The Value of Agile Methodology, Design Thinking and Visionary Application to Future-Proof Your Organization

According to the World Economic Forum, closing the global skills gap could add $11.5 trillion to global GDP by 2028. Yet, in the technology space, as Skillsoft's 2022 IT Skills and Salary Report found, 66 percent of IT decision makers worldwide are facing critical skills gaps in their departments, specifically as it related to IT ops, agile product management, and agile project management.

The need to adopt agile practices is now imperative for the business to both create and develop leaders and transform the technical workforce to remain viable in the marketplace.

With this in mind, Skillsoft has developed a broad selection of agile learning resources and curated them into one clear and concise learning journey that enables agile stakeholders - individuals, teams, and organizations – to actively engage in the delivery of value in a complex and rapidly changing world.

And the journey is purpose-built for technical and non-technical learners with guides to direct the learning and build competencies:

• Agile Collaboration -> Design Thinking: courses that teach how to help businesspeople and developers work together while adopting a customer-centric viewpoint and providing opportunity for all contributors to add value – thus, removing silos and improving collaboration with agile methodologies and practice.
• Project Pathing -> Thought Leadership: content that initiates learning which leads to skills development with guided learning paths, that in turn, can be apply in practice to create a starting point and clear path across projects, transformations, roles and responsibilities – cultivating a digitally fluent and agile organization.
• Learning that Extends the Team: Exercises that can be extended to on-the-job applications, putting learning into practice with verifiable, shareable, and portable digital badges to track and celebrate personal and team accomplishments along the way.

Agility is needed for an organization to adapt to change, and agile thinking must be fostered and realized across the organization. Developing agile thinking will help ensure your organization doesn't get left behind, unable to compete in a market that is constantly changing.

Skillsoft Agile Career Journey introduces beginning learners to agile methodologies and provides a path to learning to apply agile for all those working across projects -- fostering agile project management and organizational change management, along with an agile practice guide for comprehension and retention.

As learners progress, they will learn that mindset matters as they develop the mental agility and resilience to thrive in uncertainty, while managing transformation without chaos.

Agile basics are also provided as a foundation to embrace agile at scale, drive agile product development and management, all while cultivating enterprise agility. By building agile capabilities in the organization, learners foster a setting to build collaborative product roadmaps aligned to customer feedback and needs, all to support the organization's goals.

For the practitioner that has experience with agile methodologies and practice, Skillsoft Agile Career Journey focuses on design thinking positioned as a customer-centric approach to determining how to best meet customer needs. The course content advocates early stakeholder engagement in the co-creation and development of solutions.

Design thinkers enable organizations to deepen customer and supplier relationships and uncover a broader set of possible products and services to better meet customer needs. Practitioners will develop an understanding of the people for whom they’re designing their products or services and can pass that knowledge to their colleagues; thus, providing a positive and fruitful end user experience and happy customers.

Throughout the journey, practitioners will apply design thinking to master stakeholder engagement, customer service, while being trained to be a professional scrum master and product owner. Courses provide the necessary agile toolkit to cultivate business resilience, along with a practical guide to sustaining progress delivered at the needed pace.

Competencies include agile transformation of structures, processes and mindsets needed to transform the organization for the digital age, and the ability to leverage the power of uncertainty to build long-term resilience – leading to the use of design thinking and agile methodologies to determine how best to meet customer needs and encourage design thinking and agile methodologies in your organization.

Today’s leaders must become digitally literate, develop an adaptable mindset, and embrace new tools. And in conquering these digital challenges, they grow as leaders. There are always new devices, systems, and programs being developed – and, as such, they need to be digitally fluent.

Skillsoft Agile Career Journey provides the thought leadership needed to cultivate digitally fluent visionary leaders to drive digital transformation strategies and a digital visionary mindset with a focus in technical communications essentials and scaling agile in the organization to remain technically competent, competitive and relevant.

With an agile approach, visionaries and leaders can transform the enterprise through collaborative leadership, dynamic strategy, and organizational flexibility, building a better organization and fueling growth to lead in a digital era – all by learning to navigate the swirl and manage crucial conversations for business transformation.

The agile leader is adaptive, can sense and seize opportunities, and is constantly on the lookout for change. Discover how agility can make you, your team, and your organization more innovative, more responsive, and more successful.

For the focused learner who has experience with agile methodologies and practice, Skillsoft offers optional courses and a bookshelf to provide an opportunity to select from precise topics of interest. Whether you are building leadership skills, pursuing a certification or job role, or determining how to apply agile to your specific industry. Skillsoft’s free-standing courses, books, and audiobooks provide an opportunity to quickly expand your agile knowledge.

For organizations interested in investing in agile practices to transform their business, leaders and technical workforce to remain viable in the marketplace, look no further. Get started with Skillsoft Agile Career Journey today by requesting a demo.