[Sigia-l] How the design process fits into the agile methodology, WAS Pricing the Design Process

[David Malouf]

Isn't that just a waterfall process?
Design done upfront and then development?
the only difference is that development starts its agile process after
a significant design period, but once done they go on their merry way
with Design having review input during the iteration process that
almost all Agile methods have.

no?

What is interesting is when design goes through its own agile
processes in parallel or in front of development iterations.

So something like this.

Iteration 1: Design does field research with X deliverable (personas,
environmental diagrams, etc.) (2 wks)
Success outcome - solid x-team communication about the context of use
of the product space.

Development does technological proof of concepts of X technology.
Success: technology learned, concept prototype built using dummy data
provided by Prod Mngt.

Iteration 2: Sketch ups (1 wk)
Success: through sketch explorations a sense of possibility in design
are discovered and shared with x-functional team

Development continues with POC of a different technology.

Iteration 3: Framework/Language (1 wk)
Success: limit sketchups to 2-3 directions that are scaled out to X
depth of the application; flow diagram of basic application is built

Development architects basic infrastructure


I think you might see where I'm going.

now it could be said that technology research shouldn't be made until
some of the design is done, but  I would say that it is seldom that
you enter a project where the goals of the project themselves don't
direct us in enough direction to mitigate the risk implied by choosing
a technology too early. The small step nature of Agile methods
acknowledges the risk associated with making some decisions too early.
Architectural directions are probably the biggest risks in agile
development when being done for complex enterprise wide applications
where the architecture's nature is a million$ project in and of
itself. (number hyperbole on purpose).

Anyway, I could see something like that and have been a part of
projects that have worked this way.

I do agree that almost all agile methods are developer driven,
responding to developer pressure on the bottom line.

-- dave

On 2/14/07, Tammie Hutto Egloff <tammie_hutto at usa.net> wrote:
> > I don't have a strongly held position on XP but I have some observations:
> >
> > 1.  Virtually all XP projects are developer driven.
> > 2.  Virtually all waterfall projects of yesteryear were developer driven.
> > 3.  XP wasn't created specifically to solve design problems.
> > 4.  Developers are not designers.
>
> I have to admit, when my last company implemented XP, it was very developer
> driven. I don't know if that's common among that specific agile "flavor"...
> it's just my experience.
>
> However, XP isn't the only Agile process. At my current company, we're using a
> SCRUM agile process for several projects. While development has a lot of say
> about what can be built in the sprint/iteration, the design comes from product
> and our User Centered Design group. We make sure the designs are completed
> before development starts to work on the functionality. Which means, the
> designs/features/etc are not developer driven and, therefore, they are not the
> designers. (Note, this doesn't mean that development doesn't have the freedom
> to offer design suggestions if they have them. It does mean they have a design
> created by designers that they implement.)
>
> Tammie
>
>
>
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-- 
David Malouf
http://synapticburn.com/