Getting Started: Agile Meets Design Thinking

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 4.7 stars Average User Rating 4.7See what learners said Coursework

Each course is like an interactive textbook, featuring pre-recorded videos, quizzes and projects.

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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 expand

1. Video: Welcome to the Agile Specialization
2. Video: Welcome to the Agile Specialization (Spanish)
3. Video: Welcome to the Agile Specialization (Chinese)
4. Reading: Course Overview & Requirements
5. Reading: Get to Know Your Classmates in Discussion Forums
6. Video: What Is Agile?
7. Video: Agile for Managers
8. Video: Agile for Specialists
9. Video: Agile 101
10. Video: Today's Best Practices
11. Video: Scale Friendly vs. Innovation Friendly
12. Video: What Makes Agile Hard
13. Video: The Blue Button Moment
14. Video: Culture of Experimentation
15. Video: The Manifesto in Practice
16. Video: The Venture Design Framework
17. Video: Greg Cohen on Getting Started with Agile
18. Video: Bill Wake on Getting Started with Agile
19. Video: How to Learn
20. Reading: The Venture Design Template
21. 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 expand

1. Video: Design Thinking for Agile User Stories
2. Video: Meet the Companies: HVAC in a Hurry and Enable Quiz
3. Video: Creating and Using Personas
4. Video: Focusing Your Persona: Think, See, Feel, Do
5. Video: Demo: Using the Venture Design Template
6. Video: Demo: Drafting Personas
7. Video: Demo: Drafting Think, See, Feel, Do
8. Video: Designing User Stories: Problem Scenarios
9. Video: Needfinding with Problem Scenarios
10. Video: Skit: Meet the HVAC in a Hurry Team
11. Video: Skit: Dani's Meeting with the CEO
12. Discussion Prompt: Practice for the Assignment: Write a Persona
13. 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.


13 videos, 3 readings expand

1. Video: User Research for Busy People
2. Video: Researching Personas
3. Video: Demo: Creating an Interview Guide: Personas
4. Video: Demo: Creating an Interview Guide: Problem Scenarios
5. Video: Skit: Interviewing Trent the Technician
6. Video: Demo: Designing Google AdWords
7. Video: Enhancing Your Problem Hypothesis
8. Video: Preparing for Great User Stories
9. Video: Writing Great User Stories
10. Video: Adding Test Cases to User Stories
11. Video: Skit: From Problem Scenarios to Epic User Stories
12. Video: Demo: Drafting Epic User Stories
13. Video: Demo: Drafting Child Stories
14. Discussion Prompt: Practice for the Assignment: User Stories
15. Reading: Week 3 Slides
16. Reading: Personas for Needfinding, Design, and Growth
17. 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.


13 videos, 2 readings expand

1. Video: Better Narrative, Better Story
2. Video: Investable Stories
3. Video: Coaching for Better User Stories
4. Video: A Prototype Is Worth a Thousand Meetings
5. Video: Designing a Meeting with User Stories
6. Video: Using "Day in the Life" to Drive Empathy
7. Video: Demo: Storyboarding an Epic
8. Video: Skit: Drafting Epics from Problem Scenarios
9. Video: Skit: Storyboarding an Epic
10. Video: Skit: Child Stories and Test Cases
11. Video: Demo: Drafting Problem Scenarios, Alternatives, and Value Propositions
12. Video: Bill Wake on INVEST
13. Video: And on to Course 2!
14. Reading: Your Best Agile User Story
15. Reading: Week 4 Slides

Graded: Week 4 Quiz
Graded: User Stories