[Sigia-l] UX in Agile Sprints

[Jonathan Baker-Bates]

On 11 March 2013 20:14, Jason Valdina <signal at received.com> wrote:

> <snip>
> It was meant to challenge the notion "waterfall" vs. "agile" and make the
> case that except in truly lean contexts, the ideal (and most realistic)
> arrangement has the UX team working on the pre-sprint planning for the
> upcoming sprint in parallel to the current sprint.  This allows for a
> management feedback cycle whereby user insights can be integrated and
> addressed in the very next development cycle.


Unless I'm missed something, I don't see what the practical alternative* to
having UX sprints before dev sprints is. When you say "except in truly lean
contexts" are you referring to having UX and dev sprinting on the same
thing at the same time? In which case I would agree that's almost certainly
impossible. We tried to keep UX at least 3 sprints ahead of dev (ie about 6
weeks so as to have some chance of including user research and thinking
time in some sprint), although we were constantly being dragged in closer.

Jonathan

* Short of hiring a team of UX/dev unicorns