About this course: Despite everyone's good intentions, hard work and solid ideas, too many projects end up creating unneeded, unusable, and unsellable products. But it doesn't have to be this way. Agile and design thinking offer a different--and effective--approach to product development, one that results in valuable solutions to meaningful problems. In this course, you’ll learn how to determine what's valuable to a user early in the process--to frontload value--by focusing your team on testable narratives about the user and creating a strong shared perspective. We’ll show you how to: - Explain key concepts and practices from the agile product development methodology - Create a strong shared perspective and drive to value using personas and problem scenarios - Diagnose what software to develop and why using a set of agile user stories and prototypes - Facilitate narrative collaboration with user stories and prototypes - Allow for early testing and validation by analyzing and deciding on story backlogs As a Project Management Institute (PMI®) Registered Education Provider, the University of Virginia Darden School of Business has been approved by PMI to issue 25 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 1 of 5 in the Agile Development Specialization |
| Commitment | 5 weeks of study, 2 - 5 hours/week |
| Language | English |
| How To Pass | Pass all graded assignments to complete the course. |
| User Ratings |
Syllabus
WEEK 1
Problems Agile Solves
The practices that deliver excellent product are well understood, but rarely seen. In this module, we’ll identify what’s hard about creating excellent products and how agile can help. We'll begin with a discussion of the Agile Manifesto, introduce key agile terminology, and explore how agile arose from previous development practices. Then we'll look at what makes implementing agile so challenging and make a case for why it's worth it and how to do it. By the end of this module, you'll have a solid understanding of agile processes and be prepared to use the Venture Design Template to work through project development and drive toward valuable outcomes.
17 videos, 4 readings
- Video: Welcome to the Agile Specialization
- Video: Welcome to the Agile Specialization (Spanish)
- Video: Welcome to the Agile Specialization (Chinese)
- Reading: Course Overview & Requirements
- Reading: Get to Know Your Classmates in Discussion Forums
- Video: What Is Agile?
- Video: Agile for Managers
- Video: Agile for Specialists
- Video: Agile 101
- Video: Today's Best Practices
- Video: Scale Friendly vs. Innovation Friendly
- Video: What Makes Agile Hard
- Video: The Blue Button Moment
- Video: Culture of Experimentation
- Video: The Manifesto in Practice
- Video: The Venture Design Framework
- Video: Greg Cohen on Getting Started with Agile
- Video: Bill Wake on Getting Started with Agile
- Video: How to Learn
- Reading: The Venture Design Template
- Reading: Week 1 Slides
Graded: Week 1 Quiz
WEEK 2
Agile Design with Personas, Problem Scenarios, and Alternatives
The best way to avoid building something nobody wants is to start with somebody in mind. That "somebody" is a persona. Personas and problem scenarios tie development to the end user and help you drive toward a valuable solution. In this module, you’ll learn to develop personas, problem scenarios, and alternatives using best practices from design thinking.
11 videos, 1 reading
- Video: Design Thinking for Agile User Stories
- Video: Meet the Companies: HVAC in a Hurry and Enable Quiz
- Video: Creating and Using Personas
- Video: Focusing Your Persona: Think, See, Feel, Do
- Video: Demo: Using the Venture Design Template
- Video: Demo: Drafting Personas
- Video: Demo: Drafting Think, See, Feel, Do
- Video: Designing User Stories: Problem Scenarios
- Video: Needfinding with Problem Scenarios
- Video: Skit: Meet the HVAC in a Hurry Team
- Video: Skit: Dani's Meeting with the CEO
- Discussion Prompt: Practice for the Assignment: Write a Persona
- Reading: Week 2 Slides
Graded: Week 2 Quiz
WEEK 3
Writing Great Agile User Stories
Creating software that meets users' need begins with understanding that user--and user stories are a tool that helps teams understand the end-user perspective.The agile user story is the focal point for just about everything that follows. This is where we diagnose what we think we should do for the user and why, and how we’ll know if we did something relevant (or created waste). In this module, you'll learn how to conduct effective, efficient discovery, from creating an interview guide to interviewing users. You'll finish with creating Google AdWords-ready copy and drafting your personas, problem scenarios and alternatives.
