Certified Agile Leadership Training

Certified Agile Leadership Training and Coaching with Michigan Technology Services

Michigan Technology Services offers instructor-led Professional Coaching for Leaders, Leadership, Leadership Agility, and Certified Agile Leadership (CAL) training, as well as other Leadership, Agile and Scrum courses. We bring you business leadership education through partnerships with a number of Agile Leadership Journey guides, in addition to Scrum Alliance Certified Scrum Trainers and Agile Leadership Educators.

Our workshops help you unlock your full leadership potential — with actionable insights and strategies — taking you to the next level on your leadership journey.

In a pre-Covid world our training would take place at our location in the Farmington Hills/Novi area, 20 miles outside of Detroit, or at your location anywhere around the world. Our Agile Leadership workshops and Agile coaching sessions are now offered online/virtually, reducing your need to travel.

Pete Behrens, Scott Dunn and Tricia Broderick are our Leadership Agility instructors and coaches.

Pete guides leaders to transform themselves and their organizations toward improved outcomes. He is a globally recognized leadership coach, consultant, and in-demand speaker. As the founder and CEO of Agile Leadership Journey, he has built a curriculum and global community dedicated to building better leaders. Pete has led agile transformations for dozens of Fortune 500 companies and non-profit organizations, improving organizational health and performance. His goal is to show leaders that shifts in mindsets, behaviors, and culture are an asset—not a liability. He shares his insights at various global conferences. He also hosts the Relearning Leadership podcast, where he engages with industry experts and leaders to explore the evolving landscape of leadership and organizational development.

Scott is a Certified Scrum Trainer (CST), Agile Leadership Educator and Agile Leadership Journey guide. He has been training leadership teams for over twenty years, and is passionate about helping executive teams grow their startup organizations. He is one of only a small group of people worldwide who are dual certified as a Certified Scrum Trainer and Certified Enterprise Coach. Scott is also a SAFe Program Consultant, certified in Large Scale Scrum and an authorized Atlassian Jira trainer. Formerly a developer, project manager, and Scrum Master for Inc 500 and Fortune 500 companies, Scott has led agile adoptions at companies such as Dell/EMC, Canon, Assurant, First American, Blizzard, Yahoo!, Kaiser Permanente, eBay, Technicolor, and more. His pragmatic approach to agility and coaching has made him an in-demand consultant.

Tricia is a leadership and organizational advisor. She has over twenty-five years of experience in the software development industry. Her transformational leadership, at all levels of an organization, ignites the growth of leaders and high performing teams to deliver quality outcomes. Tricia boldly role models putting people first. Her aim is to create inclusive connections and collaborations that challenge and support people in an authentic, vulnerable, and engaging way. As a result, she is a highly-rated trainer, coach, facilitator, and motivational keynote speaker.

Our core group of Agile coaches and trainers live here in metro Detroit and support the local business agility community. We continue to sponsor regional conferences, and have successfully run Leadership, Agile and Certified Scrum courses for multiple teams in the Great Lakes area, and all over the globe.

Multiple Leadership Training Options

The vision of Scrum Alliance is to make the values and principles of Agile accessible to every leader, regardless of prior education and experience, by making known the why, what, and how of Agile in a pragmatic and experiential approach.

The Scrum Alliance Certified Agile Leadership classes are education and practice-based courses with the goal of developing Agile leadership competency and maturity.

Agile Leadership Journey supports individuals and the organizations they lead through upskilling leadership capabilities – ultimately improving value delivery, business results, and achieving superior organizational performance. ALJ training elevates and align leaders, fostering a cohesive, innovative, and adaptive organizational culture.

The Professional Coaching as Leaders workshop is focused on helping leaders empower their teams through uncertainty. This workshop verifies an in-depth understanding of the tools, skills, and techniques needed to utilize the skill of professional coaching to unlock wisdom to deliver value more effectively.

Our workshops are designed for organizational leaders who are responsible for people designing, developing and delivering products and services for their customers. Regardless of your focus – product strategy, business development, research, marketing, design, development, quality, project management, technical operations or deployment – these workshops build effectiveness in guiding teams towards delighting customers in a fast-pace, complex and uncertain environment.

Schedule:

Online:

Scott Dunn will teach our online May Certified Agile Leadership workshops (CAL 1). Tuesday and Wednesday, May 13 and 14, 10:00 am – 6:00 pm.  The regular course fee is $2,250/student, but early enrollment one week prior to a workshop is $1,550/student.  Info on the following page:  Certified Agile Leadership workshop (CAL 1).

