Sprint Planning for Faster Agile Team Delivery

University System of Maryland and University of Maryland, College Park via edX

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Go to class

Provider

edX
Pricing

Free Online Course (Audit)
Languages

English
Certificate

$249.00 Certificate Available
Duration & workload

4 weeks, 2-3 hours a week
Sessions

On-Demand
Level

Advanced
Subtitles

English

Found in

Part of

Agile Project Management

4.6

Overview

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Speed is by far the most sought-after benefit of Agile.

First mover advantages, the economic cost of delays, and the enabling effect on innovation drive the search for speed. Agile offers the fastest means of attaining speed: managing scope. But beyond the hype over scope management, there are key principles of non-traditional task management that ensure the scope chosen is delivered as efficiently as possible.

In this course, you'll learn how to drive speed into any project by selecting and limiting work-in-progress through agile planning and task management. There are two principle roles involved, the scrum master and the product owner. However, the entire scrum team needs to understand the principles behind backlog refinement, sprint planning, and execution throughout the sprint cycle.

In this course we'll show you how to run effective sprint planning meetings that produce a sprint backlog ready to deliver on your sprint goals and release objectives. You'll learn the power of prioritizing backlog items, and why we agile planning and sprint planning isn't just a managed list you work top-down in priority order. Instead, scrum teams commit to achieving goals and work together to ensure the user stories that are highest priority get delivered in this sprint, so the upcoming sprint isn't delayed. This also means understanding your team capacity and how to ensure safe and on-time delivery of the highest items on the product backlog that actually matter to your customer.

While this course will not make you an agile certified practitioner (PMI-ACP), or certified scrum master (CSM), it offers a more fundamental agile certification based on agile principles and how sprint planning enables hyper productivity in industry today. You'll finish this course more than ready to continue your agile journey, which we hope takes you to the next course in the series on “Agile Innovation and Problem Solving Skills.”

Upon successful completion of this course, learners can earn 10 Professional Development Unit (PDU) credits, which are recognized by the Project Management Institute (PMI). PDU credits are essential to those looking to maintain certification as a Project Management Professional (PMP).

Syllabus

Week 1: The first week focuses the discussion on Agile to its primary benefit, Speed, and how to easily calculate and prove its supremacy in benefits of any project management method because of timing impacts and market changes outside a project manager’s control.
Week 2: The second week explores why and how varying scope is the most powerful method to achieve speed; introducing the Exponential Pareto Principle and how to apply it effectively. Perhaps the most important lesson is that not all product backlog items are equal, and in fact, most don't matter at all!
Week 3: The third week dives into second tier methods for achieving speed through sizing, simplicity, and sprints with real-world examples ranging from air and space craft to software. Team members work together to ensure a smooth glide on the burndown chart by actively managing work in process during daily scrum sessions.
Week 4: The last week teaches ground-level techniques to avoid delays, increase speed, and apply a full range of planning, execution, and control techniques that will guarantee 2x or better improvement on traditional projects. This week is essential to producing a winning product backlog and release plan.

Taught by

John Johnson

Reviews

4.4 rating, based on 285 Class Central reviews

4.3 rating at edX based on 28 ratings

Start your review of Sprint Planning for Faster Agile Team Delivery

Breno Queiroz @BrenoQueiroz

Taking the 'Sprint Planning for Faster Agile Team Delivery' course offered by the University System of Maryland via edX was a truly enriching experience. The exceptional quality of the content and the impressive teaching style of the instructors mad…

Taking the 'Sprint Planning for Faster Agile Team Delivery' course offered by the University System of Maryland via edX was a truly enriching experience. The exceptional quality of the content and the impressive teaching style of the instructors made this course an invaluable source of knowledge. The practical and engaging approach adopted throughout the course provided a deep understanding of sprint planning and agile team delivery.

The course materials are extremely well-structured, offering a seamless and coherent learning journey. The clarity in presenting concepts, coupled with practical examples and case studies, made the assimilation of the content a highly effective experience. Additionally, the course's interactivity and the availability of additional resources significantly contributed to consolidating the acquired knowledge.

