Course profile · Project Management

Project Management: Two Real Plans, Traditional and Agile

A charter, a backlog and a burndown, built end to end. Two complete plans, nothing skipped, and the workbook you keep.

Free42 min13 lessonsIntermediate

Outcome-focused

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

About this course

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 42 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.

Is this for you?

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

Before you start

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

Inside the course · 13 lessons

Course outline

0.1 Welcome, and What This Course Actually Is

What the course assumes you already know, and what it shows you instead

0.2 What Is in the Course

The two examples, which one you actually need, and which half carries the downloads

1.1 The Project, the Team, and the Date

Five sites, six weeks, three sprints, and a launch date that cannot move because the marketing is already printed

1.2 Building the Backlog in One Pass

Fourteen user stories written, sized in points and ordered by customer value, finished rather than sampled

1.3 Planning Sprint One With No Velocity

Committing a first sprint with no history to plan from, and why capacity is not velocity

1.4 Sprint One, and What the Burndown Said

The burndown goes flat while three stories sit open, and the warning arrives eight days before anyone acts on it

1.5 The Blocker, and Re-cutting the Release

A dependency nobody controls fails to arrive and the date will not move. What gets cut, and what is refused

1.6 Sprint Two, Velocity, and the Forecast

Forecasting a launch date from measured velocity, and saying honestly how thin a two-sprint average is

1.7 The Retro, and the Workbook You Keep

The retro log, and the blank workbook you put your own project into

2.1 Problem Statement

The problem written down before anyone proposes a solution: a public library running twenty-five ageing computers

2.2 Project Charter

Sponsor, scope, budget and authority, filled in rather than described

2.3 Project Plan

The full traditional plan: stakeholders, schedule, cost, quality and risk

3.1 Final Word

Where to take the two plans next

Included materials

PDU information

This course lists 0.50 PDU. Review PDU guidance before claiming credit.

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