Agile Project Management Online Course

Termed as one of the most revolutionary project management approaches to ever strike at the heart of the project management world, Agile management or Agile project management took the field of software development by storm. Software development was rampage with different, yet traditional methodologies in the past that restricted a great deal of flexibility needed by these projects in the way they functioned. Changes were seldom welcomed and risks were never factored. To add to it all, the workflow of these traditional methods didn’t allow a project manager to test out bits and pieces of the work or have implementations based on the results. Everything spelled “rigid”. The number of failed projects was higher and there was a drastic and desperate need to get out of that vicious circle.

Along came the approach of Agile, an umbrella term for all different models for Agile development. Putting together all the lessons learned from failures, Agile rose to be an iterative and incremental process deployed to manage the design and build activities for not only software but also engineering, IT, and new product or service development projects in the most flexible and interactive manner possible.

1. Customer Satisfaction – The highest priority for Agile projects should be customer satisfaction. This should be achieved through continuous and on-time delivery of high-end products or services.

1. Changing Requirements – Change should be welcomed at any stage within the Agile project workflow. Requirements are bound to change, and in order to accommodate ad hoc changes, measures should be taken into consideration so as to perform the iterative process, which will help us in these cases.

1. Frequent Delivery – Delivery of software (or products/services) should be frequent with greater preference given to timescales that span a shorter period of time.

1. Measure of Progress – An Agile project output should be working software; working as per the objective it’s slated to achieve.

1. Sustainable Development – Long projects can be the sole cause for burnouts, and this is one thing that can break the consistency of the project work rendered. Therefore, Agile encourages work to be performed in short productive burst rather than a prolonged winding road.

1. Close Co-operation – The management and the executives, specialists need to work cordially to make an impact on the project on a daily basis.

1. Motivated Individuals – Provide motivated individuals the environment they need to thrive and make the project their own for better, efficient, and benefitting results.

1. Face-to-face Communication – Face-to-face communication is thoroughly encouraged by Agile project management as it has proved to be the most effective and efficient way of conveying important information.

1. Technical Excellence – Along with continuous delivery, continuous technical excellence and better, improving designs promotes agility within the project.

1. Simplicity – Over-complicating and magnifying issues rather than solving them in the simplest way possible isn’t going to help the project. Keep It Simple, Silly.

1. Self-organizing Teams – Allow room for creativity and allow teams to self-organize themselves into efficient functional groups to increase performance.

1. Regular Adaptation – Learn from lessons and fine-tune yourself and the team at regular intervals to take in the learning and implement them.

Scrum

Scrum is an Agile framework aimed at helping complex projects see the light of day. To sum up the ways of Scrum, it can be simply put in the following points:

1. A product owner or project manager creates a prioritized list called a product backlog, enlisting all the tasks completed, to be done, and requests.
2. During the planning of the sprint, the team takes the top-most chunk of manageable tasks from the list. This chunk is now called the sprint backlog. A plan is chalked on the basis of this list, and the team along with project manager decide the course of action on these tasks and activities.
3. The team allocates a chunk of the time made available for the project to this sprint backlog—a sprint (usually two to four weeks)—for the completion of work.
4. Daily 10-mins meets (daily Scrum) are conducted to check the progress of the work. The individual leading the daily Scrum, the ScrumMaster, keeps the team from deviating from its goal.
5. Each sprint completed should yield a product or part of a product that is shippable and ready to be handed over to the customer for use. The deliverable should be a standalone, working product.
6. At the end of the sprint, the details of the sprint are reviewed and notes are made to be implemented in the coming sprints.
7. Work restarts from point 2.

There are many other different methodologies in Agile project management, including Lean and XP. During this training course, you will go deep into understanding each of the aspects within Agile project management and its many methodologies.

Agile Project Management Course Descriptions

• Agile – Grab and hold on to this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to find all that you need to know about Agile in one place and one training course. This section will tell you all that there is to Agile.
• Scrum – Learn about this magnificent part of the Agile framework and trot your way through the different phases of Scrum and how beneficial it can be for your project.
• User Stories – Learn about epics and themes and the impact a user story has on building a story map that can help you manage your project in a more concise and efficient manner. Create awesome user stories once you’re done with this section.
• Estimation – Learn estimation techniques for your software development project and the use of story points from the previous section to further improve your estimation.
• VBP – Value-based prioritization is an important feature in the implementation of Agile. The Kano model, IRR, NPV, and many more aspects to be covered here.
• Communication – In the section, you will be able to learn the benefits of active listening and the many roles that communication plays in engaging stakeholders and bringing a team to collaborate, all in an Agile project setup.
• Risk Management – After you’re done with this section, you will be able to understand risks in a clearer manner, and be able to mitigate and respond to risks effectively.
• Soft Skill – Agile project management doesn’t only work on tools and techniques but also relies on the effective personal or soft skills that the project manager or product owner possesses.

What Are the Prerequisites for this Online Training?

Agile Project Management – Learn Agile Methodologies is an intermediate online training course, drafted for people who already have a basic understanding of project management and the many things required while leading or managing a project. As prerequisites, it’s essential that you keep in mind the following criteria and you will be able to reap the benefits of this course in abundance:

• Basic project management knowledge
• Any project management Foundation certification (not necessary but will be a plus if you do)
• Passion to learn about project management
• Keen following of Agile project management
• Basic computer and software handling knowledge

Target Audience

If you want to learn about the different Agile methodologies and you’re in a space where project management is very dear to you, you belong to one of these groups:

• Project Management Professionals
• Project Manager
• Product Owner
• Management Students
• Students aspiring to take up project management
• Project Executives
• Project Sponsor
• Project Specialist
• Production Team Leader
• Managers of other industries

Agile best practices have a very unique ring to it and can be used in many different industries as well: they aren’t restricted to software development alone. The methodologies provide a very flexible and open framework to accommodate projects that are very complex in nature due to various components, including the triple constraints. This ability to expand over different situations and scenarios is the reason that Agile is ever so popular and its implementations are growing rapidly.

There are many practitioners who take this course up to solve legacy issues persisting in their organizations and have never failed in their undertakings, subjected to correct use of the framework and methodologies.