Introduction to Agile : Scrum and Kanban

This lecture defines the Agile project management methodology as an iterative, incremental, and collaborative approach, using a fitness app example to show how a project is broken into smaller sub-projects delivered and adjusted cycle after cycle based on client feedback, unlike a rigid all-at-once delivery.

This lecture illustrates Agile project management with two concrete examples, a road trip planned and adjusted leg by leg, and building an email client feature by feature in short sprints, showing how Agile teams absorb changing priorities without derailing the project.

This lecture presents the origin of Agile in 2001 and the four values of the Agile Manifesto, individuals and interactions, working software, customer collaboration, and responding to change, explaining why these values transformed project management and improved project success rates.

A companion resource with links to the full Agile Manifesto and its twelve principles, useful as a reference to print and keep close at hand to apply the Agile mindset daily.

This lecture explains why Agile is above all a mindset and a philosophy, not just a set of practices and tools, using the Agile pyramid, mindset, values, methodologies, then practices, and a real transformation example where adopting Scrum ceremonies without the underlying mindset failed to deliver results.

This lecture explains traditional Waterfall project management, its sequential phases from requirements to maintenance, and why this rigid model, inherited from military projects in the 1950s, struggles to adapt to changing client needs, illustrated by the failed Bolit software project and Blackberry's decline.

This lecture presents the iron triangle of project management, scope, cost, and time, and shows how Agile flips it compared to Waterfall: fixed time and resources with a variable scope, allowing teams to adapt to client needs without blowing up budgets or deadlines.

This Q&A lecture addresses a common question about how budget and overall project duration are handled in Agile project management when scope is allowed to vary, clarifying how fixed sprint cycles and stable teams keep cost and timeline predictable.

This lecture compares Agile and traditional Waterfall project management using success rate studies showing Agile projects succeed three times more often, and explains how customer collaboration and iterative delivery reduce the risk of delivering a product that misses client needs.

This lecture gives an overview of the main Agile methodologies used to implement Agility in practice, including Scrum, Kanban, and Extreme Programming, setting up the deep dive into Scrum and Kanban that follows in the rest of the course.

A downloadable glossary of the key Scrum project management terms used throughout the course, sprint, daily scrum, product backlog, sprint planning, sprint review, sprint retrospective, planning poker, product owner, scrum master, and user story.

This lecture defines Scrum, the most widely used Agile framework, created by Ken Schwaber and Jeff Sutherland, and gives an overview of how a Scrum team works through sprints, from planning to review and retrospective, to deliver value incrementally.

This lecture details the three roles of a Scrum team, the Product Owner who owns and prioritizes the product backlog, the Scrum Master who coaches the team and removes obstacles, and the developers who turn backlog items into a working product increment each sprint.

This lecture explains the two defining characteristics of a Scrum team, cross-functional and self-managing, and why keeping the team small, generally under ten people, and free of internal hierarchy keeps decision making fast and productive.

This lecture introduces the sprint, the heart of Scrum project management, a fixed-length cycle of one month or less during which the team works toward a fixed sprint goal and fixed quality standards, with only the product owner able to cancel it.

This lecture explains sprint planning, the event that opens each sprint, where the Scrum team answers three questions, why this sprint matters, what can be done, and how the work will get done, to build the sprint backlog.

This lecture presents the daily scrum, or daily stand-up, a fifteen-minute event for developers to synchronize, surface blockers, and adapt their plan for the next 24 hours, with practical techniques such as the three questions method.

This lecture covers the sprint review, the event where the Scrum team demonstrates the work completed during the sprint to stakeholders and clients, gathers feedback, and discusses future adaptations to the product backlog.

This lecture presents the sprint retrospective, the closing Scrum event where the team reflects on how it worked, not on the product itself, to identify what went well, what did not, and what can be improved for the next sprint.

This lecture explains backlog refinement, or grooming, the recurring session where the team clarifies, discusses, and estimates upcoming product backlog items so they are ready to enter the next sprint, an essential Scrum project management practice not covered in the official guide.

This Q&A lecture clarifies the difference between sprint planning, which selects and commits to the work for the current sprint, and backlog refinement, which prepares and clarifies future backlog items ahead of time.

This lecture teaches the standard format for writing a clear, concise user story, as a user I want so that, so that developers, clients, and stakeholders share the same understanding of a feature to be built in Scrum.

This lecture explains planning poker, the most common Scrum estimation technique, using a Fibonacci-based card deck to estimate user stories collectively, with the team voting simultaneously and discussing extreme estimates until reaching agreement.

This lecture presents velocity, the key performance indicator measuring the amount of work a Scrum team completes per sprint, how to calculate it, and why it should never be used to compare different teams against each other.

A complete worked example applying Scrum project management to a library management system project, from forming the Scrum team and running a sprint zero to writing the first product backlog items as user stories.

This lecture presents the four core principles of Kanban: start with what you do now, agree to pursue incremental change, respect current roles and responsibilities, and encourage leadership at all levels, showing why Kanban is easier to implement than a full Scrum transformation.

This lecture presents the five core practices of Kanban project management: visualize the workflow, limit work in progress, measure and manage flow, make process policies explicit, and identify improvement opportunities collaboratively.

This lecture shows how to organize a Kanban board in practice, with columns such as to do, in progress, to test, and done, using a real example on Trello to demonstrate how team members self-assign tasks without top-down task allocation.

This Q&A lecture addresses whether a task can be moved backward on a Kanban board, for example when new information reveals it is not actually finished, clarifying how the visual board reflects the real state of the work at all times.

This lecture compares Scrum and Kanban, framework versus visual process management system, and explains Scrumban, the combination of the two, as well as why some teams prefer Kanban's lighter structure, continuous flow, and fewer meetings.

This lecture walks through a real example of using Kanban to manage customer support incidents, from creating a task when a client reports a bug to moving it through investigation, testing, and validation, showing Kanban applied to process improvement.

This lecture introduces two key Kanban metrics, lead time, the total time from task creation to completion, and cycle time, the time from when a task is picked up to when it is finished, and how they help identify bottlenecks and resource gaps.

This lecture presents the swimlane, a Kanban technique for grouping tasks by category or type of work with color coding, useful for larger teams with multiple disciplines or projects with a high volume of tasks to visualize priorities quickly.

This concluding lecture on Kanban recaps how the visual board improves flow and productivity, and reinforces the core discipline of finishing what you start, limiting work in progress, and breaking large objectives into small, completable tasks.

This Q&A lecture explains who defines and prioritizes the tasks on a Kanban board, clarifying that team members self-organize and pick up tasks from the top of the to-do column rather than being assigned work by a manager.

This Q&A lecture addresses whether Agile project management, Scrum and Kanban, can be applied outside of software development, showing how the same principles of iteration, visualization, and continuous improvement apply to other industries and even personal organization.

A closing message thanking you for completing this Agile project management course, with a reminder of the key concepts covered, the Agile mindset, Scrum roles and events, and the Kanban method, to help you apply them in your own team.

Contact details and social media links to stay in touch with Jamal Lazaar and get support for applying the Agile, Scrum, and Kanban project management techniques covered in this course.

A bonus resource offering access to other courses by Jamal Lazaar on Scrum, project management, and productivity to continue developing your Agile project management skills.

Information on how to claim your certificate of completion for this Agile, Scrum, and Kanban project management course, to showcase your project management skills.