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STEP #1: Learn The Right Agile Skills

Welcome to the video course "Getting ready to work agile in three easy steps". I am Kevin and I will help you learn the right skills to understand agile, prepare for your first steps in gaining experience in agile teams and make your profile stand out so you can really show who you are and what skills you have. AYBNvSVw4k9_6iHyzqmJB-img

I've been working and developing people for more than 10 years. Since 2019 I've been working with agile teams, so I interact with developers, engineers and all other stakeholders on a daily basis. Besides that, I have also helped non-technical teams to apply agile and optimise the workflow so they can get all the benefits of agile methods.

The right mindset to get started

Before you start, it is really important to get the right mindset at the beginning of your journey. You should decide which methodology is the right one for you or for the organisation and project you are working on. There are many methodologies to help you work through complicated or complex projects, for example you have the classic waterfall methodology where you have a bigger planning process in the beginning. And waterfall is useful when you know exactly how you are going to complete the plan. A good example is building a house, where you pretty much know where to start and where to finish and what the specific outcome will be.

But there are many other methodologies on the market and there are also many that have a really good reputation in industry. One example is the Six Sigma methodology, which is a very well-known methodology for project management and certification is pretty expensive. Besides Waterfall and Six you have three core agile methodologies, like Agile Kanban and Lean. puHetOrldnzCWqYF10ZkV-img

Agile methodologies explained

Lean methodologies help first and foremost to eliminate waste and remove wasteful activities in the processes. Then you have the Kanban methodology that also uses lean principles to increase productivity by eliminating waste time and resources. Kanban methodologies can be used and are used in combination with agile methodologies. In practice they are used to limit the work in progress items so that you have a constant flow of work that match the capacity of your team or process. Finally you have agile methodologies. Scrum is an agile methodology and it is used for solving complex problems. Any time you are trying to solve complex things and you really have uncertain conditions and the environment is changing rapidly, agile is the right approach to use.

Conclusion
The important thing to take away is before you jump on the agile bus, you have to understand your problem and how you want to go about solving it. If you have simple problems and you really know how to go from start to finish, which means the plan is laid out and the outcome is fixed, then it's easy to decide. You should go for waterfall. If you need documentation and you have a lot of compliance conditions surrounding your project, Six Sigma methodology could be really helpful. But whenever you have rapidly changing conditions, you have uncertain markets and you really don't know how to go from start to finish, agile can be the right thing to choose.
 

This was the first step. Before you apply any knowledge and deepen your skills in a particular area, you really need to understand the problem.