[Sigia-l] Adobe Flex, Fireworks, and Agile

[Laurie Gray]

Tom, we've been using a methodology that matches rapid prototyping (via
iRise) with Agile very well, and we've been investigating using Flash
Catalyst as a stand-in for iRise. There appear to be some very realistic,
very viable advantages to moving forward with FC.

Here's what I'd do based on our current methodology: I recommend that you
structure your team with 2-3 key players: Flex designer, business analyst
(this one is optional if using FC I think, but you might still want to have
this person capturing deeper, functional requirements), and a facilitator.
Run your sessions live with key stakeholders, and project the FC screen on
the wall. Take a user story (or a few of them, strung together into a
scenario e.g. "stakeholders will view x monthly report") and walk through
the design, making sure to capture high level requirements, business and
user goals, the scenario flow, and finally, page level design, getting
input, feedback, and buy-in from the key stakeholders. When using this
approach, we are generally able to get through 2-3 scenarios from start to
finish in a 2 day session. From this point, we've traditionally rolled this
over to development so they can get started, although using a tool like FC
will put you that much closer to your goal. We've done this iteratively so
that we run a session for the first 2-3 days of the week, modify the
prototype on day 4, review or user test on day 5, and roll to development on
day 1 of the following week, when we begin another sprint. It's a crazy
pace, but it allows you to capture crazy stuff that way.

Couple of other thoughts: don't worry about getting too deep in the detailed
page level design/hooking up code in front of stakeholders or you'll lose
them. Do that offline, on the equivalent of our day 4. You'll need some
folks who are ninjas at using the tools to be able to move at this pace,
live. Not recommended for newbies just learning a tool. Your facilitator is
going to have to have some skill at managing the crowd, keeping the
development resources at an appropriate level of fidelity and keeping the
stakeholders on track/out of the weeds. Use all the traditional facilitation
stuff like parking lots and so on.

Feel free to ping me if you want or need more detail, but we did an entire
redesign of an internal March of Dimes web app from start to launch in just
about 6 months using this method + their Agile shop. It can be done.

Laurie

On Mon, May 24, 2010 at 6:23 PM, Tom Donehower <tdonehower at gmail.com> wrote:

> Hi,
>
> Does anyone have any experience working with Fireworks/Flex in an Agile
> environment? Have a client that has adopted this framework. However, their
> first release is not useable and we are being asked to help. I am trying to
> figure out the best way we as a UX consultant can add value within their
> existing workflow.  Any feedback appreciated.
>
> --
> -Tom
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