What You Will Learn From These Two Project Plans
- Write a complete product backlog: fourteen user stories, sized in points and ordered by customer value rather than by which part of the system they belong to
- Plan a first sprint with no velocity to plan from, draw the ideal burndown before the sprint starts, and read the drift on the day it appears rather than at review
- Re-cut a release when a dependency you do not control fails to arrive, cutting the delivery channel instead of the customer outcome
- Forecast a launch date from measured velocity instead of optimism, and say honestly how thin a two-sprint average really is
- Write a project charter and a full traditional project plan: stakeholders, budget, schedule, quality and risk, filled in rather than described
- Run your own project in the included workbook, where entering story points and completion days computes the burndown, the velocity and the forecast for you
Requirements
- You should already know the vocabulary: what a sprint is, what a backlog is, what a project charter is. Nothing here is defined for you
- No software required. Everything is done in a spreadsheet, and the spreadsheet comes with the course
- No certification, methodology or framework prerequisite. If you have run a project of any size, in any method, you have enough
- Bring a real project if you have one. The blank workbook is built to take it
What This Free Traditional and Agile Planning Course Covers
Most project management courses explain what a backlog is. This one shows you a finished one. Fourteen user stories, sized in points and ordered by customer value. Then the sprint that was planned from it, the burndown that drifted, the dependency that failed to arrive, and the decision the product owner had to make when the launch date would not move.
Then it does the same thing again the traditional way: a problem statement, a project charter, and a full project plan for a public library upgrading twenty-five computers. Two complete plans, and neither one stops halfway.
You have probably met the other kind of example. It shows three rows of a backlog and says you get the idea. It describes a burndown chart rather than drawing one. It plans a project and never runs it, which skips the only part that was ever difficult. Every artefact here is finished, and every number can be checked while you watch.
The two examples are independent, so watch either first, or only the one you need. It runs about forty-three minutes across thirteen short lectures, and you leave with a worked PDF of the whole agile example and a blank workbook with every formula still live. Enter your story points and the day each item closed, and the burndown, the velocity and the launch forecast calculate themselves.
This Course Includes
- 13 on-demand lectures
- 42 min of video
- Free access, no payment required
- Self-paced, learn on your own schedule
- A worked PDF of the whole agile example, page by page
- A blank workbook with every formula live, for your own project
- Worth 0.50 PDUs toward PMI recertification, see the PDU claiming guide
Who This Course Is For
- Project managers and scrum masters who know the theory and have never seen a complete, finished plan end to end
- Anyone who has read a project management book and wondered what the paperwork actually looks like when somebody fills it in
- People who work in one method and are about to be handed the other, shown in an agile shape and a traditional shape
- Team leads and analysts who inherited the planning without inheriting the training, and need a template they can put a real project into this week
Course Curriculum
What the course assumes you already know, and what it shows you instead
The two examples, which one you actually need, and which half carries the downloads
Five sites, six weeks, three sprints, and a launch date that cannot move because the marketing is already printed
Fourteen user stories written, sized in points and ordered by customer value, finished rather than sampled
Committing a first sprint with no history to plan from, and why capacity is not velocity
The burndown goes flat while three stories sit open, and the warning arrives eight days before anyone acts on it
A dependency nobody controls fails to arrive and the date will not move. What gets cut, and what is refused
Forecasting a launch date from measured velocity, and saying honestly how thin a two-sprint average is
The retro log, and the blank workbook you put your own project into
The problem written down before anyone proposes a solution: a public library running twenty-five ageing computers
Sponsor, scope, budget and authority, filled in rather than described
The full traditional plan: stakeholders, schedule, cost, quality and risk
Where to take the two plans next
Related Free Courses
- Introduction to Practical Project Management, the theory behind the paperwork, across all ten knowledge areas
- Agile and Scrum: The Absolute Beginner's Guide, the Agile and Scrum vocabulary this course assumes you already have
- 13 on-demand lectures
- 42 min of video
- Free access
- Self-paced
- 0.50 PDUs