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AGILE ID

ONE SOFTWARE COMPANY’S JOURNEY TO KEEP AHEAD

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Noël Zykowski, APTD

The Big Challenge
Waterfall vs Agile
SAM…LLAMA…WTH?
Our “How”
The End Result
Resources

WorkForce Software

Every Rule

Every Schedule

Every Employee

No Compromises

My company provides a flexible, cloud-based solution to meet ever-changing business needs by equipping organizations to reduce labor costs, demonstrate compliance, and boost employee engagement—all while maximizing operational efficiencies. My role as Global Training & Education Manager allows me to work across all aspects of delivering product training to our own employees, our partners and our customers. I get to have fun by building certification programs, and more supporting our software solutions.

Key words: flexible….every-changing needs….this means an ever-changing product!

I have a small, but mighty team of instructional designers and technical trainers to educate the world. We were facing the most massive project yet – and a change to our development world. We had a product update coming that would impact every piece of training content we had ever built. To face this Goliath of a project, our team needed a David to rally behind. It was time for us to do something different. We needed to go agile, but we really didn’t know what this meant, we just heard it would help us. We saw our product development teams go agile, so we started digging in to understand what this meant for us.

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WATERFALL

Analyze

Design

Develop

Implement

Evaluate

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AGILE

A

D

I/E

A

D

A

D

I/E

A

D

I/E

Iteration 1

(Alpha / MVP)

SME ILT via PPT

Iteration 2

(Beta)

Iteration 3

(Final)

Iteration 4….etc

(More Updates)

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ADDIE, SAM AND LLAMA…OH MY!

ADDIE (Analyze, Design, Develop, Implement, Evaluate)

SAM (Successive Approximation Model)

LLAMA (Lot Like Agile Management Approach)

LLAMA

ADDIE

SAM

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HOW DID WE DO THIS?

ATTENDED LLAMA TRAINING

OVERHAULED PROCESSES OVER TIME

ADDED NEW TOOLS

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Learner Personas

Who is really going to need this?

What are their motivations?

Estimate Work

Small batches

Use set increments

Estimate unknowns

Define Stories

As a ________

I want to _____

So I can ______

Visible Work Planning

Kanban / Task boards

Index cards or sticky notes

Plan Iterations

Deliver something usable

Catch issues early

Easier to estimate

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BENEFITS

Stakeholders more involved

Things ARE getting done faster

Understand the impact

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END RESULT

WE DID IT!

(and are continuing to do it)

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RESOURCES

BOOKS AND PUBLICATIONS

Leaving ADDIE for SAM (Michael W Allen) - https://www.amazon.com/Leaving-ADDIE-SAM-Developing-Experiences/dp/1562867113/
Leaving ADDIE for SAM Field Guide (Sites and Green) - https://www.td.org/books/leaving-addie-for-sam-field-guide
Agile for Instructional Designers: Iterative Project Management to Achieve Results (Megan Torrance) - https://www.amazon.com/Agile-Instructional-Designers-Iterative-Management/dp/1949036502/
Agile and LLAMA for ISD Project Management - https://www.td.org/td-at-work/agile-and-llama-for-isd-project-management

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RESOURCES

ARTICLES, VIDEOS AND MORE

Demystifying Agile in Instructional Design - https://www.td.org/insights/demystifying-agile-in-instructional-design
An Agile Toolkit for E-Learning Development - https://www.td.org/insights/an-agile-toolkit-for-e-learning-development
Stop Wasting Your Development Time – Think Lean! - https://learningsolutionsmag.com/articles/stop-wasting-your-development-time-think-lean
We Can If… - https://www.emilyricco.com/blog/2020/2/26/we-can-if
LLAMA Articles and Videos - https://www.torrancelearning.com/llama/
2-Day Agile Project Management for ELearning LLAMA Workshop - https://www.torrancelearning.com/events/
Leaving ADDIE for SAM Recorded Webinar - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p_xIJzp9Eg4
Methodology Wars ADDIE: vs SAM vs Agile - https://www.td.org/insights/methodology-wars-addie-vs-sam-vs-agile
Cathy Moore’s Action Mapping - https://blog.cathy-moore.com/action-mapping-workflow-at-a-glance/