Most of us by now have at least heard of Agile methodology if not participated in a project using it. If you’re lucky, you may have worked with a Certified Scrum Master (CSM) or an experienced Agile practitioner.

In many cases, organizations have decided to adopt an Agile methodology without a clear plan on how it fits into the organization.  Project Managers may be asked to transition from traditional waterfall methodologies to Agile with little to no training.

“We’re using an Agile methodology, we don’t need requirements or documentation.”

Statements like these are all too common among Agile project managers and team members. Using an Agile methodology does not mean the project team abdicates all responsibility for required documentation. On the other hand, documentation should be examined to ensure only value add documentation is being produced.  

How Does this Apply to Training?

Even in waterfall projects training is often either overlooked or underestimated.  When a project falls behind schedule, what is the first thing that is usually cut to keep the timeline?  Training. When considering an Agile methodology, these same issues will usually arise. Concerns may be raised about whether training development or delivery will slow things down and reduce the velocity of the team in a given sprint.  With this background, how can we adjust our training approach to better align with the Agile philosophy?

In the Prosci report Change Management and Agile: The intersection of the people side of change and Agile development processes, it states Training must be focused, concise and delivered more frequently, with an emphasis on delivering just-in-time training. How to accomplish this?  It seems clear that change management and/or training personnel need to be included as part of the Agile project team and included in Sprint planning.  But, traditional training approaches may not easily fit into the Agile philosophy.

How can we practically accomplish Just-In-Time training?

Reed Deschler of HRPS states “Incorporating intuitive functionality and/or built-in prompts and guidance could even preclude the need for a separate training event – in essence designing and developing for change adoption.”

In an SAP environment, incorporating built-in prompts and guidance is not always practical or even possible during development. Including a Performance Support Solution, like OnScreen for SAP in sprint planning is one creative solution to this issue.

With OnScreen, trainers or analysts can develop guides for new functionality in minutes and deliver these to end users during rollout. In this case, training documentation can be included in your Definition of Done to deliver a truly complete user experience at the end of the Sprint.