404 Using Sprint Planning to Tackle Mammoth Projects
4:00 PM - 5:00 PM Tuesday, March 27
Management and Strategy
Salon 3
eLearning teams are consistently tasked with completing large projects under impossibly tight deadlines. Often, this feels like eating an elephant. How do you map out the project? How do you hold SMEs, designers, and developers accountable? How do you display progress to stakeholders? The eLearning team at Karmak struggled with these questions and consistently failed to meet deadlines. They wondered: Could borrowing an internal development model be the answer?
In this case study session, you’ll hear the tale of how Karmak’s eLearning team turned its eyes to the “sprint planning” process already used by software developers within the company. By making this one significant shift in the planning process, the team reduced the number of weekly meetings they attended, more accurately calculated deadlines, held everyone more accountable for their share of the work, increased buy-in among stakeholders and SMEs, set clearer expectations for every member of the team, and had a lot more fun in the process, all without spending an extra dime.
In this session, you will learn:
- How sprint planning is defined, and why it works so well in a development setting
- How to reduce the amount of time your team spends in meetings each week
- How to improve visibility throughout a project to increase accountability, improve efficiency, and confidently set deadlines each and every time
- How to identify and deal with potential roadblocks early on, before they stop your team in their tracks
- How to increase buy-in among internal stakeholders by setting expectations and fostering a fun, creative atmosphere
- How to implement a sprint planning process at your organization quickly and inexpensively
Audience:
Novice to advanced designers, developers, project managers, and managers with basic project-planning and instructional design skills.
Ezzy Schesvold
Senior Instructional Designer
Karmak
Ezzy Schesvold is a senior instructional designer at Karmak. With five years of experience on Karmak’s eLearning team, Ezzy has a passion for creating engaging, meaningful, effective coursework. She holds a degree in art from Blackburn College and takes every opportunity to bring her creative vision to Karmak’s eLearning.
Joe Healy
Instructional Designer
Karmak
Joe Healy is an instructional designer for Karmak, a position he has held for two years, after stops in software design and marketing for the company. Prior to joining Karmak, Joe worked as a journalist, where he honed the storytelling skills that he brings to every course he creates. He holds a BA in political science from Sam Houston State University and an MPA from Southern Illinois University–Edwardsville.