Adjacent to our consulting practice, Lean Agility delivers training in Lean, Agile/Scrum and Service Design to help clients learn how to deliver better quality work, faster on their own — ultimately without the need for external consultants like us.

We’ve trained thousands of public sector, government, and private sector knowledge workers in our methodologies through a broad range of courses designed to provide the skills needed to improve how work gets done and solve many of the common challenges that get in the way of getting great results.

Our proprietary curriculum was developed out of our own frustration with training approaches that fall short in three areas:

1. Emphasis on theory only instead of practical applications of the concepts, tools and methodologies
2. Lack of emphasis on the importance of getting the execution part of improvement initiatives right — in particular, getting people on board with change (proactive human change management)
3. Fun. The content is not delivered in an engaging, interactive format and so isn’t memorable.

So we set out to design our courses to be the opposite. We teach the theory and the concepts you need, using fun, practical, experiential learning (simulations, role-playing and experimentation) so that you walk away with the ability to successfully execute improvements and get your colleagues on board at the same time.  

No matter what stage you are at in an improvement initiative and what challenges you face, we have courses that can help.

NEXT STEPS:

• Three ways to experience our training programs:
  1. Public training course (view training calendar)
  2. Dedicated/customized training (contact us)
  3. Embedded within a consulting engagement (contact us)

Lean White Belt (1-day) – an introduction to the fundamentals of Lean process improvement, continuous improvement and innovation. Participants gain a basic understanding of Lean concepts, tools and methodologies to remove non-value-added work and reduce frustration in their day-to-day work.

Lean Yellow Belt (3-days) – an introduction to the structured process improvement method known as DMAIC (Define, Measure, Analyze, Improve and Control/Continue to Improve). Participants learn to use DMAIC to improve a simple end-to-end process.

Lean Green Belt (8-day in-class instruction, 16 – 18 days of total hands-on effort) – a deep dive into the structured process improvement method known as DMAIC (Define, Measure, Analyze, Improve and Control/Continue to Improve).  Participants learn, while improving a real-life medium-complexity process in their workplace:

• how to use DMAIC to facilitate improvement projects and get sustained results through continuous improvement
• apply principles of change management for better results
• understand and explain Lean principles to others

Lean Black Belt (customized individual program) – For Lean Green Belt graduates or experienced Lean practitioners, a custom program designed to help the individual obtain the highest Lean Belt status demonstrating a mastery of process improvement, continuous improvement systems and habits and human change management skills.

Lean White Belt for Leaders (1-day) – an introduction to the fundamentals of Lean process improvement, continuous improvement and innovation delivered from the point of view of leaders who have a unique role to play in leading a Lean transformation and eliminating certain kinds of wastes. Participants gain a basic understanding of Lean concepts, tools and methodologies to remove non-value-added work and reduce frustration in their day-to-day work and get practical insights on how to best support improvement in a leadership role.

Lean and Agile Leadership Program (3-days) – learn how to apply advanced leadership thinking from the field of Lean Enterprise to create and sustain breakthrough improvements and ongoing habits of continuous improvement. Participants gain an in-depth understanding of:

• the role of a leader in Lean transformation, tools and systems that you, as a leader, can use to create and sustain results
• how to recognize “wastes” or non-value activities that you, as a leader, control directly and
• how to free up capacity, for yourself (target 10-12 hours per week) and your team, by eliminating these wastes.

Lean Strategic Planning (1-day) – an exploration of the shortcomings of traditional strategic planning:

• too many priorities,
• starting with the solution instead of the problem,
• lack of consideration of true capacity,
• low ownership of the plan,
• lack of an effective retrospective routine and visibility throughout the year

And how to address them using the Lean Strategic Planning and Deployment methodology known as Hoshin Kanri. Participants walk away with a strategic approach and a comprehensive toolkit to reduce the number of priorities they take on, with greater focus and better execution, saving capacity for unexpected events, better execution, and a more humane pace of work.

Lean Time Management (1-day) – an exploration of the root causes of why we are so busy and Lean/Agile/Systems Thinking solutions to address them. Participants walk away with a plan to help them free up time in their schedule — targeting 10-12 hours per week.

Applying Professional Scrum™ (2-days) – an introduction to Professional Scrum and how the Scrum framework and an agile mindset enables teams to deliver more value, satisfy stakeholders and work better together.

Professional Scrum Master™ (2-days) – a dive into the accountabilities of the Scrum Master and underlying principle of Scrum while gaining the ability to choose and apply techniques and practices used by successful Scrum Masters. Participants gain a strong understanding of Professional Scrum, an agile mindset and the role of a Scrum Master.

Professional Scrum Master™ - Advanced Course (2-days) – a deeper understanding of the accountabilities of the Scrum Master. Explore the challenges that Scrum Masters face, how to handle them by applying the principles and values of Scrum to help support the Scrum Team and a deep dive into how Scrum Masters serve the Scrum Team, Product Owner and the organization.

Lean Document Creation & Approvals (1.5-days) – explore and identify solutions to the root causes of why processes that create, review and approve documents (like reports, memos, communications materials etc.) underperform. Participants gain an understanding of:

• the nature of these types of processes (heuristic) and the top causes of their underperformance
• the principles of flow in these processes
• how to improve these types of processes and solution experiments to try when they return to work

Results, Not Resistance (1-day) - explores two critical elements of successful change initiatives: buy-in (support) for change ideas and plan execution. Participants struggling to get results for a change project because of low buy-in will learn how to identify the root causes of resistance to change and what to do to overcome them. Participants also gain an understanding of the elements in an execution plan that can make or break the initiative and how to address each. 

Lean Time Management (1-day) – an exploration of the root causes of why we are so busy and Lean/Agile/Systems Thinking solutions to address them. Participants walk away with a plan to help them free up time in their schedule — targeting 10-12 hours per week.

Effective Resilience Practices for Change Agents (1-day) – gives people leading change the mental resilience tools and self-care practices to sustain themselves through long, difficult transformation work. Participants leave with a personalized plan and a follow-up one-on-one coaching session.

Streamline before digitizing (1-day) – teaches leaders and IT teams to fix the underlying business process before building software, so digital solutions solve the right problem instead of over-delivering unnecessary features. Reduces the scope, cost, and complexity of IT projects.