About this course: To deliver agile outcomes, you have to do more than implement an agile process; you have to create a culture of experimentation. It's this commitment to experimenting that's at the heart of today’s most successful implementations of agile. This course shows you how to integrate the practice of experimentation across concept testing, usability testing, functional testing, and continuous deployment. Basically, we’ll show you how to use experiments to answer these three big questions: Should we build it? (And then: Did it matter?) Is it usable? Did it break? We'll show you how to: - Translate your product’s strategic direction into a user-centric charter with lots of small, testable ideas - Test user motivation to make sure you’re building something that matters - Design and conduct usability testing (even without working software) - Use narrative collaboration to focus your testing - Integrate functional testing into a more continuous release flow As a Project Management Institute (PMI®) Registered Education Provider, the University of Virginia Darden School of Business has been approved by PMI to issue 20 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.
Who is this class for: This course is aimed at professionals working in software and IT or interested in moving into this space.
Created by: University of Virginia
Taught by: Alex Cowan, Faculty & Batten Fellow
Darden School of Business
| Basic Info | Course 4 of 5 in the Agile Development Specialization |
| Commitment | 4 weeks of study, 2-4 hours/week |
| Language | English |
| How To Pass | Pass all graded assignments to complete the course. |
| User Ratings |
Syllabus
WEEK 1
Should we build it? Did it matter?
Ultimately, agile’s backbone is the substitution of observable results over the false certainty of elaborate plans. You’ve learned to avoid waste by validating problems/needs and user motivation before investing in software. Putting that testing into practice takes skill and the right kind of project charter--one that allows you to break the work into small(ish), testable ideas. In this module you’ll learn how to put that into practice by making concept testing an integral part of your culture of experimentation. You’ll go deeper on the Lean Startup techniques you’ve learned to test motivation. We’ll look at how to design and run situation-appropriate experiments, and how that works before the fact (when you’re testing an idea) and after the fact (when you’re testing the value of some working software)
21 videos, 1 reading
- Reading: Course Overview & Requirements
- Video: Creating a Culture of Experimentation
- Video: Test-Driven Proposition Design
- Video: Recap on Lean Startup & Experimentation
- Video: Tracking Hypotheses
- Video: Tristan Kromer on the Practice of Lean Startup
- Video: Tristan Kromer on Getting Started with Lean
- Video: Tristan Kromer on Creating a Culture of Experimentation
- Video: David Bland on the Practice of Lean Startup
- Video: David Bland on Creating a Culture of Experimentation, Part 1
- Video: David Bland on Creating a Culture of Experimentation, Part 2
- Video: David Bland on Marrying Agile to Lean Startup
- Video: Laura Klein on Creating a Culture of Experimentation
- Discussion Prompt: Learnings from David, Tristan, and Laura
- Video: Five Core Experiments
- Video: Designing Experiments
- Video: Laura Klein on the Practice of Lean UX
- Video: Testing Features: When and How
- Video: Testing Features: Running the Experiment
- Video: Testing Funnels
- Video: Testing Cohorts
- Video: A/B Testing
- Video: Advanced Outcome Management: The Hook Framework
Graded: Week 1 Quiz: Should we build it? Did it matter?
WEEK 2
Is it usable?
The best products are tested for usability early and often, avoiding the destructive stress and uncertainty of a ‘big unveil’. In this module, we’ll look at how to diagnose, design and execute phase-appropriate user testing as a standard practice. Anyone can learn to use the test plan template, prototyping tool, and supporting methods you’ll learn here. And that’s a very good thing! Very often products are released with poor usability because there ‘wasn’t enough time’ to test it. With these techniques, you’ll be able to test early and often, reinforcing your culture of experimentation.
16 videos
- Video: Test-Driven Product Design
- Video: Test-Driven Product Design & System Support
- Video: Testing Usability
- Video: Creating a Good Test Suite
- Video: Creating Good Test Items
- Video: Agile User Stories Part 1
- Video: Agile User Stories Part 2
- Video: Running Usability Tests
- Video: Demo: Running a Usability Test
- Video: Demo: Creating Interactive Prototypes in Balsamiq
- Video: Laura Klein on Qualitative vs.Quantitative Research
- Video: Creating Consistency
- Video: Models, Patterns & Comparables
- Video: Common Terms: Wireframes, Mockups, Prototypes & MVPs
- Video: Laura Klein on Lean UX in Enterprise IT
- Video: Final Thoughts on Usability
- Discussion Prompt: How will these techniques help you?
Graded: Week 2 Quiz: Is it usable?
Graded: Testing Your Assumptions
WEEK 3
Does it break?
The practice of continuous delivery and the closely related DevOps movement are changing the way we build and release software. It wasn’t that long ago where 2-3 releases a year was considered standard. Large firms like Facebook now release new code twice a day. How do they do it? In this module, we’ll look at the whole continuous delivery pipeline and step through what successful practitioners do at each stage and how you can diagnose and apply the practices that will improve your implementation of agile. Most of these practices build on concepts we’ve covered and we’ll pay special attention to those linkages.
23 videos
- Video: Test-Driven Software Development
- Video: Releasing and Nothingness
- Video: The Continuous Delivery Pipeline
- Video: Getting Started with Continuous Delivery
- Video: Anders Wallgren on the Advantages of Continuous Delivery
- Video: Anders Wallgren on Getting Started
- Video: The Commit and Small Test Phase
- Video: Anders Wallgren on Unit Testing
- Video: The Job of Version Control
- Video: The Medium Test Phase
- Video: The Large Test Phase
- Video: Creating Large/Behavioral Tests
- Video: Anders Wallgren on Testing UI
- Video: Anders Wallgren on Functional Testing
- Video: The Release Stage
- Video: Anders Wallgren on Deployment
- Video: Chris Kent on Developing with Continuous Delivery
- Video: Chris Kent on Continuous Deployment
- Video: Test-Driven General Management
- Video: Narrative and the "Happy Path"
- Video: The Emergence of DevOps and the Ascent of Continuous Delivery
- Video: Design for Deployability
- Video: Anders Wallgren on Creating a Friendly Environment for Continuous Deployment
Graded: Week 3 Quiz: Did it break?
WEEK 4
Your Continuous Delivery
You've learned about the continuous delivery pipeline and how to improve cycle time. In this module, you'll apply that learning to improve your own processes.
1 video
- Video: Final Thoughts
Graded: Your Continuous Delivery
FAQs
How It Works
Coursework
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Creators
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
I thought this was a very good practical course. It was challenging for me since I lack experience in software development industry, but I thought it gave me a very good framework.
The evaluations instructions some times are a little vague, but the material is very helpful. Thank you!
Another great course 2nd best after managing an agile team. Great content and presenters with useful recommendations.
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DT
Who, what, how and why. So important and Agile provides the framework to help me Hypothesize, experiment and learn from my efforts.