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.
Agile Meets Design Thinking
Agile Meets Design Thinking
This course is part of multiple programs.
Instructor: Alex Cowan
177,330 already enrolled
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Gain insight into a topic and learn the fundamentals.
4.7
(3,531 reviews)
Beginner level
Recommended experience
Flexible schedule
Approx. 9 hours
Learn at your own pace
94%
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What you'll learn
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
Skills you'll gain
Details to know
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Assessments
3 assignments
Taught in English
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There are 4 modules in this course
The agile practices that deliver excellent product are well understood, but they take focus, energy, and confidence to apply. This week, 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- what motivated it and how it defines agile. Then we’ll get into the practical part- the problems agile solves, how to focus your time and energy, and how you’ll know if your practice of agile is working.
What's included
17 videos2 readings1 assignment1 discussion prompt
The best way to avoid building something nobody wants is to start with somebody in mind. In the design world, we talk about that "somebody" through a ‘persona’. Personas and problem scenarios (aka 'jobs-to-be-done') focus development on driving toward a valuable outcome for your user vs. just generating output. In this module, you’ll learn to focus your work by developing personas, problem scenarios, and alternatives using best practices from design thinking.
What's included
10 videos1 assignment1 discussion prompt
Now we’re going to transition from drafting personas and hypothesizing user needs to testing those assumptions and translating what you’ve learned into agile user stories. We’ll step through how you create an interview guide to ask your users the right questions and then we’ll dive into agile user stories. User stories are a standard feature of agile and serve as a day-to-day focal point for driving to value.
What's included
16 videos1 discussion prompt
The agile user story is your day-to-day focal point for making sure you’re building something valuable for your user. It’s how you discuss that within your team and how you anchor your subsequent testing. In this module, you’ll learn how to facilitate the creation and use of stories within your team.
What's included
12 videos1 assignment1 peer review
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Instructor
Instructor ratings
4.8 (726 ratings)Offered by
Explore more from Design and Product
Status: Free TrialUniversity of Virginia
The University of Sydney
University of Virginia
Status: Free TrialUniversity of Virginia
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4.7
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Showing 3 of 3531
TE
4
Reviewed on Mar 15, 2021
Pretty good course. Maybe some more examples on how you come up with relevant testable metrics--particularly when you are new and just started learning about the industry your working in.
SV
4
Reviewed on May 21, 2023
The course is very instructive, and I recommend it. Regarding the assignments, I believe peer review is a great learning opportunity, but I missed feedback from someone more experienced.
YS
5
Reviewed on Jul 1, 2025
I am rating this course a five because, Excellent meaterials and excelent teachers has been very useful throughout the course, the assignment are suberb and ready to make you learn faster and better
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