Agile Meets Design Thinking: A Free Online Course from the University of Virginia

From Alex Cow­an, a pro­fes­sor at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Vir­gini­a’s Dar­d­en School of Busi­ness, comes a free online course called Agile Meets Design Think­ing. The short course descrip­tion reads as fol­lows:

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.

Among oth­er things, the course will help stu­dents:

• 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.

You can take Agile Meets Design Think­ing for free by select­ing the audit option upon enrolling. If you want to take the course for a cer­tifi­cate, you will need to pay a fee.

Agile Meets Design Think­ing has been added to our list of Free Busi­ness Cours­es, a sub­set of our col­lec­tion, 1,700 Free Online Cours­es from Top Uni­ver­si­ties.