HAMBURG, 23.04.2021

"Agile working" - for some time now, this seems to be the magic word for a modern and efficient way of working. But what exactly characterizes agile teams, who benefits from agility and what changes when you change your project management?

Due to the great demand on this topic, House of PM now also offers open trainings for agility in project management.

Trainings have been part of the House of PM offering for many years. In particular, training tailored to the respective customer in the context of the introduction of an individually developed PM manual or a new methodology - be it classic, agile or a mix of methods. Especially the topic of agility and how it can be implemented in one's own organization is high on the agenda of many companies. In addition to the in-house trainings already offered according to individual needs, the project management experts are now expanding their portfolio to include open trainings for individuals.

The great interest in this topic is related to the discrepancy between the desire for a project routine that can be planned in the long term and the reality of work. We like clear perspectives and predictability, and we would like to define in advance how a project should proceed and when which deadlines are due. However, the reality is different: In today's working world, not only is the level of complexity increasingly challenging, but also the dynamics of the unknown - for example, external conditions such as new requirements, interactions between project components, or changing environments. Under these conditions, constant sequential processing is often just as impossible as making accurate forecasts. In order to meet these challenges appropriately, it is necessary to train how to deal with these unpredictable variables like a new muscle and to learn to draw on the team's combined diversity of ideas. The important first step is to change one's attitude and beliefs to the effect that a project cannot always be controlled linearly from the outside, but is advanced in self-organized teams through repeated observation, trying, testing, learning, adapting in short intervals. Accordingly, agility first begins in the mind.

The goal of our trainings is not only to impart knowledge about agility, but also to test and experience forms of agile collaboration in exercises and simulations in a sustainable way. It is about topics such as mindset, values and principles that are crucial for understanding agile working. We rely on a mixture of group discussions, theoretical impulses, exercises in small groups and methodological examples to train communication, improvisation skills and self-organization. The result of our strongly practice-oriented trainings should be that learned contents can be used goal-oriented in the professional everyday life.