I’ve recently been involved in an enterprise wide program in California for a global energy company. Among our activities User Experience has been a key facilitator in the client-conchango team and early on I spent time focussing on the process needed to successfully integrate a User Experience team within a large scale Agile project. These approaches are being debated within the wider agile and user centered design communities.
There is probably no ‘one solution fits all’ answer and the right process will depend on team structure, project timing, client involvement and the sprint lifecycle. But each time there should be a way to merge User Experience activities with the Agile approach to ensure a successful product designed around the goals of the users and the business.
Getty Center, LA
Perhaps the most challenging aspects are met when focusing on design activities that have traditionally been achieved through an up-front design approach; the design of persona profiles including the overall objectives and goals of archetypal users, and, as the design evolves - the holistic, big-picture vision and structure of the product. This seems exactly where Agile philosophies can help out – continual iteration and feedback into the design and development cycle means that the product re-shapes as the clients business goals and customer needs move on. Go with the flow - if the project methodology along with business and customer needs are flexible, then so too, the customer experience should be malleable and adaptable. This also allows new ideas to be discovered with the client throughout the project.
Sprint / iteration 0 for ground work – user persona profiling, user story analysis and conceptual models can be light-weight. Mini-personas and card-sized user stories allow more detailed analysis when dealing with specific objectives of the project. Conceptual models can evolve through collaboration with technical architects and stakeholder validation. Earlier thinking around user goals and product objectives can influence technology and architecture decisions.
Mini personas, affinity diagram, user stories (from stakeholder / user workshops)
So how does this work in practice? There are thoughts and experiences within Conchango and beyond. With me they broadly polarize around 2 types; both have cyclical iteration and ultimately look at discrete chunks – user stories and other requirements lead to interaction design and to low-fidelity user testing. The difference has been that one approach is staggered ahead of the development team and the other coincides. The latter is probably even more collaborative but can be challenging in terms of the holistic picture and achieving the right level of detail. Maybe there is a kind of hybrid where light-weight, mini designs are staggered ahead while a more detailed design of other features happens concurrently…