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 a high-functioning practice of agile. This course shows you how to integrate the practice of experimentation across concept/feature testing, usability testing, and testing the software itself.
Basically, you’ll learn how to answer these four big questions with experiments:
1. Should we build it?
2. Did it matter?
3. Is it usable?
4. Did it break?
More specifically, after completing this course, you’ll be able to:
- Identify where and how to invest your team’s scarce time and energy into better testing for maximum impact on outcomes
- Coach your team on the relationship between idea, usability, and software testing to get the buy-in you need for strong
interdisciplinary collaboration
- Test ideas before you build them to avoid waste and help your team focus on what will really drive outcomes
- Test alternative interface patterns before you build them to maximize both product usability and purposeful
implementation
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.
This course is part of the Agile Development Specialization
Testing with Agile
Offered By
About this Course
4.5
262 ratings
What you will learn
How to identify where and how to invest your team’s scarce time and energy into better testing for maximum impact on outcomes
How to coach your team on the relationship between idea, usability, and software testing to get buy-in for strong evidence-driven innovation
How to test ideas before building to avoid waste and alternative interface patterns with parallel prototyping to maximize usability
How to understand your delivery pipeline and how to prioritize process and infrastructure improvements so you can deliver faster and more often
Skills you will gain
Usability TestingContinuous DeliveryLean StartupAgile Testing
Syllabus - What you will learn from this course
Week
13 hours to complete
Should we build it? Did it matter?
Nothing will help a team deliver better outcomes like making sure they’re building something the user values. This might sound simple or obvious, but I think after this module it’s likely you’ll find opportunities to help improve your team’s focus by testing ideas more definitively before you invest in developing software. In this module you’ll learn how to make concept testing an integral part of your culture of experimentation. We’ll continue to apply the Lean Startup methods you learned in ‘Running Product Design Sprints’ (and/or you can review the tutorials in the Resources section). We’ll look at how high-functioning teams design and run situation-appropriate experiments to test ideas, and how that works before the fact (when you’re testing an idea) and after the fact (when you’re testing the value of software you’ve released).
25 videos (Total 157 min), 1 reading, 1 quiz
25 videos
Meet the Companies - HVAC in a Hurry and Enable Quiz3m
The Test Driven Practice of Agile Part 14m
The Test Driven Practice of Agile Part 28m
The Test Driven Practice of Agile Part 36m
Test-Driven Proposition Design5m
Recap on Lean Startup & Experimentation9m
Tracking Hypotheses3m
Tristan Kromer on the Practice of Lean Startup6m
Tristan Kromer on Getting Started with Lean6m
Tristan Kromer on Creating a Culture of Experimentation7m
David Bland on the Practice of Lean Startup5m
David Bland on Creating a Culture of Experimentation, Part 14m
David Bland on Creating a Culture of Experimentation, Part 29m
David Bland on Marrying Agile to Lean Startup7m
Laura Klein on Creating a Culture of Experimentation10m
Five Core Experiments2m
Designing Experiments7m
Laura Klein on the Practice of Lean UX10m
Testing Features: When and How4m
Testing Features: Running the Experiment5m
Testing Funnels6m
Testing Cohorts4m
A/B Testing4m
Advanced Outcome Management: The Hook Framework6m
1 reading
Course Overview & Requirements10m
1 practice exercise
Week 1 Quiz: Should we build it? Did it matter?15m
Week
23 hours to complete
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, you’ll learn how to diagnose, design and execute phase-appropriate user testing. The tools you’ll learn to use here (a test plan template, prototyping tool, and test session infrastructure) are accessible/teachable to anyone on your team. And that’s a very good thing- 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.
15 videos (Total 70 min), 2 quizzes
15 videos
Recap on Designing for Usability4m
Creating a Good Test Suite9m
Creating Good Test Items4m
Testing Your User Stories Part 12m
Testing Your User Stories Part 23m
Running Usability Tests3m
Demo: Running a Usability Test5m
Demo: Creating Interactive Prototypes in Balsamiq1m
Laura Klein on Qualitative vs.Quantitative Research4m
Creating Consistency5m
The Importance of Comparables and Prototyping10m
Common Terms: Wireframes, Mockups, Prototypes & MVPs1m
Laura Klein on Lean UX in Enterprise IT5m
Final Thoughts on Usability58s
1 practice exercise
Week 2 Quiz: Is it usable?15m
Week
32 hours to complete
Does it break?
You’ve learned how to test ideas and usability to reduce the amount of software your team needs to build and to focus its execution.Now you’re going to learn how high-functioning teams approach testing of the software itself. 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 multiple times per day. In this module, we’ll look at the 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.
25 videos (Total 126 min), 1 quiz
25 videos
The Team that Releases Together4m
The Continuous Delivery Pipeline8m
Getting Started with Continuous Delivery3m
Anders Wallgren on the Advantages of Continuous Delivery3m
Anders Wallgren on Getting Started4m
The Commit and Small Test Phase2m
Anders Wallgren on Unit Testing3m
The Job of Version Control3m
The Medium Test Phase1m
The Large Test Phase6m
Creating Large/Behavioral Tests9m
Anders Wallgren on Testing UI1m
Anders Wallgren on Functional Testing9m
The Release Stage4m
Anders Wallgren on Deployment2m
Chris Kent on Developing with Continuous Delivery10m
Chris Kent on Continuous Deployment11m
Jim Rose on Continuous Integration and Delivery7m
Test-Driven General Management5m
Narrative and the "Happy Path"3m
The Emergence of DevOps and the Ascent of Continuous Delivery4m
Design for Deployability2m
Anders Wallgren on Creating a Friendly Environment for Continuous Deployment6m
Final Thoughts57s
1 practice exercise
Week 3 Quiz: Did it break?15m
4.5
45 Reviews67%
started a new career after completing these courses
40%
got a tangible career benefit from this course
Top Reviews
Alex does an excellent job in structuring and delivering his courses. Definitely makes me want to continue educational opportunities with his courses offered and University of Virginia.
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.
Instructor
Alex Cowan
Faculty & Batten FellowDarden School of Business
About 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.
About the Agile Development Specialization
In this Specialization, you'll gain an understanding and appreciation of the principles and practice of agile management. You'll learn to coordinate all aspects of the agile development process, including running design sprints, managing teams, and fostering a culture of experimentation. In the final Capstone Project, you'll apply what you've learned to guide a real-world software development project to successful completion.
UVA Darden
Frequently Asked Questions
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Is financial aid available?
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