In-person

Pete Behrens teaches our in-person Leadership Agility workshops.  Our training takes place in Troy, Michigan.  The regular course fee is $2,250/student, but early enrollment for our in-person training is $1,995/student.

Dates for our next 2025 in-person leadership workshop with Pete will be Tuesday and Wednesday, June 24 and 25.  Info on the following page:  Leadership Agility ALJ workshop.

Pete Behrens offers an Executive Agile Leadership workshop.

Learn about and register for our new Leadership workshops.

Want a class before May 2025? Private Certified Agile Leadership, Leadership Agility and Professional Coaching as Leaders workshops for groups or companies are available upon request. We have conducted numerous onsite leadership classes for clients all over the globe. Our private virtual workshops have been receiving high marks from our students.  At times, our corporate clients allow individuals to join their private classes. Call us and ask about that option…

Our Leadership Agility educators are also available for coaching and consulting. Contact us for additional details.

For complete information on Leadership Training or to request a class date contact Michigan Technology Services. 248-489-0408

Who Should Attend

Our Leadership workshops are intended for:

  • Leaders who believe their organization needs agility to meet their business objectives and who have committed to making the transformation successful.
  • Executives, middle management, and other leaders with organizational influence
  • Organizational Leaders include senior executives, vice presidents, directors, middle management, and process and program-level leaders
  • Any leader sponsoring, requesting, or involved with an Agile adoption within their organization
  • Leaders who need skills and tools that will help their organizations—from startups who want to disrupt an industry to enterprises who want to continue to lead the pack—navigate the constantly evolving business landscape.
  • Leaders who support, lead, or interact with Agile teams
  • Agile and Leadership Agility is not just for programmers!!It's for the whole business.

Goals

Take the following into consideration:

  • Agile leadership is a broad topic, currently without a shared definition or understanding.
  • Organizational agility cannot exceed the level of personal leadership agility of those with the most influence in an organization.
  • Because leadership agility involves ongoing personal development, it is not something that can be mastered in a single training course.

Leadership training goals

  • Develop leadership agility competency and maturity, which increases effectiveness of a leader in a complex and rapidly changing environment
  • Balance education, practice, and peer collaboration
  • Flexible for participants and education providers
  • Multiple touch points to apply and deepen learning

A leader . . .

  • Operates effectively amid uncertainty, complexity, and rapid change
  • Is knowledgeable about Agile values, approaches, and practices
  • Surfaces more creative solutions through increased self-awareness, a growth mindset, and engaging others
  • Aligns and empowers teams toward delivering more customer value
  • Personally integrates feedback and experiments, and adapts their ways
  • Takes a collaborative continuous-improvement approach to organizational effectiveness
  • Catalyzes change in others and facilitates organizational change

Prerequisites

There are no formal prerequisites.

We do not require you to be a Certified ScrumMaster or Product Owner to attend.

If you are coming in with little to no agile experience or education, we may send out some pre-reading and video watching to catch you up to speed on the basics.

Scrum Alliance Learning Objectives

The Context for Agile

1. Describe at least three economic or market factors that have led to the rise of Agile approaches. For example:

  • Technological advances
  • Internet, mobile, and social media connectivity
  • Globalization of the workforce and economy

2. Illustrate how the complexity and uncertainty of work relates to the fitness of an Agile approach.

3. Identify at least two management trends and their historical fit with the business environments of their time. For example:

  • Taylor’s Scientific Management
  • Total Quality Management (TQM)
  • Lean Manufacturing and the Toyota Production System

4. Explain the long-term effects of an organizational focus on delighting the customer, and how that relates to improved outcomes.

5. Explain at least three factors that increase the level of employee engagement, and how that relates to better outcomes. For example:

  • Clear purpose
  • Autonomy
  • Opportunity to develop mastery
  • Strong social connection
  • Daily small wins

6. Describe at least two benefits of becoming a more effective Agile leader. For example:

  • Increased ability to make good decisions in a complex environment
  • Ability to deliver on personal and organizational purpose with less
  • expended energy
Agile Overview

Note: Learners can opt out of this section if they hold a Scrum Alliance CSM or CSPO certification that covers the learning objectives in this category.

2.1. Evaluate the values and principles of the Agile Manifesto for how they relate to an organization’s ability to thrive in complex and rapidly changing conditions.

2.2. Describe at least three characteristics of a high-performing team and how these characteristics relate to Agile thinking. For example:

  • Psychological safety
  • Trust
  • Clear team membership
  • Small
  • High-communication bandwidth
  • Aligned around a clear purpose/mission
  • Etc.

2.3. Compare and contrast the practices and benefits of at least two common Agile frameworks. For example:

  • Scrum
  • eXtreme Programming
  • Kanban
  • Lean Startup
  • Etc.

