Agile and Scrum Project Management

Course Overview

This course presents and compares some of the most popular project management frameworks. According to the traditional approach, all projects follow the conventional lifecycle of initiation, planning, execution, monitoring and control, and closure. The first part of the course focuses on one example of such type of approach — the so-called Waterfall framework. According to it, activities have a defined start, end, and order and changes to the plan during the execution stage should be avoided. There are, however, certain types of initiatives containing uncertainties that are difficult to structure in a clear manner. Such projects have fewer hard dependencies between deliverables and the best way to order activities is not always obvious beforehand. The next part of the course covers the Agile framework which is suitable for such situations. It is much more flexible than the traditional approach, allowing for changes and uncertainties during the execution phase. Based on Agile principles, SCRUM is a framework for managing complex projects, such as software development. Next, the course covers in detail this framework. It concludes with a comparison of the Agile and Waterfall project management concepts.