Agile Scrum Fundamentals
The course teaches Agile principles, the Scrum framework, Kanban basics, user‑story creation, estimation, and sprint planning, enabling teams to apply these practices effectively in real projects.
Who Should Take This
It is designed for team members, new Scrum Masters, and product owners who have basic project experience and want to deepen their understanding of Agile values and Scrum mechanics. Learners aim to lead or contribute to a single‑team sprint cycle with confidence and practical skill.
What's Included in AccelaStudy® AI
Adaptive Knowledge Graph
Practice Questions
Lesson Modules
Console Simulator Labs
Exam Tips & Strategy
20 Activity Formats
Course Outline
64 learning goals
1
Agile Principles and Manifesto
4 topics
The Agile Manifesto
- State the four values of the Agile Manifesto and explain how each value prioritizes adaptive collaboration over rigid process adherence.
- Describe the twelve principles behind the Agile Manifesto and categorize them by theme: customer satisfaction, embracing change, frequent delivery, collaboration, and sustainable pace.
- Evaluate team behaviors and organizational practices against the Agile Manifesto values and identify specific areas where actions contradict stated agile principles.
Empirical Process Control
- Define empirical process control and describe its three pillars (transparency, inspection, adaptation) and how they underpin the Scrum framework.
- Apply empirical process thinking to identify situations where upfront planning should be replaced by iterative learning based on feedback from working software.
Agile vs. Traditional Approaches
- Describe the key differences between Waterfall, iterative, and Agile development approaches in terms of planning horizon, feedback loops, and change management.
- Analyze project characteristics (requirements stability, domain complexity, team distribution, regulatory constraints) to determine when Agile approaches are more appropriate than plan-driven methods.
Agile Mindset and Culture
- Describe the characteristics of an agile mindset including comfort with ambiguity, bias toward action, willingness to experiment, and learning from failure.
- Apply growth mindset principles to reframe sprint failures as learning opportunities and create psychological safety for the team to experiment and surface problems early.
2
Scrum Framework
3 topics
Scrum Roles and Accountabilities
- Describe the three Scrum accountabilities (Scrum Master, Product Owner, Developers) and explain the specific responsibilities and decision authority of each role.
- Explain the Product Owner's responsibility for maximizing value through backlog ordering, stakeholder management, and clear communication of the Product Goal.
- Apply the Scrum Master's servant-leadership responsibilities to facilitate events, remove impediments, and coach the team on Scrum practices without directing their work.
- Analyze common role dysfunctions (absent Product Owner, command-and-control Scrum Master, siloed developers) and recommend corrective actions aligned with Scrum principles.
- Apply self-management principles to enable the Development Team to decide how to organize their work, assign tasks, and make technical decisions without external direction.
Scrum Events
- Describe the five Scrum events (Sprint, Sprint Planning, Daily Scrum, Sprint Review, Sprint Retrospective) including their purpose, time-box, participants, and expected outputs.
- Apply Sprint Planning to collaboratively select Product Backlog items, define a Sprint Goal, and create a Sprint Backlog that the Development Team forecasts it can complete.
- Apply effective Daily Scrum facilitation to keep the event focused on progress toward the Sprint Goal, surface impediments, and enable team self-organization.
- Apply Sprint Review techniques to demonstrate the Increment to stakeholders, gather feedback, and collaboratively update the Product Backlog based on new insights.
- Analyze common Scrum event anti-patterns (status-report Daily Scrums, demo-only Reviews, blame-focused Retrospectives) and propose facilitation improvements.
Scrum Artifacts and Commitments
- Describe the three Scrum artifacts (Product Backlog, Sprint Backlog, Increment) and their associated commitments (Product Goal, Sprint Goal, Definition of Done).
- Apply a well-crafted Definition of Done to ensure every Increment meets quality standards and is potentially releasable without additional work.
- Evaluate the maturity of a team's Definition of Done and recommend expansions (automated testing, code review, deployment) that increase release confidence.
