[Sigia-l] Agile, Scrum and UX?

[Matthew Hodgson]

I used to be a UX practitioner, then I started using agile methods to
deliver products (about 10 years ago). Now I'm an Agile Coach (for the last
6 years. Scrum, Lean and Kanban are my fav methods)

*Where does UX / Visual Design fit into Scrum?*

If you look at companies like eBay, Yahoo, Atlassian or even Spofity, the
agile team does all the design (including user-experience and visual
design) as well as development and testing. They plan together, they create
an Increment together that is production ready each Sprint. Typically, as a
result, there is some sort of UX skilled person as an integrated part of
the team. This is also my preference for teaching teams to work in agile
ways.

I find this highly collaborative approach empowers the whole team to take
control of the design themselves. That's not to say that they don't design
within a set of standards or guidelines, though. E.g. within WCAG 2.0 AA,
or a visual branding style guide. These standards form part of their
Definition of Done. When scaling across large numbers of team, this
'guidance' becomes very handy. I find that the guidance that the SAFe guys
are producing in the area of UX and scale quite useful.
http://www.scaledagileframework.com/ux/

With one team that I'm coaching now, their UX person is using Axure to
communicate interaction designs that are being implemented in the same
Sprint. He just finds this is the best way to communicate the intention of
the design to the rest of the team. If I'm doing UX work as a team member,
I don't tend to use this approach, I tend to do a lot of whiteboard
sessions with the rest of the team.

This is a team separated across 3 cities and two timezones. The physical
separation just makes things harder. We use the Quantum Entanglement
pattern to compensate (
https://sites.google.com/a/scrumplop.org/published-patterns/distributed-scrum-pattern-language/quantum-entanglement
).

*Deliverables?*

We do story mapping to help rapidly create the Product Backlog and produce
user stories rather than do extensive Spikes or Sprint 0 (
http://www.uie.com/brainsparks/2011/10/07/jeff-patton-story-mapping-for-ux-practitioners-tying-agile-and-ux-together/
)

We don't do wireframes as deliverables, but use them to communicate and
clarify design within the team. It also helps keep us focussed in terms of
what was suggested.

We do Pragmatic Personas (
http://www.stickyminds.com/article/pragmatic-personas) to help our user
stories and the Increment be user-focussed.

We do user journeys to help communicate where Epics, Features and User
Stories fit into the user experience.

We tend to update our documentation as we go as part of the Definition of
Done. This means all systems, data architecture and UX doco get updated in
an iterative fashion each Sprint as part of the Increment (production
ready, working software).

*Roles*

In terms of roles, I find that a Senior UX person can be an excellent Scrum
Product Owner as can a Senior BA. A person with good UX experience can also
be a greate Scrum Master because it can help the team focus on slicing user
stories to best represent a minimal viable (lovable) product (MVP) (not
that MVP is not supposed to be just minimal but importantly viable ... to
whom is often the issue. It's not minimal and viable for the team, it is
for the end-user). Apart from Scrum's 3 roles (Scrum Master, Product Owner
and Team), we don't have other formal roles. We don't even have a dev or
test "lead" role let alone a "ux designer" role.

*War Stories*

I used to employ the parallel pattern from Lynn Miller (
http://www.agileproductdesign.com/blog/emerging_best_agile_ux_practice.html).
The UX people always seem to get ahead of their teams, waste always results
(Lean would classify it as "over production"), and while there was
coordination there was little deep discussion and collaboration. The former
is important to note because you could interpret as an anti-pattern. The
Sprint 0 required to get work going is also considered an anti-pattern by
most scrum coaches and trainers.

*Tools*

I seem to end up using with Jira Agile or LeanKit. I don't find them useful
or as adaptable as a physical Kanban board though.

M



On 21 March 2015 at 05:33, Tom Donehower <tdonehower at gmail.com> wrote:

> For those of you out there who are or have been part of a SCRUM for product
> development, where has UX and visual design fit in the process if at all?
>
> I'm trying to understand where these other roles and their deliverables fit
> in relation to a sprint from others past experiences.
>
> Shared experiences, war stories, and insight greatly appreciated.
>
> Would also be curious if you've used a scrum tool you would recommend like
> Pivotal Tracker or Axosoft OnTime.
>
> --
> -Tom
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> Minneapolis, MN
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