COURSE 6100 | 2-DAY SESSION
Reinventing the IT Professional
Course Outline
I. Maintaining a Technical Edge - The Keys to Professional Success
In a constantly changing technical environment, you must be fully aware of the skills, services, and knowledge that you offer the business. Here, we’ll explore how to market your product (YOU) to the people that should be aware of your abilities. We’ll examine the changing demands of the marketplace and the businesses that need your services. Then we’ll determine how to better meet the needs of the future market by making sure that your skills transcend just the current technology platforms, and that you can effectively communicate with language that your businesses understands. We’ll see what steps you must take to invest in yourself and offer tips for delivering your goods to the market so the business recognizes what you’re providing.
A. Seeing “You” as Your Product
B. Choosing Your Market
C. Investing in Yourself
D. Delivering Your Skills
E. Getting Recognition
II. Becoming a Business Partner
Having a general “business mindset” these days is just as important as having the technical skills and knowing how to perform your job. Without understanding how the business you work in got where it is — and where it intends to go — how can you know where to apply your skills best? Business acumen helps us understand where our projects fit into an organization’s overall strategic direction and how they all relate to their products and services. It allows us to better understand both the challenges and the goals of the organization, and how we can turn that into an opportunity to offer the most appropriate help.
A. Understanding Your Business
B. Determining the Culture
C. Identifying Key Stakeholders and Influencers
D. Seeing the Elements of a Business Case
III. Communicating with Ease
Regardless of the project or job function, the biggest risks stem from ineffective communication. Here you’ll learn about the most common communication errors, techniques to promote effective communication, and the type of terminology you should rely on to communicate with your business stakeholders. From simple written status reports, to effective speaking in meetings, to making presentations that support your cooperative efforts with other members of a team, you’ll see that bi-directional communication is an essential skill.
A. Five Principles of Effective Communication
B. Recognizing Common Communication Errors
C. Communicating in Business Terms
D. Communicating Upwards and Downwards
E. Tips for Successful Meetings and Presentations
Practice Session:
You’ll have the opportunity to role-play one of many scenarios requiring you to effectively communicate a technical situation into business terms. Have you ever had a conversation and afterward felt like there was no one listening or there was no meaningful exchange of information? Practicing the techniques and tools in this session will put you on the road to more effective and productive conversation.
IV. Learning to Validate Requirements
Regardless of the quality of captured business, user, functional, and system requirements, we know that transforming just the documented requirements into development without critical analysis can be disastrous. A number of essential elements might be missing, ambiguous, vague, or only partially complete, which can lead down the mired path to scope creep or unacceptable product. We teach you when and how to step up, raise questions, examine and assess priorities, and validate exactly what you’re to build before you build it.
A. Reviewing Requirements
B. Dealing with Incomplete Requirements
C. Finding Missing Requirements
D. Discriminating Good Requirements from Bad Ones
E. Translating Requirements into Attributes That Matter to Developers
F. Examining and Assessing the Requirement Priorities
V. Thinking Beyond Implementation (aka Change Management)
How many times have you either seen or been involved with the rollout of a software application that failed? Often, we may write a software application that never gets used by the end user, even after providing training. This can happen to newly created, reengineered, or purchased applications. In this module we will examine why such resistance to change occurs and how to turn it around to create a successful software implementation for the end user. We’ll offer suggestions and the right tools for any project team member can use to become a champion change agent.
A. Understanding the Impacts of Change
B. Realizing the Value of Change Management
C. Becoming a Change Agent
Practice Session:
You’ll review and discuss a case study involving an organizational IT change. The purpose of the exercise is to walk through the steps of change management, then discuss how to effectively identify ideas and suggestions for improving the impacts of the change. You will also participate in a short debriefing exercise about experiencing Change versus Transition. Here you’ll see how Change is an external force which happens to us, whereas Transition is the internal force of how we choose to react. You’ll learn how understanding change not only allows us to make the transition, but also enables us to be change agents for others.
VI. Solving Problems Creatively
The value of finding a problem isn’t always just identifying it, but rather what can be done to resolve it. Many times people can easily identify or locate project problems, but most often they don’t know how to offer solutions to solve those problems. This session presents a systematic process for solving problems all the way from identifying the problem to implementing a solution.
A. Defining the Problem
B. Finding the Root Cause
C. Developing Problem Solving Strategies and Options
Practice Session:
You and your team will be given a pre-defined problem and will walk through the problem-solving process to identify potential options and a recommended solution. Organizations often try to resolve a problem by default, with no preplanning or process and no designated leader or facilitator to guide the process, or run a problem-solving meeting. You will receive a handout that can be used as a job aid when there is a need to conduct a problem-solving meeting.
VII. Estimating Time and Cost
Any estimate is a "guesstimate" but an educated estimate is usually a good one. Whether you’re a developer or a team leader, you are responsible for providing estimates for work to be completed. Once you provide an estimate, it is then up to you to uphold it. We will show you how to avoid common estimating errors, as well as how to make sure you have thought through all the necessary components to provide a sound and reliable estimate.
A. Identifying All Time and Cost Estimate Components
B. Avoiding Common Estimating Error Pitfalls
C. Using the Best Practice Estimating Methods
Practice Session:
In the first part of this exercise, you will have the opportunity to prepare an estimate on your own, based on a set of pre-defined variables. In the second part of the exercise, you will share your estimate with a class partner to review the accuracy of the estimate, as well as the challenges of creating it.
VIII. Software Risk Management
We often think that we have thought through all the potential problems that could happen on a software development project, and only later do we find out that we missed something. Risk management is a formal process to minimize the likelihood or impact of potential problems. If practiced properly it can save time and money and even avoid rework. Learn more about Risk Management and how to apply it to all aspects of software development.
A. Planning for Risk Management
B. Identifying Risks
C. Quantifying Risk Probability and Impact
D. Creating Risk Mitigation Plans
IX. Taking the Next Step into Leadership
Whether you’re applying for a new position or just want to excel in your current position, leadership skills will enable you to make that next step. Find out what you can do to develop the leader within you. See the common characteristics of leaders, how you can become a leader without being a manager, and how you can influence others.
A. Valuing Leadership Qualities
B. Developing Your Leadership Competencies
C. Becoming a Leader and Influencing Others
Practice Session:
This exercise will assess your leadership skills. You’ll take a personal inventory of your strengths and weaknesses
to help you know what might need improvement. We will also review leadership characteristics to determine which leadership qualities help projects succeed and where lacking leadership qualities challenge projects. You will review the 10 Leadership Competencies and gain a deeper understanding of them.
