Agile has grown up and become a widely adopted approach for delivering software. User Experience is maturing, and the value of good design is being recognised. Since 2006, I have been observing teams, talking to practitioners who are trying to bring the two together, and putting theory into practice in my own work.
In this talk, given at the GOTO Software Development 2012 in Copenhagen, I illustrate how the agile and the UX mindset have more in common than you think, share some (still emerging and changing) best practices for including UX work in an agile context, give examples for how you can use UX tools and techniques to spread people-centred thinking across your team, and get you excited about the hardest, but most rewarding aspect of our jobs: working with people to make something for people.
It's about people - how Agile and UX can play well together
1. It’s about people
How Agile and UX can play well together
Johanna Kollmann
@johannakoll
GOTO Copenhagen, 2012
Photo byCopenhagen: 2012- @johannakoll
GOTO Duane Storey http://www.flickr.com/photos/duanestorey/529194420
5. User Experience != User Interface
Users
Why what how
Needs, behaviour
Uses
Visualise
Features
Releases, user stories
Adapted from Kate Rutter, LUXr
GOTO Copenhagen 2012- @johannakoll
6. Agile Manifesto (2001!!)
Individuals and interactions over processes and tools
Working software over comprehensive documentation
Customer collaboration over contract negotiation
Responding to change over following a plan
GOTO Copenhagen 2012- @johannakoll
7. “Making great software quickly, it turns out,
requires collaborating really really effectively
with those pesky non-binary entities called
people.
While basically silent about UX design, Agile
thinking offers a fundamental paradigm shift
about how to interact and communicate with
your project team and beyond. ”
~ Anders Ramsay
GOTO Copenhagen 2012- @johannakoll
8. Make something that matters.
Together.
Photo byCopenhagen 2012- @johannakoll
GOTO miriam: http://www.flickr.com/photos/45617397@N05/4190477130/
9. Photo byCopenhagen 2012- @johannakoll
GOTO Martin Abegglen: http://www.flickr.com/photos/twicepix/2127828693/
10. Challenges
(Burned children fear the fire)
GOTO Copenhagen 2012- @johannakoll
12. ‘Case Study of Customer Input For a Successful Product’, Lynn Miller (2005)
GOTO Copenhagen 2012- @johannakoll
13. “This whole designing ahead thing is driving me crazy. I’m supposed to
have detailed designs ready for the next sprint, which starts in a few
days, but I can’t get the developers to stop coding and spend some
time whiteboarding the UI, because they’re heads down finishing the
current sprint and want to match or beat their velocity from the
previous sprint.
So now, the same thing that happened last sprint will happen this
sprint: the developers build what I give them, which ends up being only
half-baked in terms of UX because we didn’t really collaborate on it and
because I had to rush my work to not fall behind, and yet they call it
Done because they built everything I put in the wireframes.
I can’t keep up. I’m just one UX Designer and they’re a whole team of
developers. Man, I miss the good old waterfall days…”
Quote taken from
http://www.andersramsay.com/2010/08/22/desig
ning-ahead-the-good-the-bad-and-the-ugly
GOTO Copenhagen 2012- @johannakoll
14. ‘Case Study of Customer Input For a Successful Product’, Lynn Miller (2005)
GOTO Copenhagen 2012- @johannakoll
15. Beware!
Mini-waterfalls
Silos create bottlenecks
Process over product
Perceived cost of collaboration
Photo byCopenhagen 2012- @johannakoll
GOTO Paolo:http://www.flickr.com/photos/qualsiasi/261599589/
16. Research is the first thing to get
compromised.
GOTO Copenhagen 2012- @johannakoll Photo by Kristina Alexanderson http://www.flickr.com/photos/kalexanderson/5421517469/
17. Making it work
(UX Research tips. Collaboration hacks.)
GOTO Copenhagen 2012- @johannakoll
24. Test what you got
Sketches
Wireframes
Mockups (not clickable)
Mockups (clickable)
HTML prototype
Code
GOTO Copenhagen 2012- @johannakoll Wireframe by Mike Rohde: http://www.flickr.com/photos/rohdesign/5098835256//
25. Access barriers?
Remote research
Proxy researchers: train your sales team
Guerrilla approach
Quantitative data
Photo byCopenhagen 2012- @johannakoll
GOTO Sussman Imaging: http://www.flickr.com/photos/thesussman/3386874390/
26. Making it work
(UX Research tips. Collaboration hacks.)
GOTO Copenhagen 2012- @johannakoll
28. Us vs Them is over.
Photo Copenhagen 2012- @johannakoll
GOTOby Bogac Erguvenc: http://www.flickr.com/photos/sozesoze/320117614/
29. GOTO Copenhagen 2012- @johannakoll Photo by Dnnya17: http://www.flickr.com/photos/dnnya/2628246374/
30. Photo Copenhagen 2012- @johannakoll
GOTOby Boston Public Library: http://www.flickr.com/photos/boston_public_library/5703905054/
31. A collaborative design process
There are many ways of getting the team involved
• Design Studio
• Story Mapping
• KJ Technique
• Collaborative Sketching Exercises
• and many more! (I’ll have links to resources!)
