UCD can fit into a fast-paced Agile environment
Picking up where we left off last week, we continue our exploration of how to successfully marry UCD and Agile processes within the same development environment. The previous post covered the first 3 of 7 Tips for Success which focused on the important role collaboration plays, from building the right team through every phase of a project. Today we’ll talk about how experimentation, rhythm, focus and quality come into play.
Tip 4: Encourage experimentation.
As Jeff Gothelf in his book Lean UX points out, “Permission to fail breeds a culture of experimentation. Experimentation breeds creativity. Creativity, in turn, yields innovative solutions.” Because there is no one-size-fits-all Agile methodology, it’s important to make sure the team has the freedom to experiment with their processes, deliverables, and sprint rhythm. Establish a culture where taking risks and progressive elaboration of team processes and deliverables is encouraged – after all, you’re unlikely to get it right the first time, but if you experiment, eventually you will. For example, some Agile UX practitioners advocate a staggered sprints approach to integrating UX and design activities with development activities, where design activities take place one or two sprints ahead of development work (as noted in both Lynn Miller’s and Desirée Sy’s articles). But Jeff Gothelf in Lean UX talks about the disadvantages his team encountered with this approach, and describes the experimentation they engaged in to find a sprinting process that allowed everyone to focus on the same problems at the same time. Your team can, and probably should, start with someone else’s model for incorporating UX work into the sprint cycle – but, like Jeff’s team, don’t be afraid to evolve your process to suit the needs of your team and your project.
Tip 5: Find the optimal sprint rhythm for your team.
Establishing a sprint rhythm that allows the team to make adequate progress while maintaining a sustainable pace is critical. This is especially important when introducing UX activities into the sprinting process. Finding the right rhythm requires choosing the appropriate scope for each sprint, picking the right UX activities, figuring out how best to “chunk” the design work (Desirée Sy’s article “Adapting Usability Investigations for Agile User-centered Design” has helpful advice on this), finding the right level of documentation, and playing with sprint duration. Ultimately, the sprint rhythm will depend on the team and the project. For example, some teams might find that a two-week sprint cycle with UX testing every other sprint works well for them; others may prefer a three- or four-week sprint cycle with testing during every sprint. As mentioned above, some teams might prefer to use a staggered sprint approach to incorporating UX activities into the sprint rhythm; others may prefer a model more like the one Jeff Gothelf describes.
Don’t lead your team astray!
Tip 6: Make sure user experience activities are focused and actionable.
Working on Agile time scales necessitates modifying the timing and granularity of UX activities that are performed. For example, your team may need to:
- Streamline study planning processes.
- Develop smaller-scale studies that focus on a few key design elements.
- Test on low-fidelity mock-ups instead of polished prototypes (see Garett Dworman’s UsabilityGeek blog post for more on the advantages of using low-fidelity mock-ups to iterate design solutions).
- Use methodologies such as the Rapid Iterative Testing and Evaluation (RITE) method to test and iterate designs more quickly.
- Supplement formal usability testing with quick-turnaround online tests using products like User Testing, or through informal tests using in-house participants (especially when testing early designs).
- Think about faster ways to recruit members of your target audience to participate in more formal studies (for example, creating a bank of participants available for studies).
To be sure the UX activities meet your team’s informational needs, all team members must be involved in articulating the study questions for each round of UX testing. Once the results are in, the whole team should go through the findings and come up with realistic, actionable solutions to the issues identified.
Tip 7: Experiment with appropriate quality for user experience study materials and deliverables.
While long and detailed documentation has its place, Agile values “working software over comprehensive documentation” (see the Manifesto for Agile Software Development). Values like this plus short release cycles means there is rarely time to write a tome – by the time you finish writing, your report will be moot. So instead, UX practitioners working on Agile teams need to think creatively about how they can produce lighter-weight study materials and deliverables that give the team only what they need in order to move forward. For example, in her article, Desirée Sy talks about using verbal stories and demonstrations of observed behavior, along with index cards documenting each issue, to communicate test results to her team. Findings should be succinct and prioritized by the team so everyone buys into the findings and knows which problems to focus on first and which should go into the backlog. In Janet Six’s interview with Carol Barnum, Carol describes her team’s process of debriefing together at the end of each study day to “agree on the findings and prioritize the issues the development team needs to fix. The developers, when present, walk out with their list of issues to address in the next or a future sprint.” If done properly, light-weight reporting is by no means synonymous with lack of quality; it is simply a different, and often more effective, way to communicate your results. Perhaps you’ve had experience introducing UCD into an Agile development process, so please share with us, or let us know if we can provide user research or design services that fulfill your business objectives, Agile or not! Contact TecEd and tell us your story to get started.
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