- Apply Product Backlog ordering techniques based on value, risk, dependencies, and learning to ensure the most impactful items are at the top of the backlog.
3
Kanban Method
5 topics
Kanban Principles and Practices
- Describe the six core Kanban practices (visualize workflow, limit WIP, manage flow, make policies explicit, implement feedback loops, improve collaboratively) and their purpose.
- Apply WIP limits to a Kanban board to expose bottlenecks and force the team to finish work in progress before starting new items.
- Analyze the effect of WIP limit changes on cycle time and throughput and recommend adjustments based on cumulative flow diagram patterns.
Kanban Board Design
- Describe the elements of a Kanban board including columns, swimlanes, card design, WIP limits, blocked indicators, and policies per column.
- Apply Kanban board design to map a team's existing workflow including explicit done criteria for each column transition and appropriate WIP limits per stage.
Kanban Flow Metrics
- Define cycle time, lead time, throughput, and work item age and explain how each metric provides insight into the team's delivery performance.
- Apply cumulative flow diagrams to identify bottlenecks, growing queues, and starvation in the workflow and interpret the visual patterns for corrective action.
Service Level Expectations
- Describe service level expectations (SLEs) in Kanban and explain how they use historical cycle time data to set probabilistic delivery forecasts rather than fixed deadlines.
- Apply Monte Carlo simulation concepts to generate probabilistic delivery forecasts based on throughput data and communicate expected completion dates with confidence levels.
Scrum vs. Kanban Comparison
- Analyze the differences between Scrum and Kanban in terms of cadence, roles, planning approach, and change philosophy and identify scenarios where each is more effective.
4
User Stories and Estimation
5 topics
Writing Effective User Stories
- Describe the user story format (As a [role], I want [capability], So that [benefit]) and explain how the three Cs (Card, Conversation, Confirmation) guide story usage.
- Apply the INVEST criteria (Independent, Negotiable, Valuable, Estimable, Small, Testable) to evaluate and improve the quality of user stories.
- Apply acceptance criteria writing techniques (Given-When-Then format, checklist format) to define clear, testable conditions of satisfaction for user stories.
Story Splitting and Decomposition
- Describe common story splitting patterns (by workflow steps, by business rules, by data variations, by interface, by operation) and when each pattern applies.
- Apply story splitting to break an epic or large user story into independently deliverable slices that each provide user value while fitting within a single sprint.
- Analyze a large feature request to identify the thinnest possible vertical slice that validates the core assumption and can be delivered as a meaningful Increment.
Estimation Techniques
- Describe relative estimation techniques (story points, T-shirt sizing, bucket system) and explain why relative estimation is preferred over absolute hour-based estimates in Agile.
- Apply Planning Poker to collaboratively estimate user stories, using the discussion of differing estimates to uncover hidden complexity and shared understanding.
- Analyze the relationship between story point estimates and actual cycle time to identify estimation biases and calibrate the team's estimation accuracy over multiple sprints.
Backlog Refinement
- Describe the purpose and activities of backlog refinement including story clarification, acceptance criteria review, estimation, and ordering adjustments.
- Apply backlog refinement practices to maintain a ready backlog with at least two sprints of estimated, well-defined stories available for Sprint Planning.
User Story Mapping
- Describe the user story mapping technique and explain how arranging stories in a two-dimensional map (user activities vs. priority) reveals the backbone of a product.
- Apply user story mapping to identify minimum viable product (MVP) release slices by drawing horizontal lines across the story map that represent releasable increments.
5
Sprint Planning and Execution
4 topics
Sprint Goal and Capacity Planning
- Describe how to formulate an effective Sprint Goal that provides focus, flexibility, and a coherent objective for the Development Team's work during the Sprint.
- Apply capacity planning techniques to determine how much work the team can commit to in a Sprint, accounting for team size, availability, and historical velocity.
- Apply task decomposition to break Sprint Backlog items into actionable tasks of approximately one day or less that the team can track on a task board.
Sprint Tracking and Visualization
- Describe burndown charts, burnup charts, and sprint task boards and explain how each visualization helps the team inspect progress toward the Sprint Goal.
