How do you turn a visionary strategy, with a pile of unanswered questions, into the new products your company needs to grow?

They already see improvements in their teams' ability to learn, share their knowledge and focus on the most important decisions.

The materials we give them to run the framework make it a great experience for team members — the first time.

Our participants tell us:

They get immediate value from the workshops, with many of them using the framework on a program within 30 days.

The Rapid Learning Cycles Program Manager Certification Workshop will prepare you to lead your first team through the Kickoff Event to establish their Learning Cycles Plan, coach them through their first learning cycles, help them capture their knowledge real-time and lead their first Learning Cycle and Integration Events.

• Why the Learning Cycle is the Heartbeat of an Effective Product Development Team. Teams have so much uncertainty to manage in early development that they get out of sync with each other and with their leaders too easily. A regular "heartbeat'" of learning cycles give your team a rhythm that coordinates its work, the way that a regular tempo keeps a jazz band in sync as band members improvise.

• Why You Don't Want to Try to Close Every Knowledge Gap You Have, Even If You Have Time. We teach you how to prioritize a big pile of Knowledge Gaps so that you maximize the value of the time you have to learn and recognize when you're ready to decide. Teams can always learn more about their customers, markets or technologies but they need to know when it's time to make decisions so that the program can move ahead.

• How the Rapid Learning Cycles Framework Captures Your Most Valuable Knowledge in Real Time. Most product development teams capture their "lessons learned" at the end of a program—if ever—and their most valuable knowledge is trapped in product documentation or in engineers' brains. In the Rapid Learning Cycles framework, learning cycles are not done until the knowledge has been captured—and we give you templates and best practices so that capturing this knowledge is a natural part of the process.

• Why Learning Cycle and Integration Event Dates Don't Move - And What the Consequences Will Be If You Try. Many product development organizations conduct management reviews only when the team is ready, but this slows down product development. We'll show you how to help your team understand why the Learning Cycle and Integration Events don't move and how to manage the temptations to delay these events. 

• How to Find the High Impact / High Unknown Decisions that Drive Late Design Changes. Most product development programs pass through their first gates on time, only to get further and further behind in later gates as the team gets entangled in loopbacks and late design changes. Your teams will be able to identify the big decisions that trigger major loopbacks when they don't work out, and figure out how to learn what you need to learn to make these decisions with confidence.
  

This two-day workshop models a Kickoff Event for a moderately-sized team, going "behind the scenes" to explain why the framework elements accelerate product development, and how to help teams complete each step successfully, so that their teams at home will be set up for success with the Rapid Learning Cycles framework.

We'll accept only 24 people per workshop with a maximum of eight people from any one company in any workshop, to ensure that there's lots of cross-fertilization across groups, and that teams start building relationships with other Rapid Learning Cycles Certified™ Professionals

In Fall 2017, we'll offer workshops in Portland (Oregon), Detroit, Amsterdam and Washington, DC. Our plans for Spring include San Diego, Boston, Auckland NZ and Minneapolis. We may add additional dates and locations if classes sell out too early in a region. Groups can purchase credits that allow team members to choose the workshop dates and location that work best for them.  

We'll describe the learning cycles work within the framework to build knowledge the team needs to make its most important decisions and that future teams can reuse and extend to accelerate their development.

We'll give tips for how to prepare and facilitate your team's Learning Cycle and Integration Events. Then we'll share our best practices for how to recognize when a Rapid Learning Cycles program has run into trouble, and how to get it back on track quickly.

The workshop models a Kickoff Event for a moderately-sized team:

• The Core Hypothesis
• Key Decisions
• Knowledge Gaps
• The Team's Event Structure
• The Learning Cycles Plan

We'll prepare you to introduce the Rapid Learning Cycles framework to your team and other stakeholders, and give you the inside information you need to succeed with the framework as a program leader.

We have over six years of experience with helping teams like yours succeed with the Rapid Learning Cycles framework, even when the team starts out lacking the scientific, technical, customer or market knowledge they need to build their product.

Other Product Development Process workshops like Scrum or Agile teach techniques that were designed for software, while Project Management classes teach methods that are better suited for building highways. Neither of these groups understand the value of building and capturing knowledge, or the importance of pulling learning forward to push decisions later.

We teach you the framework that hundreds of development teams use today to get their products to market faster in the most demanding areas of product development.

RLCI has shown how to pull together a combination of agile software management techniques within a phase gate development, with a process to follow, and made it easier to ask my organization to implement it. We have had two Kickoff events and the response has been very positive. The one thing I would change is having more people from my company attend.

I was concerned that the R & D executives would not buy into this. But the simplicity and logic of the approach made this an easier sell. Almost everybody we sent to the training is involved in an RLC project or is about to be. I especially appreciated the ongoing support that has been available to my team after the workshop.

