Agile Leadership and Management
Develop Agile Leadership skills to support your professional development and benefit your organisation and teams.
Duration
12 weeksCost
$1,074
Learn Agile Leadership techniques to build, lead, and empower teams
This microcredential provides a solid foundation and introduction to Agile Leadership and Management. Designed by The Open University and the Agile Business Consortium, it combines research and evidence-based training with good practice principles and tools.
The course will equip managers, leaders, and those aspiring to move into leadership roles with strategies and tools to support team development at all levels. You’ll improve your skills and understanding of Agile principles and gain practical leadership competency.
What is Agile leadership and how does it benefit your organisation?
Agile is a mindset and is used to describe an alternative way of working. By adopting an Agile approach, teams can stay productive and focused on customer needs, learning to adapt to increasingly complex and uncertain environments while also building resilience and sustainability for better outcomes.
Using practice and research-based strategies, you’ll build your skills and knowledge of Agile working, which will help you to:
- increase your leadership effectiveness
- improve team engagement and cohesion
- improve communication across teams and leadership levels
- reduce workplace stress
- reduce workplace conflict
- improve the quality and quantity of production
Explore the key principles of Agile leadership and how to apply them to your work
This course is based on material from the Agile Business Consortium, who have scoured the best sources and engaged thought leaders to define Agile leadership through nine key principles.
You’ll learn the tools, techniques, behaviours, and principles of Agile leadership and increase your confidence and skills in leading, empowering, and supporting highly engaged teams in an Agile environment. You’ll also develop your emotional intelligence, personal resilience, communication skills, and self-awareness; all of which are important skills in effective leadership.
Empower teams and develop skills that you can immediately apply to your work
This course focuses on your own professional development and offers the opportunity to apply your learning to your own situation. You’ll create an action plan to convert your learning into tangible action; addressing challenges in the workplace and developing skills that you can immediately apply to your work to facilitate change, empower teams, add value and make a difference.
Throughout the course you’ll take part in weekly activities to support and consolidate your learning. At the end of the course, you’ll submit an assessment which is marked and graded by subject matter experts.
Your final assessment will be to develop an on-going action plan to convert your learning of the 9 principles of agile leadership into tangible action and to reflect on your current Agile leadership style and interactions with your team.
What skills will you learn?
- Emotional and social intelligence
- Effective agile team building
- Techniques for continuous improvement
- Value-based decisions and actions
- Improved self-awareness & resilience
- Appreciative inquiry
- Stakeholder engagement
- Strategic and systems thinking
- Agile management
- Active listening
- Facilitation
- Wellbeing and mindfulness
What you will achieve
By the end of the microcredential, you’ll be able to...
- Discover the key concepts and aims associated with agile leadership
- Recognise ways to improve your confidence and skill at leading people in an agile environment
- Explore Agile leadership tools, techniques, behaviours and principles
- Develop techniques and strategies to empower, steward and support highly engaged teams
- Demonstrate your communication and feedback skills and apply strategies for more effective ways of eliciting and utilising the feedback and wisdom in the team
- Reflect on your own Agile Leadership style and develop a greater sense of yourself, especially your strengths and positive traits
- Evaluate your own approach as an Agile Leader and how you work with your team and the wider organisation
- Create and implement an Action Plan to convert the learning on the nine Principles of Agile Leadership developed by the Agile Business Consortium into tangible action in the workplace and at the point of need.
Are you eligible for this microcredential?
To study this postgraduate microcredential you will ideally have:
- A Bachelors degree or an equivalent level qualification
- 2 years experience working in team-based projects or management roles; and
- A strong interest in agile management, leadership or business agility
The course material does not assume that learners are currently working. Past experiences will be just as relevant.
If you do not have a degree or equivalent level qualification you may find the postgraduate level assessment challenging.
Is this microcredential right for you?
This microcredential would benefit anyone currently working, or looking to work in:
- Senior roles in business, the public sector or third sector
- Managers and leaders who are new to Agile or business agility
- Those in an established Agile environment but are struggling with the ‘culture’ ‘people’ or ‘empowered team’ aspects of Agile
- Leaders who want to improve their knowledge of Agile and are committed to seeing Agile organisational and cultural change implemented successfully
This course has a global focus and delivers transferable skills for diverse sectors and organisations.
