About this course: This project-centered course provides a guided opportunity for you to practice your agile development skills. Using the venture design process that frames the four courses in this Specialization, you will apply agile processes to a project of your choice or to a provided venture concept. From persona, problem scenario, and user story development to designing user testing and product launch, you’ll practice leading an agile project. You’ll finish the course with a portfolio-building design brief that demonstrates your learning and specialized skills in agile product development. To get the most out of this course, we suggest you first complete the other four courses in the Agile Development Specialization (Getting Started: Agile Meets Design Thinking; Running Product Design Sprints, Managing an Agile Team, Testing with Agile). By the end of this course, you'll be able to: --Formulate foundational positioning statements --Create, refine and test actionable personas --Conduct user interviews and analyze the results --Determine a 'happy path' to quickly test user stories --Run motivation and usability testing and evaluate the results As a Project Management Institute (PMI®) Registered Education Provider, the University of Virginia Darden School of Business has been approved by PMI to issue 40 professional development units (PDUs) for this course, which focuses on core competencies recognized by PMI. (Provider #2122) This course is supported by the Batten Institute at UVA’s Darden School of Business. The Batten Institute’s mission is to improve the world through entrepreneurship and innovation: www.batteninstitute.org.
Created by: University of Virginia
Taught by: Alex Cowan, Faculty & Batten Fellow
Darden School of Business
| Basic Info | Course 5 of 5 in the Agile Development Specialization |
| Level | Intermediate |
| Commitment | 8 weeks of study, 4-5 hours per week |
| Language | English |
| How To Pass | Pass all graded assignments to complete the course. |
| User Ratings |
Syllabus
WEEK 1
Introduction to Your Project
Welcome to this project-centered course. By completing the four prerequisite courses, you are now ready to bring together all that you have learned and apply it to develop a product from charter to user testing. To get started, read the course overview and introduce yourself to your classmates. Next, watch the "Welcome and Getting Started" video lecture and then get to work developing your positioning statement. We've included some optional review videos to guide you through the process. Post in the discussion forums your Positioning Statement--then take some time to read through your peers' posts and give feedback.
6 videos, 3 readings
- Video: Welcome and Getting Started
- Reading: Course and Project Overview
- Discussion Prompt: Introduce yourself
- Reading: Giving Feedback
- Reading: Milestone 1: Create your position statement
- Discussion Prompt: Milestone 1: What's your position statement?
- Video: The 20-Minute Strategy Brief
- Video: IT Strategy Brief: Value Definition
- Video: IT Strategy Brief: The Customer Journey
- Video: IT Strategy Brief: Key Activities
- Video: The Venture Design Framework
WEEK 2
Develop Personas and Problem Scenarios
Welcome to Week 2. This week you'll work on getting a baseline on your personas and discovery plan. Submit this by the end of the week to get (and give) feedback to help improve your final product. If you want to accelerate your learning, go ahead and get started on user interviews and set up a few Google AdWords.
7 videos
- Video: Develop Personas and Problem Scenarios
- Video: Focusing Your Persona: Think, See, Feel, Do
- Video: Designing User Stories: Problem Scenarios
- Video: Demo: Creating an Interview Guide Personas
- Video: Demo: Creating an Interview Guide Problem Scenarios
- Video: Overview: Problem Scenario Sprint
- Video: Using "Day in the Life" to Drive Empathy
Graded: Milestone 2: Personas, Problem Scenarios & Alternatives
WEEK 3
Complete Persona Discovery
Welcome to Week 3. This week, you'll continue working on persona development by interviewing at least three people. As you process the transcripts, look for key learnings and share these in the discussion forum, noting how these interviews impact your direction and point of view. If you want to accelerate your learning, interview at least three more learners and complete a "Day in the Life".
5 videos, 1 reading
- Video: Complete Persona Discovery
- Reading: Milestone 3: Persona Discovery
- Discussion Prompt: Milestone 3: What did you learn from persona interviews?
