Description

This curriculum spans the operational breadth of an enterprise DevOps transformation, equivalent to a multi-workshop program co-led by Agile coaches and platform engineers, addressing the integration of Scrum practices with CI/CD governance, incident management, compliance automation, and cross-team alignment at scale.

Module 1: Integrating Scrum with DevOps Lifecycle

Define shared Definition of Done (DoD) criteria that include automated testing, infrastructure provisioning, and monitoring readiness across development and operations teams.
Align sprint planning cycles with CI/CD pipeline maturity, adjusting sprint length based on deployment frequency and feedback loop duration.
Coordinate backlog refinement to include infrastructure-as-code (IaC) tasks, security patching, and technical debt reduction alongside feature development.
Facilitate joint ceremonies between Scrum teams and operations, including incident retrospectives that feed into sprint retrospectives.
Map user story acceptance criteria to observable system behaviors in production using monitoring tools like Prometheus or Datadog.
Implement cross-functional team staffing models that embed SREs or platform engineers within Scrum teams to reduce handoff delays.

Module 2: Continuous Integration Pipeline Oversight

Enforce build gate policies in Jenkins or GitLab CI that prevent merge requests from progressing without passing unit, integration, and static analysis checks.
Configure parallel test execution strategies to reduce feedback time while maintaining test coverage integrity across microservices.
Manage flaky test triage processes by assigning ownership to feature teams and tracking resolution in the product backlog.
Standardize build environment containers to eliminate "works on my machine" discrepancies and ensure reproducible builds.
Integrate SonarQube or CodeClimate quality gates into pull request workflows, blocking merges on critical code smells or coverage drops.
Negotiate SLAs for build execution time with platform teams and monitor compliance using historical pipeline performance dashboards.

Module 3: Continuous Delivery and Deployment Governance

Design deployment runbooks that integrate with Jira and Confluence, ensuring release notes and rollback procedures are automatically generated.
Implement canary release patterns using service mesh tools like Istio, with Scrum team ownership of success metrics and promotion logic.
Establish deployment freeze windows in coordination with business stakeholders, balancing release velocity with regulatory or fiscal compliance.
Enforce immutable artifact promotion across environments, preventing configuration drift between staging and production.
Coordinate feature flag management using LaunchDarkly or Flagsmith, with Scrum Master ensuring flags are tracked and cleaned in backlog grooming.
Conduct pre-mortems before major releases, documenting risk mitigations and assigning incident response roles within the team.

Module 4: Agile Metrics and Flow Optimization

Track and visualize cycle time using control charts in tools like Jira or Azure DevOps, identifying bottlenecks in code review or QA stages.
Calibrate team capacity planning by analyzing historical throughput instead of story points, adjusting sprint goals based on delivery trends.
Define and monitor lead time for changes from commit to production, correlating improvements with process changes in retrospectives.
Implement WIP limits in Kanban boards for bug fixes and hotfixes to prevent context switching during sprints.
Use escape defect rate metrics to evaluate testing effectiveness, feeding findings into backlog refinement for test automation investment.
Align sprint review demonstrations with production telemetry, showing real user impact rather than just feature completion.

Module 5: Incident Management and Blameless Culture

Integrate incident response into sprint planning by reserving capacity for on-call duties and postmortem follow-up actions.
Facilitate blameless postmortems using the 5 Whys or Fishbone analysis, ensuring action items are assigned and tracked in the backlog.
Coordinate escalation paths between Scrum teams and NOC/SOC teams, defining RACI matrices for incident ownership.
Implement incident simulation (game days) during sprint cycles, treating findings as improvement backlog items.
Track mean time to detection (MTTD) and mean time to resolution (MTTR) as team KPIs, reviewing trends in sprint retrospectives.
Ensure monitoring alert thresholds are co-owned by development teams, reducing noise and false positives through code-level instrumentation.

Module 6: Security and Compliance in Agile Delivery

Embed security scanning tools (e.g., Snyk, Trivy) into CI pipelines, with Scrum Master ensuring vulnerabilities are triaged within 24 hours.
Integrate compliance checks (e.g., SOC2, HIPAA) into automated policy-as-code frameworks like Open Policy Agent.
Facilitate collaboration between DevOps teams and internal audit, translating control requirements into user stories and acceptance tests.
Manage secrets rotation workflows using HashiCorp Vault or AWS Secrets Manager, ensuring credential updates are tested in staging.
Track security debt alongside technical debt in backlog refinement, prioritizing based on exploitability and business impact.
Coordinate penetration test findings with sprint planning, ensuring critical issues are resolved before feature promotion to production.

Module 7: Scaling Agile Across DevOps Teams

Coordinate dependency management across multiple Scrum teams using dependency boards and integration sprints.
Implement SAFe or LeSS frameworks selectively, adapting ceremonies to maintain team autonomy while ensuring alignment.
Facilitate cross-team backlog refinement sessions to synchronize API contracts and service-level agreements (SLAs).
Manage shared DevOps platform backlogs, prioritizing infrastructure improvements based on team feedback and usage metrics.
Standardize tooling across teams for logging, monitoring, and deployment to reduce cognitive load and onboarding time.
Resolve cross-team impediments by escalating to Scrum of Scrums, with clear criteria for when to elevate issues beyond team level.

Module 8: Coaching and Change Leadership in Technical Teams

Diagnose team dysfunctions using the Westrum organizational culture model, tailoring interventions for pathological or bureaucratic environments.
Coach product owners on writing user stories that include non-functional requirements like performance, reliability, and observability.
Facilitate conflict resolution between developers and operations staff over deployment ownership and on-call responsibilities.
Lead adoption of new DevOps practices (e.g., GitOps, chaos engineering) through pilot teams and measurable adoption metrics.
Model servant leadership by protecting team focus from external interruptions while maintaining transparency with stakeholders.
Assess team health using structured surveys and triangulate results with delivery metrics to identify root causes of stagnation.