The Simplest Guide to Agile, including Lean, Kanban & Scrum

Explore how lean and kanban feed into agile, using visualization and work-in-progress limits to deliver small batches and adapt to change with scrum, xp, christel, and other frameworks.

The agile manifesto born from a 2001 Utah gathering reframes software development around the four values: individuals and interactions, working software, customer collaboration, and responding to change, over heavy processes.

Explain how user stories start with a user role, describe an action, and state the business value, linking activities to benefits to meet user needs in agile work.

The product backlog acts as the inventory of user stories awaiting processing in the technology work stream, prioritized for the development team to turn into code.

Navigate four project lifecycles—predictive, incremental, and agile among them—managing a backlog of user stories through a value stream to deliver an end product, weighing advantages and disadvantages.

Capture all requirements through a single upfront gathering effort with business stakeholders. Plan, execute, monitor, and deliver a single end product on time within budget in a predictive lifecycle.

Master iterative lifecycles in agile, guiding user stories through a value stream until they meet acceptance criteria, as teams continuously review, revise, and redeploy to deliver a customer-focused, working product.

Prioritize a subset of high-value user stories, push them through the value stream in an incremental lifecycle, and deliver a quick working prototype to test market reception.

Examine how the agile lifecycle combines iteration-based and flow-based approaches to deliver fast, correct products, using time boxes, capacity limits, and value streams.

Map project life cycles on a continuum by evaluating degree of change and delivery frequency, then switch between predictive, incremental, iterative, adaptive, or agile approaches as needs evolve.

Explore how hybrid lifecycles blend agile and predictive approaches to optimize value from concept to product, adapting to scope and regulatory needs across projects.

The product owner owns the product backlog, prioritizes user stories by business value, and ensures functional and non functional requirements drive value through the agile value stream.

Adopt an agile mindset grounded in four values and the twelve principles of the Agile Manifesto, promoting iterative development, collaboration, and rapid delivery aligned with customer needs and company goals.

Practice servant leadership within agile by uplifting the team, removing obstacles, and providing the information, resources, and emotional intelligence needed to deliver value to customers.

Discover how an agile team delivers value by transforming user stories into tested, working software, with a product owner guiding a cross functional group and a servant leader facilitating collaboration.

Project managers in agile teams act as facilitators, leading with humility and servant leadership, coordinating self-organized cross-functional teams with a product owner and transparent, reliable work.

Explore agile concepts through Project Mortar and Pestle, a home-cooked food app MVP, outlining lean, kanban, and scrum principles from cuisine listings to ratings.

Explore project Mortar and Pestel by drones to illustrate how agile methods, including Lean, Kanban, and Scrum, manage high risk, uncertainties, and autonomous drone delivery with real-time app updates.

Learn how iteration serves as the heartbeat of Agile, turning prioritized product backlog items into a committed, two-week iteration backlog that delivers a valuable, working product increment.

Teams demonstrate built features to product owners and stakeholders to validate usefulness and correctness against customer expectations, enabling frequent feedback and updated user stories for the next iteration.

Hold an iteration retrospective to capture lessons learned and identify improvements for the next iteration, led by the Scrum Master, in a 30–40 minute time-boxed session.

Perform 15-minute daily stand-ups with all team members to share progress and daily activities. Use the Kanban board to discuss progress and identify bottlenecks in the iteration.

Explore how MVP and MMP differ, using a seismograph analogy to show validating ideas quickly, learning, and delivering market-ready value through MMF.

Observe how the mortar and pestle app evolves from a crude MVP to a refined map and final product, emphasizing iterative design, testing, and delivering value with drone delivery.

Explain Scrum as a lightweight agile framework of three roles, five events, and three artifacts, featuring the product owner, Scrum Master, and Scrum team, plus sprint planning and backlog artifacts.

Define and apply a clear, specific definition of done to deliver high-quality, shippable product increments at the end of each sprint, meeting functionality, testing, review, documentation, and customer feedback criteria.

Explore how product owners estimate with story points to prioritize the backlog and plan iterations, using the Fibonacci sequence and planning poker for relative size and effort.

Velocity measures how much work a team can complete in an iteration by summing completed story points, helping predict future capacity and spot bottlenecks for self-managed improvement.

Implement scrum in ten steps by forming the product owner, the team, and the Scrum master, and maintaining a living backlog. Use sprint planning, standups, and reviews to boost velocity.

Learn how to apply scrum to the mortar and pestle app project, detailing product owner, scrum master, developers, and testers, with sprint planning, daily standups, reviews, and retrospectives.

Assemble a high-performing agile team by selecting a product owner, two developers, two testers, and a scrum master, detailing roles, skills, and collaboration for the mortar and pestle project.

Brainstorm to shape a product vision, gather surveys, interviews, and analytics, and build an initial product backlog with prioritized features and user stories for the minimum viable product.

Refine and estimate the product backlog within the Scrum framework by breaking features into user stories, sizing with Fibonacci, and prioritizing value under the product owner.

Learn how to estimate user stories with story points using Fibonacci numbers, assign relative sizing across feature sets, and prioritize a product backlog for Scrum sprint planning.

Plan the upcoming sprint by selecting items from the product backlog for the sprint backlog, set a sprint goal, and estimate with story points to match velocity.

Make work visible with scrum boards and kanban boards that show who works on what and task duration; track progress from todo to done and promote accountability.

Demonstrate the sprint's completed work to the product owner, stakeholders, and customers, showcasing features that meet the definition of done, including registration, search, orders, payment, and push notifications.

Join the sprint retrospective to review miscommunications, prioritization issues, and what worked, then agree on improvements for the next sprint, fostering collaboration and continuous improvement.

Wrap up the first sprint by delivering core user registration, login, and account management features, showcasing a working increment and preparing for the next sprint with backlog grooming.

Celebrate completing this course on agile methods by applying lean, Combine, and Scrum lessons to daily work, while continuing learning and seeking opportunities for personal and professional growth.