2.4. Describe the benefits of an Agile approach from the perspective of at least three stakeholder groups with differing needs. For example:

  • Board of Directors
  • Shareholders
  • Employees
  • Customers
  • Etc.
Leadership in an Agile Context

3.1. Describe at least three key mindset shifts required to effectively lead in an Agile context. For example:

  • From fixed mindset to growth mindset
  • From directing to coaching
  • From telling to collaborating
  • From preventing and hiding failure to learning through it
  • From viewing the organization as a machine to viewing it as a living system
  • From predict and control to inspect and adapt
  • From chess master to gardener
  • From expert to catalyst
  • From reactive to creative
  • Etc.

3.2. Explain at least one leadership development framework that is aligned with Agile thinking. For example:

  • Leadership Agility (Joiner)
  • The Leadership Circle (Anderson)
  • NeuroLeadership (Rock)
  • The Leadership Gift (Avery)
  • Etc.

3.3. Apply at least one technique for incorporating feedback that improves your ability to inspect and adapt your own leadership behavior to increase effectiveness.

3.4. Practice at least one technique that enables a leader to be present, aware, and engaged, while avoiding over-influence and micromanagement. For example:

  • Gemba
  • Hawthorne effect — paying attention
  • Engaging in the Agile delivery and feedback cycle
  • Advice Process
  • Etc.

3.5. Demonstrate a coaching approach that integrates alternative perspectives, engages others, and improves outcomes.

The Agile Organization

4.1. Identify at least three challenges an organization might face when undertaking an Agile approach beyond a single team. For example:

  • Building trust between teams
  • Optimizing the whole
  • N-factorial problem as communication scales
  • Large-group collaboration
  • Psychological safety
  • Etc.

4.2. Apply at least three patterns for increasing trust and collaboration between multiple teams. For example:

  • Information radiators
  • Co-location
  • Radical transparency
  • Job rotations
  • Team liaisons
  • Etc.

4.3. Describe at least two factors that influence the culture of an organization and how that relates to organizational agility. For example:

  • Power distance index
  • Organizational structures
  • Leadership beliefs and behaviors
  • Risk and change attitudes
  • Industry factors
  • Etc.

4.4. Evaluate at least two ways to structure an organization in order to enhance agility. For example:

  • Value-based matrix (e.g., Spotify)
  • Communities of Practice
  • Holacracy
  • Sociocracy
  • Self-management
  • Etc.

4.5. Describe at least three governance policies that enhance organizational agility. For example:

  • Compensation and incentives
  • Career advancement practices
  • Performance appraisals
  • Procurement and budgeting
  • Legal and regulatory
  • Etc.

4.6. Deconstruct at least one case study of an organization that uses an Agile approach. For example:

  • Spotify
  • Morning Star
  • Valve
  • Buurtzorg
  • Zappos
  • Geonetric
  • Etc.
Agile Approaches to Change

5.1. Describe an Agile organization as a human system where change is always present and dynamic leadership is required to catalyze that change for positive growth.

5.2. Evaluate at least three organizational metrics for their alignment with Agile thinking and how they impact behaviors and results. For example:

  • Outcome-based metrics, such as customer satisfaction, employee engagement, time to market, cost, etc.
  • Output-based metrics such as productivity, velocity, features delivered, milestones met, etc.

5.3. Deconstruct at least one change management approach and evaluate its alignment with organizational agility. For example:

  • Scrum
  • Lewin
  • Satir
  • Kotter
  • McKinsey 7S
  • Etc.

5.4. Describe at least one Agile approach to identify and reduce bottlenecks, impediments, and overall friction in an organization. For example:

  • Systems thinking
  • Human systems dynamics
  • Lean A3
  • Organizational agility team using Scrum
  • Large-group retrospectives
  • Kaizen events
  • Etc.

5.5. Reflect on at least one case study of an Agile transformation and critique how it approached change in an Agile way.

Leadership Agility Agenda

Leadership Agility Key Topics Include:

  • Understanding how technology and change are shaping new leadership approaches.
  • Differentiating your authority as a leader from the respect required for effective leadership.
  • Recognizing how your own technological mastery impedes your growth as a leader.
  • The art of letting go - and why it is only half the battle to becoming a better leader.
  • Developing a more strategic orientation, and aligning and engaging others towards it.
  • Navigating the fine line between influence and manipulation and how to know if you’ve crossed it.
  • Honing your power as a leader to foster safety, shared ownership, and engagement.

Day 1: Agility in Leadership

Share in a historical perspective of organizational development and leadership providing a current global context that is driving the need for agility.

