[Sigia-l] Agile, Scrum and UX?

Sat Mar 21 18:42:58 EDT 2015

Getting *all* the work needed to deliver a user story, from analysis and design thru to development and testing requires 'small' sized user stories so that the work fits into a single Sprint. 

The slicing method depends on a discussion between the Product Owner and the Team with the resultant slices just being smaller user stories. The order is negotiated between the Team and the PO. In a normal software project each user story will be a small feature-like element. 

Some of those slices will likely require more UX effort, some less, some none at all. But each slice will represent something that is of value to the Product Owner. A wireframe or prototype as the end result of a user story ia only likely to be 'of value' if it helps clarify some high risk unknown that will be looked at in a later Sprint. Architecture is some times tackled this way. Its often referred to as a Spike.

The Team collectively decide how they will tackle their Sprint Goal and the Increment together. They also decide how much work they take on. But the Product Owner still has the final say in terms of whether their approach represents value. If everyone is going to sit around and do nothing until the UX work is complete that's obviously not of value 

The Scrum Master's role in this is to help the team work out a plan of attack and ensure that the team doesn't "waterfall their sprints" http://www.scaledagileframework.com/sprint-execution/

When UX work starts at the beginning of a Sprint -- prototyping, interaction design, wireframes etc - is going on, I often find other team members are doing things like:

* Writing test scripts 
* Engaging business stakeholders, clients, end users face-to-face to clarify functional requirements 
* Doing cross a functional pairing with the UX guy to understand the interaction design and give feedback on areas where the technology is limited
* Analyzing requirements for that user story
* Doing technical design for that user story
* Researching what the coding community says about the features in the user story 
* Doing the back end components of that user story 

Or

* Delivering other user stories that have no real UX components

The Scrum Master makes.sure there is a plan of attack each day at the Daily Scrum and ensures everyone is collaborating toward the team's goal. No one is idle.

----- Reply message -----
From: "Thomas Donehower" <tdonehower at gmail.com>
To: "SIG Information Architecture" <sigia-l at asis.org>
Subject: [Sigia-l] Agile, Scrum and UX?
Date: Sun, Mar 22, 2015 6:35 AM

Jonathan,

You mention below "such sprints developers wouldn't be coding." Doesn't that go against the principe of each sprint yields production ready software?  Are you saying there could be sprints that are devoted to just prototyping for example?

> On Mar 21, 2015, at 9:54 AM, Jonathan Baker-Bates <jonathan at bakerbates.com> wrote:
> 
> "... they create an Increment together that is production ready each Sprint."
> 
> I assume this only really works when the team members can all (or
> mostly) do the UX and VD work as well their other roles. By "UX work",
> I mean things like user research, prototyping, visual and interaction
> design, etc. This would mean that during such sprints, developers
> wouldn't be coding (other than perhaps looking at technical debt or
> bug fixes from the last sprint). The companies you mention also have
> mature products (or at least brands) already, which makes it less
> likely that the visual design, if not the interaction design, would go
> off the rails. If you're a startup, things would be rather different I
> would suppose.
> 
> One of the major problems I've found with sprint-based activity is
> when team members can't (or won't) do UX work because they're working
> to deliver their part on stories from a previous sprint. I take it
> that you prevent this by making sure all stories are done in a single
> sprint, is that right? Does that not lead to endless discussions about
> how to cut stories down to fit though?
> 
> Interesting also that you say that a UX person might be the product
> owner or scrum master (they're very different roles in orthodox scrum,
> of course). Assuming UX designers have the necessary seniority in the
> organisation to take the place of product manager, I would think
> having UX in that position would lead to large "sprint zeros", no?
> 
> Jonathan
> 
> 
> 
> 
>> On 21 March 2015 at 06:36, Matthew Hodgson <magia3e at gmail.com> wrote:
>> 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
>>> ------------
>>> 2015  IA Summit
>>> April 22-26, 2015
>>> Minneapolis, MN
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