Home › Professional Development › Agile Project Management Foundation Training

Professional Development

Agile Project Management Foundation Training

Saudi Vision 2030 megaprojects, NEOM, the Red Sea Project, and the dozens of transformation programmes running simultaneously across GCC government and corporate organisations, are operating in an environment of constant change, shifting requirements and compressed timelines. Traditional waterfall project management, plan everything upfront, build to the plan, deliver at the end, is failing in exactly these conditions. Across African development organisations managing complex, multi-donor programmes with evolving requirements, the same failure is playing out. Agile project management was built for exactly this environment: iterative, adaptive, focused on delivering value rather than following a plan. But most agile training assumes a software development context. This course is built for the professionals managing projects in GCC and African organisations who are not writing code, and who need agile principles that work in their actual context.

71%of organisations globally now use agile approaches in at least some of their projects, including in non-technology functions

GCCmegaprojects and transformation programmes are adopting agile methods to manage the pace and complexity of Vision 2030 delivery

300+project management professionals trained by Matsh across Gulf, Africa and Asia

The project management situations that make traditional approaches fail in GCC and African contexts:

You spent three months planning the project in detail. By month four the requirements had changed and you are now managing the gap between the plan and reality, which grows every week
Your stakeholders cannot articulate what they want until they see something, but traditional project management requires sign-off on requirements before you build anything
Leadership priorities shift faster than your project plan can accommodate, leaving you managing a plan that no longer reflects what the organisation actually needs
Your project team is remote, distributed or working across multiple time zones and traditional project management coordination is not keeping up
You are delivering everything on time and on budget against the original plan, and the output is not what anyone actually wanted because the world changed while you were delivering it
You have heard about agile but everything you have read assumes you are building software, and your projects are not software projects

This course builds the agile project management foundation to manage projects adaptively, deliver value continuously, and respond to change without losing control.

Agile in Non-Tech Contexts: What Works in the Gulf, Africa and Asia

GCC Transformation Projects

Vision 2030 transformation programmes, digital government initiatives, and major infrastructure projects in Saudi Arabia and UAE are adopting agile approaches to manage complexity and pace. Understanding agile is becoming a baseline expectation for project professionals in GCC organisations.

African Development Programmes

Development programmes in Africa are inherently agile in practice, adapting continuously to changing community needs, donor requirements and implementation realities, but rarely agile in methodology. Applying agile principles formally produces significantly better outcomes in these environments.

Hierarchical Decision-Making

Agile frameworks developed in Western startup contexts assume flat hierarchies and autonomous teams. Implementing agile in GCC and African organisations requires understanding how to apply agile principles within hierarchical structures where authority and sign-off work differently.

Non-Technology Agile

Scrum, Kanban and sprint planning were originally built for software. Applying them to HR transformation programmes, infrastructure projects, training rollouts and organisational change initiatives requires specific adaptation that this course addresses directly.

Who Should Attend

📊

Project Managers

Project managers who want to add agile approaches to their existing traditional project management skills.

🏛️

Government Transformation Leaders

GCC government professionals leading Vision 2030 transformation programmes who need agile methods for managing complex, evolving initiatives.

🌍

Development Programme Managers

NGO and development organisation programme managers who need structured adaptive management frameworks for complex, multi-stakeholder programmes.

👥

HR and L&D Professionals

HR and learning professionals managing large-scale people programmes, training rollouts and organisational development initiatives who need agile delivery frameworks.

🔄

Change Managers

Change management professionals who want to incorporate agile principles into their organisational change work.

🚀

Team Leaders Managing Projects

Team leaders and functional managers who manage project work alongside their operational responsibilities and need practical, lightweight project management approaches.

What You Will Leave With

Practical agile tools and frameworks ready to apply on your next project.

✓Agile foundations, a clear, practical understanding of agile values, principles and how they differ from traditional project management

✓Scrum framework skills, running sprints, stand-ups, retrospectives and sprint reviews in non-technology contexts

✓Kanban method, visualising and managing workflow in your team using Kanban boards

✓Agile in hierarchical contexts, applying agile in GCC and African organisations where hierarchy and approval processes require specific adaptation

✓Stakeholder management in agile, keeping traditional stakeholders engaged and satisfied in an agile project environment

✓Agile adoption plan, a specific plan for introducing agile approaches to your next project or team

Programme Outline

Agile Foundations: Values, Principles and the Case for Adaptive Management

Why traditional project management fails in high-change environments and what agile was designed to fix
The Agile Manifesto: what the four values and twelve principles actually mean in practice
Agile vs waterfall: when each approach is appropriate and why GCC and African contexts often demand agile
Agile frameworks overview: Scrum, Kanban, SAFe, and when to use which
Agile in non-technology projects: the specific adaptations required for HR, change, development and operations projects

Scrum Framework: Roles, Events and Artefacts

Scrum roles: Product Owner, Scrum Master and the development team, adapted for non-technology project contexts
The product backlog: capturing, prioritising and maintaining requirements in an adaptive environment
Sprint planning: breaking work into achievable two-week cycles and committing to sprint goals
Daily stand-ups: the 15-minute synchronisation that keeps teams aligned without unnecessary meetings
Sprint review and retrospective: delivering value, gathering feedback and continuously improving the team's approach
Practical exercise: participants run a complete simulated sprint on a realistic non-technology project

Kanban Method: Visualising and Managing Flow

What Kanban is and when it is more appropriate than Scrum
Designing a Kanban board for your team's specific workflow
Work in progress limits: why limiting WIP produces faster, higher-quality delivery
Identifying and removing bottlenecks using flow metrics
Digital Kanban tools: Trello, Jira, Microsoft Planner and Azure DevOps for non-software teams
Workshop: participants design and populate a Kanban board for their actual work

Agile in GCC and African Organisational Contexts

Implementing agile in hierarchical organisations: getting leadership approval, managing upward expectations and protecting the team's agile working practices
Agile stakeholder management: keeping traditional stakeholders satisfied in an iterative delivery environment where the plan keeps evolving
Agile in Vision 2030 transformation projects: the specific considerations for GCC government and corporate agile adoption
Agile in African development programmes: adapting Scrum and Kanban for multi-donor, multi-stakeholder programme environments
Common agile adoption failures and how to avoid them: the mistakes that cause most non-technology agile implementations to fail

Agile Adoption Planning and Next Steps

Agile maturity assessment: where is your team or organisation on the agile adoption journey
Starting small: piloting agile on one project or team before scaling
Building organisational agile capability: what is required beyond individual skills
Agile certifications overview: PMI-ACP, PSM, PSPO and which to pursue depending on your role and context
Personal agile adoption plan: each participant designs a specific plan for introducing agile to their next project or team

Course At a Glance

Locations	Riyadh, Dubai, Nairobi, Lagos, Online
Methodology	65% applied, simulated sprints, live Kanban board design, real project case studies from GCC and Africa
Pre-requisite	No prior agile experience required · Useful for traditional project managers wanting to expand their toolkit
What's Included	Workbook, Scrum reference guide, Kanban board template, agile adoption plan template, certification of completion

Your Projects Are Not Failing Because of Your Team. They Are Failing Because of Your Methodology. Fix the Methodology.

Join project management professionals from across the Gulf, Africa and Asia who are building the agile skills to deliver in environments where the plan cannot stay the same.

📅 No upcoming schedules at the moment.

View All Schedules

📅 Upcoming Schedules