Learn a Leadership Agility Maturity Model that fosters self-awareness of their own leadership maturity and discovers more agile thinking and behaviors.

Explore agile leadership mindset and behaviors of leaders at varying maturity levels to reflect on leadership traits in our own leadership and in others.

Practice a 5-step catalyst conversation technique to positively impact every aspect of our work (and personal) life – engaging others without micromanaging them.

Day 2: Agility in Organizations

Explore organizational culture and structures and how they impact organizational agility, speed, innovation and collaboration.

Evaluate multiple case studies of real organizations with different cultures applying different structures to drive effective and sustaining change with positive results.

Reflect and share participant organizational cultures and structures in comparison to these case studies and other participant models.

Practice a 5-step organizational change approach (V2MOM) to guide effective and sustained change

A Note From Your Leadership Instructor

Laying the Foundation for Success

By Pete Behrens, Leadership Agility Coach, Trainer & Speaker

While Agile offers myriad benefits to an organization, the fact is: adoption and subsequent success of software development projects across the board could be better long-term. Why, when we have a system that has proven to work for countless organizations in various verticals, do initiatives still fail, or else the whole Agile endeavor peters out after a few months or years?

While there are many reasons why Agile approaches can fail, inadequate leadership Agility can be a large contributing factor. Note that it’s not necessarily inadequate leadership, because you can have the most stellar executive leader, but if she doesn’t know how to lead and support an Agile team, she can put it at great disadvantage.

Why Coaches and Consultants Can’t Save Your Organization 

Organizations spend millions on Agile coaches and consultants, then point the finger when, a few months down the road, the “whole Agile thing” has gone off the rails. Is it really the fault of these Agile professionals?

Not at all.

Coaching and consulting can only take a team so far, but beyond that, it’s up to leadership to foster an Agile mindset and behaviors which support and sustain an agile environment.

The Makings of a Leader

So what’s the difference between a leader and an Agile leader?

An Agile leader understands that rapid change, complexity, and uncertainty are central to the role, and can operate effectively in such challenging conditions. She knows and can apply Agile values, approaches, and practices to her own thinking and behaviors to foster creative solutions through increased engagement, feedback and self-awareness.

An Agile leader knows how to engage her employees, and can align, empower and free them to deliver increasingly more customer value.

Feedback and collaboration are important to the Agile leader. She understands that continuous improvement is crucial to foster long-term organizational change.

Reading the Leadership Compass

I’ve developed a tool to provide orientation and direction for leaders: the Leadership Agility Compass. Like a traditional compass, there are four directions: north and south represent the opposing views of the leader and organization. And representing true north is the leader herself - the leader who does not first develop herself as a leader will likely be ineffective at developing others or the organization as a whole.

East and west directions represent the opposing internal and external aspects of the leader and organization. How leaders think impacts how leaders act, and what organizations value impacts how organizations deliver, sustain, and grow.

I’ve noticed that the focus of most Agile initiatives is toward the southwest, focused on organizational delivery. However, without first orienting the leaders and enabling the organization, these early results often don't last. That’s why I encourage balance for Agile leaders:

  • Leader: Leaders role model agility through their own adaptive thinking and behaviors.
  • Organization: Leaders guide organizational agility inside out by creating a culture of safety to experiment, learn, and grow.
  • Enable: Leaders enable agility through personally and organizationally living the Agile values.
  • Action: Leaders exhibit catalyze behaviors and guide organizational delivery and change.

Where Leadership Agility Comes Into Play

Having a solid leader can create a solid foundation for long-term success in an organization, but how do we get from Point A, where executives are aware of Leadership Agility and maybe even support it, to Point B, where they are actively taking a role in its success?

And how do we make leaders aware that there is even a journey to take? Once they’re aware, how do we convince them to actually take that journey?

These very questions have long been up for debate among Leadership professionals like myself, as well as a myriad of organizations. I am happy to say that a solution has been developed: the Leadership Agility Program.

Anyone who is involved in implementing Agile, from the person who signs the checks to those leading Agile teams, can now get a better roadmap to help them strengthen Leadership practices within their company.

The course is designed to increase the effectiveness of those involved in Agile, as well as foster continual learning and interaction with Agile. When leaders become Agile leaders, they increase the success rate of Business Agility implementation and long-term — or even permanent — adoption.

While the broader certification program is in its infancy, the work and experience behind it are anything but. I have been focusing and guiding leaders across these dimensions for the past half decade, but I fully expect that, once executives and leaders see the value of increasing their fluency in Agile, it will become a requirement for all aspiring Agile leaders.

Reprinted with permission.

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