I would like to highlight the excellence of the instructors, who demonstrated a profound understanding of the subject and remarkable skill in conveying information in an accessible and motivating manner. This course not only met but exceeded my expectations, providing valuable insights that will undoubtedly positively impact how I approach sprint planning in my professional practice.

I highly recommend this course to anyone looking to enhance their skills in Agile Team Delivery. It is a unique opportunity to learn from renowned experts and elevate your understanding of sprint planning to a higher level. Congratulations to the University System of Maryland and edX for delivering such an exceptional learning experience!
Moises Cepeda @Mcepeda

This course offers a clear and practical approach to agile sprint planning. It effectively covers key concepts such as backlog prioritization, sprint goals, and limiting work-in-progress. The lessons are well-structured, and the weekly quizzes help reinforce learning. Ideal for those looking to improve their agile planning skills and speed up project delivery.
Anonymous

Taking the 'Sprint Planning for Faster Agile Team Delivery' course offered by the University System of Maryland via edX was a truly enriching experience. The exceptional quality of the content and the impressive teaching style of the instructors mad…

Taking the 'Sprint Planning for Faster Agile Team Delivery' course offered by the University System of Maryland via edX was a truly enriching experience. The exceptional quality of the content and the impressive teaching style of the instructors made this course an invaluable source of knowledge. The practical and engaging approach adopted throughout the course provided a deep understanding of sprint planning and agile team delivery.

The course materials are extremely well-structured, offering a seamless and coherent learning journey. The clarity in presenting concepts, coupled with practical examples and case studies, made the assimilation of the content a highly effective experience. Additionally, the course's interactivity and the availability of additional resources significantly contributed to consolidating the acquired knowledge.

I would like to highlight the excellence of the instructors, who demonstrated a profound understanding of the subject and remarkable skill in conveying information in an accessible and motivating manner. This course not only met but exceeded my expectations, providing valuable insights that will undoubtedly positively impact how I approach sprint planning in my professional practice.

I highly recommend this course to anyone looking to enhance their skills in Agile Team Delivery. It is a unique opportunity to learn from renowned experts and elevate your understanding of sprint planning to a higher level. Congratulations to the University System of Maryland and edX for delivering such an exceptional learning experience!
Anonymous

There is a lot of good material, mostly towards the end of the course. However, there is supposed to be bonus material for verified students and only the first course in the series has that material and this one does not.

Also a lot of the questions on the final tests I think are unfair (asking about specifics not covered), incorrectly (I answered exactly as found in the notes but was marked wrong), poorly worded/ambiguous, and lacking in quality e.g. major typos or boilerplate text that should have been removed but wasn't.

Overall I found some value in the class but think it wasn't as good as I expected and certainly comes across as a rush job by UMD.
Anonymous

You don't get a degree. You already know that. What you gain are very useful insights around Agile planning and more specifically some of the underlying concepts.
You'll need to reflect on the concepts in order to maximize learning. Moreover you'll need to get one or more books from the suggested ones to deepen your understandings.
If you have experience in fast-paced environments (eg . s/w development) you'll get the content easily.

Overall a nice module.

I would like to see more content on Agile estimating though.
Gurumahesh G

The UMD's "Sprint Planning" course on edX was exceptional. High-quality content and engaging instructors made it a goldmine for Agile learners. Clear explanations with real-world examples fostered a deep understanding of sprint planning in Agile delivery. The course's interactivity and resources solidified the knowledge. I highly recommend it for anyone looking to boost their Agile skills.
Anonymous

The quiz and test questions are poorly written. The final exam test questions twisted content and used terminology that was not introduced in the content used poor grammar & had misspelled words. This was more prevalent in the final exam. I felt like the final was purposely written to be confusing. I did well on all the in-course assessments but struggled in the final.
Anonymous

Excellent course. Added a lot to my knowledge. I used to work using waterfall and lean management. Not knowing much of Agile and worried how to implement it efficiently. The concept and how to apply it was clear and easily explained. I recommend this course for anyone new to Agile and want to expand his/her horizon professionally and even personally.
Anonymous

I enjoyed the course more than I'd expected, and look forward to finding ways to incorporate more speed into my team's processes. I can also see that I have a lot to learn. (I fall into the classification of "unofficial project manager" or "default…

I enjoyed the course more than I'd expected, and look forward to finding ways to incorporate more speed into my team's processes. I can also see that I have a lot to learn. (I fall into the classification of "unofficial project manager" or "default project manager", where I have to run projects in addition to being a developer on them.)