7 videos, 3 readings
- Video: User Research for Busy People
- Video: Researching Personas
- Video: Demo: Creating an Interview Guide: Personas
- Video: Demo: Creating an Interview Guide: Problem Scenarios
- Video: Skit: Interviewing Trent the Technician
- Video: Demo: Designing Google AdWords
- Video: Enhancing Your Problem Hypothesis
- Reading: Week 3 Slides
- Reading: Personas for Needfinding, Design, and Growth
- Reading: The Customer Discovery Handbook: Persona and Problem Hypothesis
Graded: Personas, Problem Scenarios & Propositions
WEEK 4
Enhancing Your User Story
Now that you've "discovered" your user, you'll write your user story--and you'll make it great by layering in details. In this module, you'll learn to create detailed, specific user stories to anchor your project.
18 videos, 2 readings
- Video: Preparing for Great User Stories
- Video: Writing Great User Stories
- Video: Adding Test Cases to User Stories
- Video: Skit: From Problem Scenarios to Epic User Stories
- Video: Demo: Drafting Epic User Stories
- Video: Demo: Drafting Child Stories
- Discussion Prompt: Practice for the Assignment: User Stories
- Video: Better Narrative, Better Story
- Video: Investable Stories
- Video: Coaching for Better User Stories
- Video: A Prototype Is Worth a Thousand Meetings
- Video: Designing a Meeting with User Stories
- Video: Using "Day in the Life" to Drive Empathy
- Video: Demo: Storyboarding an Epic
- Video: Skit: Drafting Epics from Problem Scenarios
- Video: Skit: Storyboarding an Epic
- Video: Skit: Child Stories and Test Cases
- Video: Demo: Drafting Problem Scenarios, Alternatives, and Value Propositions
- Video: Bill Wake on INVEST
- Reading: Your Best Agile User Story
- Reading: Week 4 Slides
- Discussion Prompt: Please help us improve the course!
Graded: Week 4 Quiz
Graded: User Stories
WEEK 5
Finish User Stories Assignment and Optional Content with an IT Focus: Strategy-Driven Process Design
First, use this week to finish up your User Story Assignment and complete peer reviews.Then, if you're interested in IT, let's talk process. What? Process? While you’ve learned that the agile manifesto explicitly reacted to primary/excessive use of tools and processes, agile is not categorically the enemy of process. After all, most of what we do follows some kind of process/habit. In this module, you’ll learn how to use thoughtful, adaptive processes as a tool both for your internal processes as well as for prototyping for work in enterprise software.
15 videos, 3 readings
- Video: The Problem with IT Projects
- 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: Demo: Business Model Canvas Template
- Video: Demo: Using Google Docs for Your Business Model Canvas
- Video: Drafting a Process Inventory from Key Activities
- Video: Prototyping with Process
- Video: An Example of Prototyping with Process
- Video: Demo: Sketching a Process Design
- Video: Validation Criteria: 0, 30, 90 Days
- Video: Skit: Process Design
- Video: Skit: Validation Criteria
- Video: Course Summary
- Reading: The 20-Minute Business Plan: Business Model Canvas Made Easy
- Reading: The Enterprise Software Playbook - 6 Steps to Better Deployments
- Reading: Week 5 Slides
FAQs
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University of Virginia
A premier institution of higher education, The University of Virginia offers outstanding academics, world-class faculty, and an inspiring, supportive environment. Founded by Thomas Jefferson in 1819, the University is guided by his vision of discovery, innovation, and development of the full potential of students from all walks of life. Through these courses, global learners have an opportunity to study with renowned scholars and thought leaders.
Pricing
| Audit | Purchase Course | |
|---|---|---|
| Access to course materials | Available | Available |
| Access to graded materials | Not available | Available |
| Receive a final grade | Not available | Available |
| Earn a shareable Course Certificate | Not available | Available |
Ratings and Reviews
Excelente curso, me ayudó bastante a entender los conceptos básicos de Agile y entender el framework.
Overal, this course delivers basic and theoretical concepts regarding agile. However, I'd like to see more concrete practices in real world applications. Maybe later courses could touch deeper on the practicality side of agile.
Very informative and detailed. Alex is a great Agile coach
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Very useful course. I honestly recommend it to all PM.