Agile Process, Project, and Program Controls
University of Maryland, College Park via Coursera
-
68
-
- Write review
Overview
Coursera Flash Sale
40% Off Coursera Plus for 3 Months!
Grab it
Agile provides greater opportunities for control and risk management and offers unique benefits that traditional methods miss. As a project manager or program manager the emphasis should always be on delivering value and benefits. With complex projects these demand increase and knowing you've delivered value can be difficult for even those with years of project management experience.
However, in this course we'll cover the agile practices and management skills necessary to delivery value with certainty, such as:
1. Transparency with daily standup meetings discussing work status, risk, and pace.
2. How a clear definition of done drives acceptance by all key stakeholders.
3. Measuring performance and benefits of working solutions during project delivery.
4. Iteratively testing to gain authentic feedback on solution requirements and stability.
5. Regular retrospectives that drive continuous improvement into the team.
6. How agile project management ensures success and uniquely tackles business risk
7. Quality management principles to reduce project risk and technical debt
8. Manage and reduce interdependencies between project teams to scale programs at speed
9. Making the business case for agile contracts and how they ensure deliverables achieve business outcomes and objectives
In this course, you will learn how these levers of control far exceed traditional management methods of earned value management (EVM), which relies on estimates and no changes in scope. We'll discuss how the key to unlocking the control potential is to learn what to manage, and how to measure it. It's no longer just ensure the deliverables are delivered on-time and under-budget.
This shift to benefits management is in-line with how the PMBOK is changing to integrate program management concerns into project management with an emphasis on value and not just delivery of scope specifications. The Agile revolution requires program managers to embrace this type of continuing education to advance and grow in your project management career.
So how do programs ensure smooth project delivery?
This answer is bottoms-up with different controls at each level of management, separating the concerns between the program, the individual projects, and the team processes. For teams, it’s a focus on team velocity and how to ensure its measurement is useful for diagnosing internal and external productivity constraints. For the project, the focus is on how to integrate teams of teams on related projects and ensure stead delivery of product roadmaps. For the program, the focus is on what capabilities are delivered and how to measure return on investment (ROI) capabilities provide. This also requires understanding your portfolio and contracting processes.
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 agile leadership is applied in industry today. You'll finish this course more than ready to continue your agile journey, which we hope either completes your certificate with us or takes you to one of our most popular courses in the series, "Agile Leadership Principles and Practices."
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 Anti-Fragile Approach
- In week one, we dive right into what leadership means—defining it, discussing what makes someone a leader, exploring the science behind it, and looking at different styles, from Primal and Team Leadership to Situational and Transformational models.
- Week 2: Agile Project Controls
- In week two, we’ll look at why servant leadership works best—drawing on old philosophies and modern psychology to show how empowering teams is key. We’ll also explore how gamification and play help everyone on Agile teams contribute and perform at their best.
- Week 3: Agile Programs and Portfolios
- In week three, we’ll dig into how we make decisions—including common biases—and how emotional intelligence and mindfulness can help us improve by taking a step back. We’ll also cover negotiation styles and techniques, encouraging you to reflect on your approach to conflict and different ways of handling challenges.
- Week 4: Agile Organizations
- The final week focuses on putting these lessons into practice with real-world approaches and tools for managing and facilitating decisions, interactions, and environments for optimal team performance
- Course Final
- Now it’s time to put your new knowledge to the test! =
Taught by
John Johnson
Tags
Reviews
2.0 rating, based on 2 Class Central reviews
Showing Class Central Sort
-
The reason I only gave it two stars is because, while the information in the course was good and educational, the way the rest of it was done was extremely annoying. Instead of just having a video explaining everything and then having a quiz, it was…
-
Prof. Johnson is an excellent lecturer, and I enjoy listening to his course lectures, but unfortunately, I was disappointed in the contents of Course 5. Having taken the entire Specialization from Course 1 to 5, I felt Course 5 basically repeated the contents presented from earlier Courses, mainly 1 to 3. While reviewing and referring back to previously taught materials is good, in this case, as this Course is a part of the Specialization series, I believe it would have been beneficial if this Course presented new topics and contents that built on the previous lectures rather than simply repeating them.