A few things I'd like to see improved:

1) reduce the number of typographical and grammatical errors. The errors are distracting sometimes, and are inappropriate for a center for excellence.

2) the intro music is recorded much louder than the presenter. The levels should match. As it is, I have to make sure to remember to mute the video until the presenter starts to speak, otherwise the music is jarring because I have to have the volume turned up nearly all the way to hear the lecture.

3) I'd like to see real-world examples and maybe some exercises to help solidify the lecture material.

4) Verified students are supposed to receive additional "bonus" lectures, but that only happened for the first week of the first course. This course offered no such bonus lectures, though it did have sections for them.

5) Some of the Knowledge Check questions look like they were done in a hurry. In addition to the issues in (1) above, quite a few still had the boilerplate text (e.g., "Enter question text here") meant for the instructor writing the question, not for the student taking the course. Several had identical answer choices.

But, even with those issues, I still received value for my time and money, and the material will surely help improve my project management skills.
Anonymous

Sprint Planning for Faster Agile Team Delivery was informative and provided a high-level view of sprint planning utilizing multiple methods. The course would benefit from a couple of case studies as a conclusion to help bring the various topics into action and help the learner put them all together.
Anonymous

I liked this course itself so much, the explanations and summaries was helpful enough. I learned many new things and can not wait to practice them more in future. One thing I found hard was the last exams, they were too detailed in my opinion. Thank you.
Anonymous

Overall the class was very helpful. I learned a lot of about speed and the planning of backlog with 50/50 method. I thought the information covered for ROI and capability ROI didn't give enough examples and so those questions I got incorrect.
Anonymous

Mr. Johnson really knows how to out line the lessons, very knowledgeable at the subjects. In over all; great course, I'm glad I'm learning new skill to further improve myself and the organization that I work for.
Anonymous

The course, instructor and materials were well organized. The only suggestion for improvement is to refine the transcript and written materials to be accurately worded vs the audio and to correct typographical errors.
Anonymous

Taking this course has been a great opportunity for me to gain knowledge regarding agile methodologies and principles, develop time management skills to apply both in my professional and personal life!
Anonymous

Great courses, maybe can be improved with giving more exercises and that's allow to more proctice the agile methodology and apply more and more to make the project faster
Anonymous

Well thought out. Each module is just the right size and through. Videos quickly get to heart of the topics.
Anonymous

Good course, since it is distributed worldwide, it would be good if it was also possible to do it in Spanish, for all that audience, who, although they live in Latin America, as is my case, here in Chile, courses can be given in Spanish.
Subimal Banerjee

I have thoroughly enjoyed this course. "Sprint Planning for Faster Agile Team Delivery" by John Johnson through the University System of Maryland on EdX is a highly valuable course for anyone looking to enhance their Agile project management skill…

I have thoroughly enjoyed this course.

"Sprint Planning for Faster Agile Team Delivery" by John Johnson through the University System of Maryland on EdX is a highly valuable course for anyone looking to enhance their Agile project management skills. John Johnson's expertise shines through as he guides learners through the intricacies of sprint planning, enabling teams to achieve faster and more efficient project delivery.

This course offers a well-structured curriculum that covers essential concepts and practical strategies for successful sprint planning. John's engaging teaching style keeps you thoroughly engaged, and the course materials are comprehensive and easy to follow.

Whether you're a seasoned Agile practitioner or new to the methodology, this course provides actionable insights that can be applied immediately to improve your team's productivity and delivery speed. The real-world examples and case studies further enhance the learning experience, making it a must-take course for Agile enthusiasts.

In conclusion, "Sprint Planning for Faster Agile Team Delivery" is an excellent investment of your time, offering valuable knowledge and skills to propel your Agile projects to success. Highly recommended!
Serena Bonini @serenabonini

Really great course with interesting examples on how to plan for faster agile team delivery. great to see building from the previous course. the examples given and external links were very useful. there were some spelling mistakes and omitted words that were distracting (especially on quizzes) and one time there was a quiz question that pertained to the next section.