Agile/Scrum

Main contributor: Mark Hall

Keywords- close to customer, Collaboration, Curiosity, Courageous decision-making

Agile continues to be a major player in product development but we find our clients are struggling when they hire consultants who are way too prescriptive in implementing Agile/Scrum. WGA counters this trend in our blog by sharing client success stories when WGA Trains/certifies 25-150 people in an organization allowing them to understand what is possible in using Agile Thinking and figuring ways for your teams to best adapt to Agile and adopt. Agile practices must be molded to the culture rather than overwhelm or try to change it. Infusing Agile behavior organically is the best way to have success. Because Agile gets our clients much closer to their customers, revenues increase and Product Quality does too.

WGA believes in training organizations for Agile rather than siloing knowledge within specific roles. Our competition trains and certifies only by role. Scrum Master has their own classes. Product Owners and team members are the same. The entire purpose of Agile is to have teams collaborate as equals, therefor we train an organization’s Management, Operations, Product Management/Owner, Scrum Master, Team members, Sales & Marketing ALL in the same class. Now the organization is fully engaged.

Portfolio & Project Management

Main contributors: John Birnstengel, Ken Tanch, Mark Hall

Keywords: Project Online/PowerBI/Hybrid Certification

Project Management is a profession that allows leaders to bring teams together around project objectives, plan projects with the customer experience in mind and deliver successfully. Project Management is both art and science. Art = leading teams to accomplish great things. WGA concentrates on making great leaders. We coach client PM’s in providing confidential coaching as PMs build confidence and skills. The market is moving rapidly away from Waterfall (think PMI), and some segments of the market are finding it difficult to go 100% agile- so WGA has created a 2-day certification course in Hybrid Project Management which utilizes the best practices of Agile and Waterfall. Many system engineering companies are taking the course and benefitting from it. As far as PM software tools go, Project Online (POL) is still the most cost-effective and easiest enterprise-class PM tool in the market. It handles Portfolio management. Resource, Management, Status reporting, Cost Reporting, and the fact that PowerBI is part of the toolset, clients can get all the data related to their portfolio in POL.

Lean Six Sigma

Main contributor: Kevin Yonge LSSBB

Keywords: quality, continuous improvement, Kaizen, Lessons learned,

If there were one thing a company could do to kick start the Fall, it would be to train 5 of your employees at Green Belts (LSSGB); The other thing most valuable would be to certify 25 employees in Agile Scrum. Doing both of these will lower the cost of operations and increase revenue. The Green Belt class is 5-days (one day/week for 5 weeks). Participants bring a class project (a problem) from their work. Students learn how to use the tools of lean and practice using those tools in class in addressing their company’s specific problem. This course is so valuable because not only is the participant gaining a key certification, for $3,000, but the company is getting $ tens of thousands of returns by solving their process problems in the course of the class. The 5 LSSGBs can now act as a quality Tiger team to solve defects or catastrophic failures, but also to establish a culture of continuous improvement.