The strategic problem this addresses
Validated ideas stall when nobody can translate them into a backlog, a plan and a cadence that a team can work to. Delivery also fails when a change ignores the dependencies around it.
Intended audience
- Product owners and delivery leads
- Team leads adopting iterative delivery
- Innovation Practitioners moving into delivery
- Programme and portfolio teams
Prerequisites
- Innovation Processes
- Innovation Practitioner (recommended)
Duration and delivery format
2 days. In person or live online, cohort of 12 to 24.
Capability outcomes
By the end of the programme and its workplace application, participants can:
- 01Write a product goal that connects the work to an outcome
- 02Build and prioritise a backlog from evidence rather than opinion
- 03Plan a sprint and establish a review rhythm the team will keep
- 04Map the system and the dependencies a change relies on
- 05Choose which agile practices fit the context instead of applying a template
Course experience
Day one takes a real initiative and turns it into a product goal, user stories and a prioritised backlog. Teams practise estimation, slicing and sprint planning on their own work.
Day two steps back to the system. Teams map causal loops, hand-offs and dependencies around their initiative, identify where delays and failures will come from, and adjust the plan accordingly.
Methods
- Agile principles and practices
- Scrum roles, events and artefacts
- Backlog development and prioritisation
- Systems mapping
- Dependency analysis
- Review and retrospective rhythm
Tools
- Azure DevOps, Jira or Planner
- Miro
- Copilot or Claude for user-story drafting and backlog analysis
Where AI supports this programme
User-story and backlog development, System mapping, Scenario analysis. Human ownership of decisions, source checking and your organisation’s information-handling rules apply throughout. How we govern AI use.
Practical outputs
Work products recorded in the Capability Portfolio.
- Product goal
- Prioritised backlog
- Sprint plan
- System map
- Dependency map
- Review rhythm
Workplace application
Teams run at least two sprints on their initiative, hold reviews and retrospectives, and record how the backlog and system map changed as a result.
Assessment and recognition
Evidence of two completed sprints, an updated backlog and a reflection on what the system map changed. Recorded in the Capability Portfolio.
Capability Portfolio record
Completion and workplace evidence are recorded in the participant’s Capability Portfolio and count toward facilitator and leadership stages.
Position within the wider pathway
A Deliver stage specialist module. Usually taken after Innovation Practitioner by teams responsible for building and shipping the solution.
- 1Aware
- 2Align
- 3Apply
- 4Deliver
- 5Sustain
Part of the recommended pathway for: Innovation Practitioners and Unit Teams; Core Teams and Capability Specialists. See the role-based pathways.
Related programmes
Place in the Innovation Capability System
The Agile (Scrum) loop for the team building the solution, inside the system it has to work in.
See the whole systemEnterprise deployment options
Standalone programme
One programme, one cohort, one live challenge each
Best for: A team or unit that needs a specific capability now, or an organisation testing the approach before committing further.
Facilitated cohort
A role-based pathway for a cohort, with sponsored challenges and coaching
Best for: Developing practitioners, facilitators or leaders for a defined part of the organisation with visible results.
Enterprise capability academy
The full pathway run at organisational scale, with internal facilitators
Best for: Organisations building innovation and AI capability as a permanent asset rather than a programme.
Relevant case study
Enterprise, consumer goods
Faster from concept to shelf
A global consumer goods company
A multi-stage programme in agile and lean methods that reset how product teams at one of the world’s largest snack companies moved from concept to launch.
Read the case study