Agile Project Management: Scrum, Kanban and Sprints

This course contains the use of artificial intelligence.

Read this first: the six lessons that carry the method itself were recorded for an audience running internal projects, so the cases are hiring, training and reward projects rather than software features. The mechanics are unchanged — board, backlog, prioritisation, sprint, story points, daily meeting, review — because those do not care what you put in the backlog.

I would argue the internal customer is the harder case to learn on. They do not pay you and they cannot leave, which means you have none of the usual leverage when you tell them their request is not in this sprint.

Why the ceremonies stop working

Most teams adopt Agile from the wrong end. The board goes up, the sprints get named, the stand-up appears in everyone's calendar, and two months later the work is exactly what it was before, except now everybody describes it out loud every morning. The reason is always the same. The ceremonies were copied and the decision they exist to force was not. A sprint is not a way of cutting time into pieces. It is a fortnightly moment where somebody has the standing to say "we are not doing this one". Take that away and the board is a to-do list with coloured cards.

What changes when the decision comes first

Prioritisation stops being a conversation about urgency and becomes a comparison of value against effort with a named owner attached. A story that nobody can write acceptance criteria for gets sent back rather than started. Estimates stop being deadlines in disguise and start being a signal that an item is too big. And a goal cycle sitting above the sprints gives you the one sentence that makes all of it possible: not this quarter.

Where this comes from

I have introduced delivery cadences and goal systems in companies that were scaling fast and companies that were rebuilding, including Preply, Wargaming, iDeals and Alfa-Bank. Over 1.6 million people have enrolled in my courses and more than 150,000 professionals have been trained through them. I hold PHRi and SHRM-CP certifications and represent HRCI in more than ten countries.

How the course is built

You start with the mechanics: artefacts, the product owner role, vision, minimum viable product, roadmap, the board, the backlog, prioritisation, story points, release cadence and each of the sprint meetings. Then the product side: product-market fit, portfolio decisions, discovery, squads, north star metric, monetisation and unit economics. Then what the backlog is made of: framing the problem, elicitation, user stories with acceptance criteria, process modelling, traceability and impact analysis when requirements change. Then facilitation, so each ceremony ends in a decision — preparation, running the room, closing with owners, difficult participants, online and large groups. Then the goal cycle above the sprints: launch, running it, closing it, real company cases and tooling. And finally working with leadership, where delivery projects usually lose their sponsor.

What is included

• Lifetime access to all 41 lessons and every future update

• Active instructor support in the question and answer section

• Udemy Certificate of Completion

• Practical assignments you can run on your own backlog

• A section with additional courses, tools and resources

Why start now

A team without a working cadence does not fail loudly, it just delivers slightly less each quarter while everyone stays busy, and that decline never appears as a problem anyone owns. The first board and the first prioritised backlog take an afternoon. Enrol now and build them today.