GOTO Copenhagen 2012- @johannakoll
32. Make it a habit.
Photo Copenhagen http://www.flickr.com/photos/jayw/871244465/
GOTOby Transguyjay:2012- @johannakoll
39. Agile is built around teams
Responsibilities and competencies over roles
Expertise over interest
No ego
Don’t value process over outcome
GOTO Copenhagen 2012- @johannakoll
40. Customers.
Values and team culture.
Vision.
GOTO Copenhagen 2012- @johannakoll
41. A selection of resources (1)
Case Study of Customer Input For a Successful Product, Lynn Miller (2005)
5 Users every Friday, Tom Illmensee & Alyson Muff, Agile 2009 Proceedings
Learning to play UX rugby, Anders Ramsay, http://slidesha.re/GPfK0w
Beyond Staggered Sprints: Integrating User Experience and Agile, Jeff Gothelf,
http://slidesha.re/9Pq3qb
Designing the user experience in an agile context, Johanna Kollmann, http://bit.ly/p3NmWI
Undercover User Experience, Cennydd Bowles & James Box
How to build the integrated scrum board, Ole H. Kristensen, http://b.qr.ae/JHeM9R
Test everything you got regardless of its polish or fidelity, Jeff Gothelf, http://bit.ly/n6qjTI
GOTO Copenhagen 2012- @johannakoll
42. A selection of resources (2)
It’s Our Research: Getting Stakeholder Buy-In for UX Research Projects , Tomer Sharon
Introduction to Design Studio Methodology, Will Evans, http://uxmag.com/articles/introduction-to-
design-studio-methodology
The KJ Technique: A Group Process for Establishing Priorities, Jared M. Spool,
http://www.uie.com/articles/kj_technique/
The new user story backlog is a map, Jeff Patton,
http://www.agileproductdesign.com/blog/the_new_backlog.html
Collaboration games: http://gogamestorm.com, http://innovationgames.com/resources/the-
games/
GOTO Copenhagen 2012- @johannakoll
Editor's Notes
Raise your hand ifyou are practicing some form of agile at your work – formal scrum, kanban, apply informallyyou are practicing user experience as part of your day job, formally or informallyyou are interacting with people who ‘do UX’, that could be a colleague, an internal team, an agencyI will talk about why I believe UX and Agile can be happy together. Then I’ll discuss some of the challenges, and reasons I’ve observed for why it’s not working. Then I will share a few tips on how to make it work – firstly about how to make more research with customers happen, secondly about how to make sure you work well as a team.
For me, UX is about curiosity, understanding people, how they interact psychology, (group) behaviour, systems thinking, cognition, communication, all part of itUX business benefits: reduced risk because by understanding users and by applying what we know about human cognition to the UI, we can help to make a product that works right.enhanced knowledge about customers more effective marketing, better product differentiation, understand social trendsbetter compliance: accessibilitytime and cost savings: easier to improve things quickly prior to implementation, can help to come up with better development approaches, benefit of involving UX in testing
manifesto is about doing things a better wayUX or design thinking not really taken into account
When I first came across agile, I thought: this is about empowering people by trusting them to do their job. And I found that agile folks have great techniques and tools for making people work better with people.
Mindset challenge. UX and design: predictive mindset. Agile: reactive, able to deal with change.
this works at Autodesk because of the ‘invisible collaboration’ and mindsetmention setups I have observed: separate track for design and research, designer per scrum team (which can be a challenge if there are inter-dependencies)Designing ahead != designing alone
this works at Autodesk because of the ‘invisible collaboration’ and mindsetmention setups I have observed: separate track for design and research, designer per scrum team (which can be a challenge if there are inter-dependencies)Designing ahead != designing alone
stepping on each others toes
Example from my own experience: collaboration within team worked well, but it was hard to fit research in and get the whole team involved in UX decisions that were informed by customer feedback.Depends of course on your context. In hindsight, I should have made more effort to get quantitative data from internal user feedback from product managers, help them to ask better questions (but hey no time for that).
If you want to make more UX happen at your company, understand your toolbox and push for it.If you want to make the team do more UX work together, become a collaborator.
If you want to make more UX happen at your company, understand your toolbox and push for it.If you want to make the team do more UX work together, become a collaborator.
Doing research will save you time! It’s like asking for directions. Asking for directions creates a delay, and at the same time makes sure that you’ll get to your destination. Drive through Copenhagen as a foreigner – asking for directions saves me time. Especially as there might be knowledge that’s not on the map, like road closure, construction work, a traffic jam, or a shortcut only a local can tell me about.
Cadence
understand the strengths and constraints of each
If you want to make more UX happen at your company, understand your toolbox and push for it.If you want to make the team do more UX work together, become a collaborator.
If you want to make more UX happen at your company, understand your toolbox and push for it.If you want to make the team do more UX work together, become a collaborator.
Mindset!
ants help each other outmention problem solving skills?
understand the strengths and constraints of each
how to create this? Together, eg with design studio, sketching exercises, collaborative planning sessions, demos and design reviews (cadence!), storymapping