Speaker 1: Welcome to this course on applying Agile project management methodologies to digital media projects. This is a good course for those new to Agile and for digital media team members and managers looking for ways to improve collaboration and inspire teams. This course consists of seven lessons. Lesson one provides a brief introduction to Agile with the following lessons providing additional detail on various methods used in Agile projects including the backlog, sprint planning, scrum, sprint review meetings, and sprint retrospectives. There is so much often conflicting information regarding Agile out there. A resource I recommend is the Agile Alliance. Their website agilealliance.org has great information on Agile's history, Agile events, and Agile resources. To summarize information from their What is Agile link, in the 1990s, several groups of developers were working on new methodologies that focused on collaboration between developers and business experts. Prior to this time, developers rarely, if ever, worked directly with business experts. For the purposes of this course, we may not be talking about developers, but instead we're focused on any person working on a digital media project. This can include designers, web developers, copy editors, and so on. The close collaboration focused on face-to-face communication as much as possible and a goal of delivering business value to the customer frequently instead of at the end of a long project. Unusually, a focus of Agile is to deliver this regular business value through self-organizing teams, a theme of Agile we'll look at throughout this course. By 2001, Agile had developed to the point where an Agile manifesto was written. It was developed by 17 participants from many different programming methodologies. Even though the participants didn't agree about much, they were able to agree on four main values. The manifesto for Agile software development reads, we are uncovering better ways of developing software by doing it and helping others do it. Through this work, we have come to value individuals and interactions over processes and tools, working software over comprehensive documentation, customer collaboration over contract negotiation, responding to change over following a plan. That is, while there is value in the items on the right, we value the items on the left more. To supplement the four main points in the Agile manifesto, the group further developed 12 main principles. The highest priority is to satisfy the customer through early and continuous delivery of business value. Changing requirements are welcome throughout the project. Working software is delivered frequently. Business people and developers work together daily. Projects are built around motivated people who are trusted to get the job done. Face-to-face conversation is the preferred communications method. Working software is the primary measure of progress. Agile projects are sustainable and all stakeholders should be able to maintain a constant pace indefinitely. Continuous attention to detail, technical excellence, and good design enhances agility. Agility is essential. Self-organizing teams develop the best solutions. And finally, Agile teams reflect on how to become more effective and tune and adjust at regular intervals. Examples of these principles will be examined throughout the course. To better understand Agile, it's important to understand how it's different from some more traditional projects, such as a waterfall project. In a waterfall project, each phase of the project is very distinct and often completed in its entirety before moving to the next phase. In the first phase, a business case is identified. This is where the customer defines what's needed. When the business case is clearly defined, then the requirements analysis phase begins. In this phase, business analysts write detailed documents explaining exactly what the deliverable will look like and how it will function in every scenario. Only after this phase is completed does the design phase begin where developers and designers begin their work. When the developers and designers have completed their work, the solution is tested before it's finally delivered to the customer. In an Agile project, the lifecycle is much more iterative with various tasks and activities overlapping throughout the project. One of the main goals of Agile is to deliver business value early and continuously throughout the project, so the project deliverables are divided into much smaller sections. After some initial analysis and planning, developers and designers immediately go to work designing, building, and testing the first small set of deliverables. As those deliverables are released to the customers, the analysis and planning phase begins again for the next set of deliverables. All of the phases represented in an Agile project are basically the same as those in a Waterfall project. Note that the design, build, and test phases are all happening at the same time, and small deliverables are released frequently instead of at the end of a large project. To better demonstrate an Agile project lifecycle and how Agile principles are applied throughout a project, a case study of a real-world digital media project will be used throughout the remainder of this course. Congratulations. Your web design firm has been approached by a small but growing local car dealership to develop a modern website. Through the remaining lessons, we will examine how an Agile project team might complete this project.