Syllabus
What happens before, during, and after your microcredential
Before learning
You’ll have access to our online welcome area where you’ll be able to read any information relating to your microcredential.
Course
From 24 Jun 2024
Agile Leadership and Management
Develop Agile Leadership skills to support your professional development and benefit your organisation and teams
12 weeks
13 hours per week
After learning
Your submitted assessment will be marked and graded by subject matter experts. You’ll continue to have ongoing access to the course materials.
What you will receive
15 UK credits at Postgraduate level from The Open University and a Certificate
Academic credits are awarded on passing the final assessment. These will be at postgraduate level 7 of the Framework for Higher Education (England, Wales and Northern Ireland) / level 11 of the Scottish Credit and Qualifications Framework.
Find out how credits work and where you can use them in our FAQs.
Additional benefits
Additional benefits: On successful completion, you will pre-qualify to gain Business Agility Professional Level 2 – Practitioner status with the Agile Business Consortium. You will be part of a growing community of professionals, with access to a wide range of tools, resources, and events.
What is a microcredential?
Microcredentials are designed to upskill you for work in rapidly-growing industries, without the time and cost commitment of a full degree. Your microcredential can stand alone as an independent credential, and some also offer academic credit to use towards a degree.
Complete online courses led by experts over multiple weeks with a dedicated group of professionals.
Test your understanding with online tutor-marked assessments and exercises.
Finish your learning and pass your assessments to gain an accredited credential.
Use your microcredential as evidence of your specialised skills and progress further in your industry.
Career-focused learning by The Open University
As the UK’s largest university, The Open University (OU) supports thousands of students to achieve their goals and ambitions via supported distance learning, helping to fit learning around professional and personal life commitments.
Established
1969Location
Milton Keynes, UKWorld ranking
Top 510Source: Times Higher Education World University Rankings 2020
This microcredential is in collaboration with Agile Business Consortium
The Agile Business Consortium is the global professional body for Business Agility, with unrivalled expertise in the field. A UK based not-for-profit organisation and the brains behind AgilePM®, AgileBA®, AgilePgM® and AgileDS™.
Delivered by experts
I am Professor of Software Engineering at the Open University, UK and have been working with agile practitioners for many years, seeking to explore a wide range of human and social aspects of practice
I’ve spent many years as a self-employed consultant, working on a wide range of projects. I now use this practical experience to promote & share better ways of working at the Agile Business Consortium
Advait Deshpande is a Lecturer in Computing & Communications at the Open University. His work is focussed on information & communication technologies, and business practices that shape them.
Learning on FutureLearn
Your learning, your rules
- Courses are split into weeks, activities, and steps to help you keep track of your learning
- Learn through a mix of bite-sized videos, long- and short-form articles, audio, and practical activities
- Stay motivated by using the Progress page to keep track of your step completion and assessment scores
Join a global classroom
- Experience the power of social learning, and get inspired by an international network of learners
- Share ideas with your peers and course educators on every step of the course
- Join the conversation by reading, @ing, liking, bookmarking, and replying to comments from others
Map your progress
- As you work through the course, use notifications and the Progress page to guide your learning
- Whenever you’re ready, mark each step as complete, you’re in control
- Complete 90% of course steps and all of the assessments to earn your certificate
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When would you like to start?
We aim to run our microcredentials every few months. Join on the date that suits you or register to hear about future runs and updates.
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FAQ
We can accept payments made by card (Visa, Mastercard and American Express) or PayPal via our online system.
You will have 14 days from the day the course starts to apply for a refund. If this Microcredential has any non-refundable costs they will be stated in the ‘Overview’ section above. You can find more information in our cancellation and refund policy.
Microcredentials are designed to fit around your life and timezone.
There may be live events as part of your studies, but these will be recorded and can be watched afterwards if you aren’t online for the live broadcast.
No, microcredentials are designed to be taken anywhere in the world. You won’t need the right to study in the country where the university offering the microcredential is based.
Microcredentials are stand-alone courses designed to meet specific learner and employer needs. Those awarded by The Open University have academic credit value at either undergraduate or postgraduate level, and, if appropriate, this may be used towards selected Open University qualifications. For more details, including eligible qualifications, visit The Open University’s Counting microcredentials towards OU qualifications page.
The credit awarded may potentially be used at another university, subject to the agreement of the receiving institution.
Want to know more? Read the microcredential FAQs, or contact us.