Agile Meets Design Thinking

Despite everyone’s good intentions, hard work and solid ideas, too many teams end up creating products that no one wants, no one can use, and no one buys. 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. 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 .

• How to evaluate and explain the relevance of concepts and practices from the agile development methodologies

• How to create a strong shared perspective and drive to value using design methods like personas and problem scenarios

• How to diagnose what software will be valuable to the user and how to test your ideas using agile user stories and prototypes

• How to facilitate narrative collaboration with user stories and prototypes

Syllabus

Syllabus - What you will learn from this course
Week 1
Problems Agile Solves
Week 2
Focusing Your Agile with Personas, Problem Scenarios, and Alternatives
Week 3
Getting to Great Agile User Stories
Week 4
Focusing on Customer Value with User Stories

FAQ

When will I have access to the lectures and assignments?

Access to lectures and assignments depends on your type of enrollment. If you take a course in audit mode, you will be able to see most course materials for free. To access graded assignments and to earn a Certificate, you will need to purchase the Certificate experience, during or after your audit. If you don't see the audit option:

What will I get if I subscribe to this Specialization?

When you enroll in the course, you get access to all of the courses in the Specialization, and you earn a certificate when you complete the work. Your electronic Certificate will be added to your Accomplishments page - from there, you can print your Certificate or add it to your LinkedIn profile. If you only want to read and view the course content, you can audit the course for free.

Is financial aid available?

Yes. In select learning programs, you can apply for financial aid or a scholarship if you can’t afford the enrollment fee. If fin aid or scholarship is available for your learning program selection, you’ll find a link to apply on the description page.

Reviews

I loved doing this course, and the exercise towards end to give complete picture of mapping the persona understanding and problem solving. Very satisfied with the course content.

Rich and well-structured content about Agile and Design Thinking, shows how to approach and include personas that will somehow be touched by the solution being created, and deliver outcomes to them.

Attendig this course I learned how to come up with something really valuable for my customers. In addition, it helped me to understand step by step the entire process of the Agile method

The course is very well designed & Alex has wonderfully explained the concepts very nicely...the pace of the course is fairly balanced...a big thanks to Alex and coursera for organizing this course