Agile Principles Applied to Training: Transparency and Information Radiation

One thing I’ve noticed agile projects tend to do is to push relevant information out to people, and be extremely honest about how things are going. Here are my attempts at doing so:

• Posters Around the Workplace – Finding time to showcase progress to my stakeholders is like trying to hold a wriggling eel in water, so I thought of hanging some eye catching posters on the noticeboards. I decided they’d be good for two purposes – the first to help give stakeholders an idea of what I’ve been doing with training since we met about a month ago without the need of scheduling another meeting, and the second, to market towards potential people who’d have an interest in attending. In about an hour, I ended up with a poster (see the photo) that included what topics I have material for (and what I have planned), photos of outputs from the training including snippets of real feedback, and contact information for more information. I purposely left two spaces to update the colour poster with two pieces of information, just the right size for sticky notes. I’m currently filling one indicating the number of people who’ve participated so far, and the other, the number of classes I’ve run.
• Mini Card Wall – Keeping track of all the tasks associated with material development, scheduling training, meeting with people is becoming difficult so I’ve put up a mini card wall using the desktop PC I have next to my monitor. People around me can take a look at the things that I need to do, and as new requests pop up, I can quickly add it to the list of items still open using the pen and pad of sticky notes I have nearby. As you can see from the picture, all I really care about is whether or not something is open (needs my attention eventually), in progress (reminds me of what I’m working on) and done (I remove these at the end of the day).