This is terrifyingly immediate feedback Sevcan.

00:53:05 Sevcan Yasa: Oh, that’s impressive.

00:53:11 Andrew Kell: So far so good.

00:53:12 Sevcan Yasa: Yes.

00:53:15 Andrew Kell: Yeah, obviously this has been very much a whistle stop tour at a very high level There’s a lot more as some of you know, there’s a lot more I can say about a lot of these topics whether you want me to or not is a whole different question.

00:53:29 Andrew Kell: Thanks for the comments in the chat.

00:53:32 Andrew Kell: If anyone does have any questions, they think I might be able to address then, then please feel free to drop me an e-mail.

00:53:39 Andrew Kell: It’s [email protected]. I’m happy to deal with queries by e-mail. If they want to find out anything, more about anything we’ve talked about, et cetera. If it’s to do with courses, I’ll probably pass you on to someone at Knowledge Train or AgileKRC.

00:53:54 Andrew Kell: But if it’s to do with agile, yeah, please drop me.

00:53:58 Sevcan Yasa: I think Karen has a question for you, Andrew.

00:54:00 Andrew Kell: Yes, that one, so that’s a good one. So, we do talk about this actually, on the PRINCE2 Agile course and when we talk about closing a project, the final part of PRINCE2 in theory, closing a project down and doing that final retrospective and review should be a really straightforward thing, because as you’ve said in the chat Karen because you’re doing continuous improvement and you’re trying to improve things all the way through project there shouldn’t be any surprises at the end of an agile project, so closing an agile project down should be relatively straightforward.

00:54:36 Andrew Kell: You’ll have noticed I’ve just used the word ‘should’ about four times, so clearly in the real world that’s not always going to be the case, but in theory the lessons that you learn should be learned during the project.

00:54:48 Andrew Kell: Which again to me, has always felt like common sense.

00:54:51 Andrew Kell: You know, learning lessons at or after the end of a project is too late for that project.

00:54:56 Andrew Kell: Cheers, Carmine, speak to you soon, so that’s always been my view So you know you, you still need to close the project down and do that sort of project handover, but it should be very straightforward. Hopefully that makes sense Karen.

00:55:09 Andrew Kell: Yes, Thank you.

00:55:09 Andrew Kell: Sevcan just put my e-mail address in the chat Suzanne, I saw you asked what my address was. Sorry I probably read it out very quickly.

00:55:18 Andrew Kell: Cool, still got 3 minutes left if anyone’s got any other questions.

00:55:22 Andrew Kell: I can see we’re slowly starting to lose people.

00:55:26 Andrew Kell: I’m pleased that 27 have stayed for 57 minutes though That’s all, that’s encouraging.

00:55:37 Andrew Kell: It’s all gone quiet Sevcan.

00:55:39 Sevcan Yasa: Yes, I can see someone is typing, so yeah.

00:55:42 Andrew Kell: Oh OK, Oh yes.

00:55:44 Andrew Kell: Yes, I can see that.

00:55:50 Andrew Kell: Yes, just to pick up on Fiona’s comment this is the first one of these that I’ve done, I must admit.

00:55:54 Andrew Kell: But I’m hoping we will do more and I’ve actually got a list of my hobby topics that I’d like to talk about, us trainers love a platform to talk you know, we do.

00:56:04 Andrew Kell: So yes, hopefully they’ll be more absolutely right.

00:56:10 Andrew Kell: Thank you, Bina.

00:56:21 Andrew Kell: OK.

00:56:22 Andrew Kell: Thanks, Eduardo, thank you for attending.

00:56:29 Sevcan Yasa: I don’t think there’s going to be any more questions.

00:56:38 Andrew Kell: That’s almost likely.

00:56:39 Andrew Kell: Am I right of thinking that Olu you dialed in from Nigeria?

00:56:44 Andrew Kell: Sorry I’ve shortened your name to Olu that’s really rude actually I should just try and say your whole name.

00:56:53 Andrew Kell: I think I spotted earlier in the in the list of participants that you dialed in from Nigeria, so welcome.

00:57:01 Andrew Kell: Thank you, Karen, you’re welcome.

00:57:13 Andrew Kell: There we go.

00:57:16 Andrew Kell: Thank you, Emillia.

00:57:17 Andrew Kell: Thank you Modupe.

00:57:21 Andrew Kell: Yeah guys, you can drop off whenever.

00:57:24 Andrew Kell: Feel free to e-mail me if you think of any questions after the event.

00:57:39 Andrew Kell: Yeah, Alexa, I’m very fond of the expression agile by stealth and it genuinely will be the title of my book if I ever get around to writing it. Sadly, I’m probably a bit too lazy to actually write that book, but I know I should.

00:58:03 Andrew Kell: We’re down to 7, 6, Sevcan.

00:58:09 Sevcan Yasa: Yes, I think that should be the end those who stayed. Thank you.

00:58:16 Andrew Kell: Yes, thank you everyone.

00:58:18 Sevcan Yasa: Thanks, and have a nice evening everyone and to you of course Andrew. Thank you so much for everything.

00:58:23 Andrew Kell: No worries, cheers. Thank you for your support.

00:58:26 Sevcan Yasa: Thank you very much. Bye everyone.

00:58:29 Andrew Kell: See you next time.