SI 699-xx3
User-Centered Agile Development

Photo by Aleksei Gorodenkov from Noun Project

SI 699: User-Centered Agile Development (UCAD)

Build real software. Master Agile. Deliver results.

SI 699 is a mastery-level course for graduate students who want to become professional programmers capable of working in Agile software teams. Students learn Agile development by doing it—building a real-world application for a real client, in teams of 5–6.

This course is part of the Agile graduation pathway at UMSI. Attendance at all scheduled sessions is mandatory, including biweekly sprint meetings with clients and instructors. Students are expected to demonstrate their technical, communication, and team collaboration skills in every sprint.

What to Expect

Project-Based Learning:
After initial preparation in Agile methods, teams build an MVP (Minimum Viable Product) for a real-world client. You’ll work in two-week sprints, hold Agile ceremonies (Sprint Planning, Reviews, Retrospectives), and deliver production-ready code.

Learning by Doing:
You’ll apply Agile, Scrum, GitHub workflows, and stakeholder collaboration on a real timeline. This is not a simulation—it's hands-on software delivery.

⏱ Class Format:

Biweekly 3-hour in-person sprint meetings with your team, client, and instructor (mandatory attendance)
9–12 hours/week programming outside of meetings
At least 3 team "stand-up" meetings per week (15 minutes each)
Final deliverables presented at the school-wide expoSItion fair

🛠 All students code.
This is not a UX class. All students are responsible for programming and participating in technical planning and software delivery. Students uncomfortable with programming should not enroll.

Portfolio Examples from Winter 2024

Charter City HS – Course management for alternative high schools
City of Dearborn – City media dashboard
Detroit River Story Lab – Historic story preservation platform
National Fibromyalgia Association – Awareness and research study matching

FAQ: Choosing the Right Path – PO vs UX vs Agile Programming

Do I need to understand Agile to work in UX or Product Management?

Yes. All UX designers, researchers, and product professionals working in tech need to understand Agile frameworks.

But if you do not want to program or don’t enjoy collaborative software development, UCAD is not the right course for you.

Want to be a Product Owner or Product Manager?

You’re part of the Discovery Track in Dual-Track Agile.

Choose the Product or UX degree pathway at UMSI with electives in product ownership, design thinking, or business (e.g., Ross School of Business).

Your responsibilities in industry will include:

Leading customer and stakeholder interviews
Defining high-level requirements as Epics and User Stories
Refining the backlog to keep developers productive
Approving and validating features
Acting as the voice of the user and business strategy

📚 For templates, tools, books, blogs on Product Ownership, look into these industry experts:

Marty Cagan – Inspired, Empowered, Transformed
Teresa Torres – Continuous Discovery Habits, Product Talk, Videos
Roman Pichler Tools and Templates
Tools: Jira Product Discovery, Aha! Discovery

Want to be a UX Researcher or Designer?

You’re also part of the Discovery Track in Dual-Track Agile.

Skip UCAD and focus on the UX graduation pathway instead. In industry, you will:

Conduct research to uncover user needs and system pain points
Create designs based on ambiguous, high-level product goals
Collaborate with Product Owners and Developers
Validate and iterate on designs using user feedback
Deliver UX requirements in Agile formats: Epics, User Stories, Tasks, Acceptance Criteria...or even the JTBD framework

💡 Your goal is to fill the Delivery Backlog with clear, validated work—weeks or months ahead of development.
This is Continuous Discovery, also known as the Discovery Track in Dual-Track Agile...some UX pros may lead a Design Sprint or Design Thinking Workshops.

Want to be a Developer (Frontend, Backend, or Full Stack)?

You belong on the Delivery Track of Agile. UCAD is for you.

If you love solving problems with code and want to build real applications for clients with teammates, this course is a perfect fit.

You will:

Program a complete application for a real client
Implement features from Discovery Track artifacts: Epics, Stories, and Acceptance Criteria
Collaborate in Agile Scrum Teams using GitHub, stand-ups, and retrospectives
Write unit tests, build front- and back-end functionality, and debug
Define “Definition of Ready” and “Definition of Done” for quality
Possibly act as Scrum Master or share PO responsibilities when UX resources are limited

This is where the real product is built.

About Dual-Track Agile

The Discovery Track is for Product Ownership and UX work and follows a Continuous Discovery or Design Thinking process and feeds requirements to the Delivery Track. Typically (hopefully) a development lead also is involved with this work.

This diagram is similar to Google's Design Sprint Kit process diagram. Note that Google's Design Sprints are not well-named; these are NOT true agile sprints that can continuously take place back-to-back. https://designsprintkit.withgoogle.com/methodology/overview
The Google website is helpful for planning Design Thinking Workshops, which are labor intensive and expensive.
Design Thinking Workshops are an excellent way to occasionally get all stakeholders together to "swarm" around a large problem and solve it as team.

The Delivery Track is where developers run the agile scrum process and manage all development work as a collaborative and self-organized team.

If this is the work you're interested in, SI 699-xx3 User-Centered Agile Development is the right graduation track for you! You enjoy solving problems with code, testing code, discussing programming standards and best practices, and creating the real product with code that adheres to requirements.

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