- Video: Getting People to Interview
- Video: Talking with Users
- Video: Skit: Interviewing Trent the Technician
- Video: Overview Problem Scenario Sprint
WEEK 4
Design and Test Your Value Proposition
Welcome to Week 4! This week, you're ready work on Milestone 4: Design experiments to test your value proposition. This is an intensive--and exciting--week as you'll get to actually run your tests. Spending around 5 hours probably means just testing your experiment design once. That's fine--that's a great accomplishment! After that, you'll have a solid idea of how to proceed and generally how to test motivation. You'll post your experiment design for peer review and then let the group know how it went in the discussions.
5 videos
- Video: Design and Test Your Value Proposition
- Discussion Prompt: How did your experiments go?
- Video: Demo: Drafting Problem Scenarios, Alternatives, and Value Propositions
- Video: Learning What's Valuable
- Video: Recommendations by Type of Project
- Video: Preparing for Motivation Sprints
Graded: Milestone 4: Design and Test Your Value Proposition
WEEK 5
Create Strong User Narrative
Welcome to Week 5! This week, you'll focus on creating strong user narrative, going in depth to detail out the user experience and plan atomic rewards. You'll develop epic user stories, child stories, test cases--and then put them up on the wall using sticky notes. Then take a picture and submit it along with the relevant portions of the Venture Design Template for peer review. Be sure to save time to give a thorough review to at least one of your peer's submissions.
4 videos
- Video: Create Strong User Narrative
- Video: Writing Great User Stories
- Video: IT Strategy Brief: The Customer Journey
- Video: Good Collaboration
Graded: Milestone 5: User Narrative
WEEK 6
Design Prototypes and Usability Test for Them
Welcome to Week 6. This week, you'll focus on developing your user test plan, exploring patterns & comparables for one user story, and then drafting at least two different concepts for that story based on alternative patterns and comparables. You'll also develop interactive wireframes that directly relate to the narrative. At the end of this week, you will submit your test plan and wireframes for peer review and give feedback to at least one of your peer's on their test plan.
6 videos
- Video: Design User Tests
- Video: Test-Driven Proposition Design
- Video: Creating Good Test Items
- Video: The Importance of Comparables and Prototyping
- Video: Models, Patterns & Comparables
- Video: Demo: Creating Interactive Prototypes in Balsamiq
Graded: Milestone 6: User Testing
WEEK 7
Conduct User Testing and Submit Your Full Project for Review
Welcome to week 7. This week you will conduct user testing and reflect on the results. With this accomplished, you can finalize your Venture Design Template and upload it (or a link to it) for your peers to review next week. We're excited to see these projects!
3 videos
- Video: Conduct User Testing
- Discussion Prompt: User Testing Results
- Video: Testing Usability
- Video: Running Usability Tests
Graded: Your Completed Venture Design--including user testing
WEEK 8
Review Your Peers' Projects
Welcome to week 8, our final week together. Your main assignment this week is to carefully review at least three different projects. This is no small task--but please complete it promptly so that everyone can receive their Specialization Certificate on time. We've also provided resources for you to create a portfolio to showcase your final project for your team, your employer, or for an interview. Finally, please share your reflections about the course experience. It's been great working with--and learning from--you!
1 video, 2 readings
- Reading: Milestone 8: Peer reviewing final projects
- Discussion Prompt: So, how did it go?
- Video: Final Thoughts
- Reading: Portfolio Resources
FAQs
How It Works
Coursework
Each course is like an interactive textbook, featuring pre-recorded videos, quizzes and projects.
Help from Your Peers
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University of Virginia
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Pricing
| Purchase Course | Audit | |
|---|---|---|
| Access to course materials | Available | Available |
| Access to graded materials | Available | Not available |
| Receive a final grade | Available | Not available |
| Earn a shareable Course Certificate | Available | Not available |
Ratings and Reviews
The content is outstanding. Very clear instructions and very informative, but it suffers from the "tragedy of the forums", if you have any question or is struggling with the content, you are by your own.
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Nice and pragmatic! Some very interesting real use cases :)