[Sigia-l] How the design process fits into the agile methodology, WAS Pricing the Design Process

[Adrian Howard]

On 14 Feb 2007, at 12:04, James Melzer wrote:

> Austin Govella posted a couple weeks ago on agile and design.
> http://thinkingandmaking.com/lightpress/entries/232
>
> Austin - "Agile development won't give you better design. Design
> models things to be made. Development makes things you've modeled.
> Agile development methods promise better model-making, but don't
> promise better models. Agile development can actually devastate
> design."

Any my response was (no comment since I couldn't get past the spam  
filters :-) was:

---
There seems to be some confusion agile methods are purely a  
developmental process. That really doesn't gel with my experiences.  
For example I've found the Planning Game in XP is a very rich  
environment for doing exploratory design work.

For me agile is just as much about design as it is about  
implementation. Go read the agile manifesto again . Replace  
"software" by "product" and see how it reads.

It's true that if you don't have people with design skills involved  
in the team then you're less likely to get a decent product out the  
other end - but this is true of any process.

Agile development doesn't devastate design any more than any other  
process. In fact, I'd say that you're slightly more likely to get  
things right even without input from Design (in the UX/IxD sense)  
folk, because you're getting feedback far more frequently and can  
spot problem areas.

When the developers aren't separated from the stakeholders and users  
by N layers of management Chinese whispers it becomes a lot easier  
for them to do a good job.

As for agile only working 2-4 people - there are a /whole/ bunch of  
people who seem to be doing pretty darn well with considerably more  
than that :-) It's certainly easier to get a small team up and  
running in an agile manner. That doesn't mean that you can't get  
larger projects working that way.

---

Cheers,

Adrian