I had some doubts about sending all our Project Managers and whether they would learn how to use Rapid Learning Cycles better for their own projects. But I am sticking with the decision to send them all as it is another positive experience with Rapid Learning Cycles when they are applying it together with RLC enthusiasts from other companies and more attention to the thinking behind the framework. The best part of the class was the three baskets that help determine which elements of Rapid Learning Cycles drive success and therefore must be applied rigorously, and which ones can be left for the team to decide.

The class prepared us very well for explaining Rapid Learning Cycles to teams that will work with it and convincing stakeholders of the logic behind it.  The workshop will give you the tools and insights that you need to judge and positively influence the quality of the plans of the teams that you guide. With that the learning on how to successfully apply Rapid Learning Cycles in your company will be accelerated.

You'll have the opportunity to work directly with Katherine Radeka, the author of The Shortest Distance Between You and Your New Product: How Innovators Use Rapid Learning Cycles to Get Their Best Ideas to Market Faster.

Katherine co-teaches this workshop with one or more Rapid Learning Cycles Certified™ Coaches and Consultants to ensure that everyone receives real-time feedback and coaching.

After completing the workshop and a few other certification requirements, you will join the Rapid Learning Cycles™ Professionals Community, a growing user group with special learning opportunities, regular update calls and resources to help you go deeper into the framework.

Detroit, MI

Sept 14-15

Washington

Nov 9-10

Amsterdam

Oct 30-31

Register now by signing up for one of these five locations:

OR by purchasing workshop credits that you can pass on to your team members and colleagues. We'll send you a set of one-time-use codes that your team members can use to register themselves for their preferred workshop.

Auckland, NZ

Mar 6-7, 2018

Portland, OR

August 24-25

© 2017 Rapid Learning Cycles Institute - All Rights Reserved

• This workshop is open to senior product developers who have experience leading development teams.
  
• About four weeks before the workshop, each participant will receive a copy of The Shortest Distance Between You and Your New Product: How Innovators Use Rapid Learning Cycles to Get Their Best Ideas to Market Faster. You must read the book prior to Day One of the workshop, so that we can dive into the deep end of the material immediately.
  
• Product development consultants and other service providers may participate by personal invitation only.
  
• Class sizes are limited to 24 participants, and group size is limited to eight per company. If you have a group of more than eight people that you would like to sign up for a workshop, please please send us an email. You may also purchase workshop credits that allow participants to choose their own workshop and location, up to the limit of eight per company per workshop.
  
• Participants will need to sign the Rapid Learning Cycles Certified™ Program Manager License Agreement. This agreement is sent out for review prior to the workshop and signed during the workshop. It is an individual agreement between Rapid Learning Cycles Institute, Inc. and the individual who attends the workshop.
  
• Participants will need to pass a one hour exam, and sign Rapid Learning Cycle Institute's Certified™ Program Manager Agreement prior to receiving access to the Program Managers Kit. 
  
• Successful completion of the certification requirements grants permission to use the materials to lead Rapid Learning Cycles events. It does not grant permission for the participants to modify the materials, conduct Rapid Learning Cycle Workshops to train additional program managers, or serve as a paid facilitator or program manager for external clients. Such use requires additional certification steps and express permission from us.
  
• If you or your developers primarily develop software, contact us prior to registering. There may be better options for you.
  

Day One

• The Rapid Learning Cycles Framework: What and Why
  
• The Rapid Learning Cycles Kickoff Event
  
• The Core Hypothesis that Captures Your Vision
  
• The Right Key Decisions to Build Your Best Product
  
• A Complete Set of Well-Defined Knowledge Gaps
  
• How to Prioritize Knowledge Gaps to Maximize the Team's Learning
  
  

Day Two

• Cadence and Flow in Rapid Learning Cycles Programs to Establish Your Regular Heartbeat
  
• How to Build the Learning Cycle Plan in Seven Steps
  
• Learning Cycles that Build Extensible Knowledge
  
• Knowledge Capture at the End of a Learning Cycle to Avoid Knowledge Loss and Accelerate Learning
  
• How to Run Learning Cycle and Integration Events to Maximize the Value of the Team's Time Together
  
• Troubleshooting Rapid Learning Cycles Programs to Get Back On Track Fast if Something Goes Wrong

• All registrations must be paid at the time that you register.
• Pre-purchased workshop credits are subject to availability and must be matched with the participant at least 30 days in advance of the participant's workshop.
• We reserve the right to cancel any participant's registration for any reason. If we exercise this option, we will give you a refund of 100% of your registration fee.
• You may send a qualified substitute in your place, as long as you let us know at least 24 hours in advance of Day One and the substitute will be able to complete the pre-reading assignment.
• If you cancel up to five business days after registering but not less than thirty days prior to the start of the workshop, we will refund 100% of your registration fee.
• In the unlikely event that we need to cancel for any reason, we will offer participants the opportunity to join a different class or receive a refund.

We Guarantee Results! 

We don't offer a money-back guarantee—we offer something better. We offer ongoing support to our Rapid Learning Cycles Certified™ Professionals by phone, email and through an online forum to make sure that you never slow down because you don't know what to do.