"Agile customized to meet your needs, reflect your values, and support your business."
Agile Foundations Workshop
The Heart of Agile
Welcome to Agile Foundations, a workshop designed to introduce you to the core principles, mindset, and practical applications of Agile.
Whether you're new to Agile or looking to deepen your understanding, this session will provide the essential foundations needed to increase your agility — in daily tasks, projects, and even at home.
Agile is more than any specific framework; it's a way of thinking and working that prioritizes adaptability, collaboration, and continuous improvement. In this workshop, we’ll explore the Agile Manifesto and the key elements that make Agile successful, including feedback loops, tradeoffs, and ceremony. You’ll gain hands-on experience through an immersion exercise designed to help you apply Agile techniques to everyday activities.
This workshop is designed to be engaging, practical, and eye-opening. By the end, you’ll walk away with a deeper foundation in Agile and the confidence to start applying its principles in ways that truly make a difference. Let’s get started!
Agile Foundations Workshop
The Heart of Agile
What You Receive
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The Agile Foundations class notes
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The Art of Agile Living book by Helene GIdley and Thomas Meloche
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The Art of Agile Living worksheets
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Two Second Lean audiobook
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6 PDUs or SEUs
What You Learn
The Foundations of Agile essential to applying the values and practices to any aspect of work or life. Covered topics include:
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The Birth of Agile (20 min)
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Why Agile? (90 min)
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Tradeoffs Exercise(Order, Set Driven, Story Structure)
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Wrongness (Feedback)
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Metaphor (Over Communication)
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Copiers (Ceremony)
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The Art of Agile Living Immersion Exercise (90 min)
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Applying Agile techniques in day to day activities
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Agile Vocabulary
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Where Does This Work? (15 min)
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Applied to advertising, building, churches, education hardware, HR, marketing, non-profit organizations, and throwing great parties.
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Anywhere you have collaboration and/or teams
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Prior Art (50 min)
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Ford, Toyota, SpaceX
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Theory of Constraints
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The Name Game Exercise (Focus)
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The Value Cycle (50 min)
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How to make any project dramatically more clear fast!
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Value Stream Mapping Exercise
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Event Structure
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3 two-hour sessions (6 hours total)
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May be delivered live in person in one day
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May be delivered remotely over one to three days
Workshop Fee
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$495 per person
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10 person remote minimum, 20 person on-site minimum
Who Should Attend
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Anyone interested in Agile and/or passionate about working smarter, being happier, and working faster, better, and less expensively!
Prerequistes
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None
World Class Instructors
"The 'real world' experience of the instructors enables them to draw from a rich tapestry of stories. More than just lecture, they keep you engaged in the learning process. There are no bystanders here!"
Tom Meloche
Tom was an Agile pioneer. He created and taught the very first class on Agile in Michigan in 2002.
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Over the past twenty-three years he led Agile transformations in companies both large and small
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Tom co-founded Menlo Innovations LLC, the company featured in the book "Joy Inc. How we built a workplace people love."
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He has overseen the delivery of hundreds and hundreds of Agile projects with budgets counted in billions
Helene Gidley
Helene has been working as an Agile trainer, mentor, and coach for fifteen years. A coach of coaches, she leads the annual Agile Coach Retreat in Ann Arbor MI.
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She has thirty years of experience in the IT industry
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She consults and trains for the Fortune 500, startups, and mid-sized companies bringing broad Agile experience, coaching, and training to project teams
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She is the founder of Agile Groupies, a Scrum Meetup, which has been running for 15 years
Tom and Helene believe in Appreciative Agile, growing agility with our clients by celebrating and embracing the best of their existing corporate culture.