- Apply burndown chart interpretation to identify sprint risks (scope creep, stalled progress, late integration) and recommend mid-sprint corrective actions.
Impediment Management
- Describe the Scrum Master's role in identifying, tracking, and removing impediments that block the team's progress during a Sprint.
- Apply impediment escalation strategies to resolve blockers that the team cannot address independently, distinguishing between team-level and organizational impediments.
Sprint Scope and Goal Protection
- Describe how the Sprint Goal provides flexibility for scope negotiation during the Sprint while protecting the team from unrelated work interruptions.
- Apply techniques for handling mid-sprint change requests including evaluating urgency, negotiating scope trade-offs with the Product Owner, and deciding whether to cancel a Sprint.
- Analyze the conditions under which a Sprint should be cancelled and evaluate the organizational and team impact of Sprint cancellation versus completing a compromised Sprint.
6
Agile Metrics and Continuous Improvement
3 topics
Velocity and Flow Metrics
- Define velocity, describe how it is calculated from completed story points per sprint, and explain why velocity should be used for forecasting rather than performance evaluation.
- Apply velocity trends to forecast release dates using range-based predictions (optimistic, likely, pessimistic) rather than single-point estimates.
- Analyze the dangers of using velocity as a cross-team comparison metric or performance target and explain how this misuse undermines estimation honesty and team morale.
Retrospective Facilitation
- Describe common retrospective formats (Start-Stop-Continue, 4Ls, Sailboat, Mad-Sad-Glad, Timeline) and explain when each format is most effective.
- Apply retrospective facilitation techniques to generate actionable improvement items, secure team commitment, and track follow-through across sprints.
- Evaluate the effectiveness of a team's retrospective practice by assessing whether improvement actions are specific, time-bound, and consistently implemented across sprints.
Quality and Outcome Metrics
- Describe outcome-oriented Agile metrics including escaped defects, customer satisfaction scores, team happiness index, and value delivered per sprint.
- Analyze a team's metric dashboard to distinguish between vanity metrics (activity-based) and actionable metrics (outcome-based) and recommend a balanced measurement approach.
Scope
Included Topics
- Agile principles and values: the four values and twelve principles of the Agile Manifesto, iterative and incremental development, empirical process control, and the mindset shift from plan-driven to adaptive approaches.
- Scrum framework: the three roles (Scrum Master, Product Owner, Developers), five events (Sprint, Sprint Planning, Daily Scrum, Sprint Review, Sprint Retrospective), and three artifacts (Product Backlog, Sprint Backlog, Increment) with their commitments (Product Goal, Sprint Goal, Definition of Done).
- Kanban method: core principles (visualize workflow, limit WIP, manage flow, make policies explicit, implement feedback loops, improve collaboratively), Kanban boards, cumulative flow diagrams, and cycle time analysis.
- User stories and estimation: user story format (As a... I want... So that...), acceptance criteria, INVEST criteria, story splitting techniques, relative estimation (story points, T-shirt sizing), Planning Poker, and backlog refinement.
- Sprint planning and execution: capacity planning, sprint goal formulation, task breakdown, daily coordination, impediment removal, burndown and burnup charts, velocity tracking, and sprint review/retrospective facilitation.
- Agile metrics and continuous improvement: velocity, cycle time, lead time, throughput, escaped defects, team happiness index, retrospective formats (Start-Stop-Continue, 4Ls, Sailboat), and Kaizen practices.
Not Covered
- Scaled Agile frameworks (SAFe, LeSS, Nexus, Spotify model) and enterprise-level agile transformation.
- Specific tool training for Jira, Azure DevOps, Trello, Asana, Monday.com, or any project management software.
- Agile contracting, procurement, and vendor management approaches.
- Extreme Programming (XP) technical practices in depth (pair programming, TDD, CI/CD) beyond brief mentions as complementary practices.
- Organizational change management, agile coaching certification paths, and management-level transformation strategies.
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