Applying Agile Business Solutions as a Graduate Capstone Project

Abstract

A graduate course was implemented to teach the fundamentals of Agile project management as part of the MS Technical Project Management curriculum. The course was designed to provide a solid foundation in Agile methodologies for project management practice to enable graduates to execute appropriate Agile techniques to plan, and deliver quality results that frequently deliver value to customers. During the course students are introduced to Agile processes which include developing user stories and story maps, estimate and plan for sprints, track project execution and releases using burn-down charts and conduct retrospective sessions. This paper discusses how a graduate student was able to successfully apply the Agile principles and processes learned in the graduate program to an Independent Study project designed to provide students with the opportunity to apply their knowledge and experience gained during the curriculum to addressing and solving a real business problem. The student chose to develop and implement an Agile framework solution to a software implementation and performance problem his business organization was facing.