Agile Project Management For Dummies

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Provider

Coursera
Pricing

Paid Course
Languages

English
Certificate

Certificate Available
Effort

6 weeks, 1 hour a week
Sessions

Self-Paced
Level

Intermediate
Subtitles

English

Found in

Overview

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Most organizations that say they are agile are running the ceremonies and keeping the assumptions. Fixed scope, a plan settled in advance, a team assembled per project, and a status report that describes progress rather than working product. Agility is not the ceremonies. It is a set of values and behaviors about customers, change, teams, and evidence, and the practices only work when those are actually in place. Across four thematic modules and eight focused lessons, you will start with why project management modernized at all, the Agile Manifesto and its principles, the evidence that the approach works better under uncertainty, and what customer focus really requires. You will then cover being agile rather than doing agile, namely the approaches available, the environments that support delivery, the behaviors that enable agility, and the case for permanent teams. From there you will work through planning and execution, covering the product goal and roadmap, release and sprint planning, the working day, and showcasing, inspecting, and adapting. The course closes on project management with agility, covering portfolio, scope and procurement, time and cost, team dynamics, quality and risk, and on ensuring success through foundations, de-scaling, and acting as a change agent. Each lesson opens with two five-minute topic videos followed immediately by applied practice, and every module closes with a hands-on lab, a roleplay, a discussion prompt, and a graded assessment, so nothing stays theoretical for long. Whether you are a project manager moving into an agile environment, a product owner or scrum master, or a leader who keeps hearing that the transformation is not delivering, this course gives you the frameworks, planning artifacts, and worked scenarios that separate agile practice from agile vocabulary. By the end, you will be able to plan a release and a sprint, manage the traditional constraints with agility, and identify what in your organization is preventing it.

Syllabus

Introduction to the Entire Course
- Provides a starting-point assessment that helps learners understand their current readiness across the agile project management skills developed throughout the course. It highlights strengths and development needs across Agile Manifesto values and principles, team environments and behaviors, roadmap, release and sprint planning, showcases and retrospectives, and managing portfolio, contracts, cost, and risk. Results generate a personalized readiness profile and recommended learning path without restricting access to any module.
Understanding Agility and Customer Focus
- Establishes the reasoning behind agile project management and why traditional approaches can struggle when work involves genuine uncertainty. Learners explore the Agile Manifesto, its four value statements and twelve principles, and examine how shorter feedback loops and earlier validation help teams respond to uncertainty. They also develop a practical understanding of genuine customer focus, including identifying the real customer, involving them continuously, and using feedback to guide subsequent work.
Being Agile in Environment and Behavior
- Develops an understanding of the organizational environments, team behaviors, and structures required to make agile practices effective. Learners compare approaches for becoming more agile, assess physical and virtual working environments, and identify conditions that teams can change or need to escalate. They also explore behaviors such as transparency, evidence-based adaptation, collective ownership, and learning from mistakes, while examining the benefits of maintaining permanent teams rather than assembling new teams for each project.
Agile Planning and Execution
- Develops the planning and execution practices needed to turn agile principles into a practical delivery rhythm. Learners define product goals and roadmaps, plan releases and sprints, size and prioritize work, and use sprint goals to maintain focus. They also learn how to coordinate daily work, surface and remove impediments, showcase working products to appropriate stakeholders, capture feedback, and use retrospectives to create meaningful improvements for subsequent sprints.
Managing Constraints and Driving Adoption
- Develops practical approaches for managing traditional project constraints while maintaining agility and supporting organizational adoption. Learners explore portfolio management, scope and procurement, time and cost, quality and risk, and agile contracting under uncertainty. They also examine team dynamics and stakeholder communication, establish foundations for agile adoption, reduce unnecessary organizational dependencies and coordination overhead, and develop approaches for acting as change agents when constraints extend beyond the delivery team.
Course Wrap-Up and Next Steps
- Provides practical reference, reflection, and application resources that help learners consolidate and continue applying the agile project management practices developed throughout the course. These resources reinforce Agile Manifesto values and principles, customer involvement, team environments and behaviors, planning levels, delivery rhythms, and approaches to portfolio, scope, contracts, cost, quality, and risk. The collection also includes an integrative final project in which learners develop an end-to-end delivery plan for a real or representative product, covering the product goal, roadmap, release and sprint planning, delivery rhythm, constraint management, and organizational adoption.