[Sigia-l] IA and Agile Processes

[Jeff Lash]

I'm looking for suggestions on integrating IA/UCD into an Agile Process (XP,
SCRUM, etc.)

It's been over three years since there was any serious "discussion" on this
in the IA community, inspired by the infamous Kent Beck vs. Alan Cooper
interview
--> http://www.info-arch.org/lists/sigia-l/0201/#364

I've gathered a lot of white papers, articles, and URLs, but I'm looking
more for personal experiences. And, in my case, agile WILL be used for a
project that's starting up, so any philosophical discussions about whether
XP can actually work with IA will not help me as much as HOW can they work
together ;-) I'm being asked to better clarify and explain the UCD role, and
am optimistic about the opportunity to define our involvement as WE think it
should work.

Specifically, I'm looking at things like:
- How do you work with iteration timelines -- are you always one iteration
ahead?
- How much initial up-front IA work is necessary to get the foundation? Or
is that not needed?
- How do you document your work? Do you produce the same deliverables?
- How do you deal with different interpretations of the "customer" (internal
customer, external customer, end user)?
- IA would seem to bounce back between the "customer" and the "developer"
side, depending on the phase... is this true? Is this an issue?
- Are you involved in writing front-end code with the developers, or only
producing wireframes/specs that they code off of?
- How important IS colocation, really? Is it needed 100% of the time?
- How and how often do you usability test? Do you test off iterations or off
prototypes that you develop?

You know, tactical stuff like that...

Thanks,
Jeff