Introduction to the Course

What’s this course about?

This course mainly discusses the Agile process model and its different approaches and techniques. We’ll begin with a comparison of the Waterfall model and the Agile model. After that, we’ll look at the structure of the iterations in the Agile model and how we can start and evaluate an iteration. After that, we’ll learn how to collaborate in teams, conduct daily stand-ups, and conduct workshops in distributed teams.

In the second half of the course, we’ll learn about the different stakeholders that are involved and how we can test and refactor using the Agile process model. We then discuss different units of work along with some user stories. Later on, we’ll look at the estimations of Agile projects and how we can give appropriate estimations in terms of steps, hours, and points.

Furthermore, we’ll discuss different planning approaches so that we can adjust our deadlines efficiently. Then, we’ll learn how to measure the progress of work done by looking at backlogs and using different visual techniques, like burn-down charts and burn-up charts.

We’ll analyze how we can move any organization to the Agile process model from other traditional process models by learning different approaches to the Agile process model like Extreme Programming, SCRUM, DSDM, Smart, and Kanban. Lastly, we’ll examine the issues that arise during conversion from traditional models to Agile models, and their solutions.

There will be some case studies at the end of this course that will help test our concepts.

Intended audience

This course is for anyone who wants to learn and understand different Agile processes. However, project managers can enhance their existing set of skills, since there is a discussion on the different dashboards, which the project managers can use to track employee performance. Developers can also learn different techniques in Agile, such as the very popular pair programming, which can help programmers easily debug any problems found during the development process.