[Sigia-l] Agile & User Experience: What are the common denominators?

[Dave Robertson]

Hello!

First - apologies to subscribers of Agile-Usability and IxD for 
cross-posting... 

My name is Dave Robertson, and although you can't see him, this is my 
partner, John (JJ) Johnston. We've been asked to deliver a presentation 
for friends of ThoughtWorks Canada in January (to which all of you are 
welcome to come, but more later). JJ is an agile guy who's interested in 
user experience and I'm the user experience guy who's interested in Agile. 

 
We've decided to make an argument that Agile and UX share a number of 
common values and that these values should form a foundation for better 
integration (rather than simply trying to mash together our respective 
techniques or chucking rocks at opposing sides). 

Since we were approached in October, there's been a lot of fresh 
discussion about "agilux" here and on other lists.  Nielsen/Norman Group 
delivered their opinion on the topic and Cennydd Bowles made his call for 
a common future for the Agile and UX communities. But, as always, we still 
see emails on mailing lists asking questions like "How do we mash these 
things together?",  "Should we mash these things together?" and, most 
importantly - "How do we make this work better!?". It struck us that you 
might have an opinion about common values, so as part of our presentation, 
we'd like to hear and summarize this community's feelings about our 
theory, good or bad. 

To (hopefully) start the discussion, here are three questions:

1. What role do you play in your projects? Is it as an analyst, a project 
manager, a developer, a designer, a researcher or something else?

2. What "things" - goals, objectives, values, attitudes, philosophies - 
are most important to you when you do your job? 

3. If you've been engaged in projects that have been heavily influenced by 
agile and /or user experience, how has it influenced what you value in 
your work?

Sincerest thanks!

Dave & JJ


Dave Robertson
Principal Consultant, User Experience
ThoughtWorks Canada
Yahoo! IM: dar_calgary at yahoo.ca
Twitter: shoveller

PS: Here are some details about that presentation. Feel welcome to 
register if you're planning to be in Toronto on January 20th or Calgary on 
January 22nd. 

http://www.thoughtworks.com/what-we-say/events/tech-briefing_ca.html