In software there are two key types of work - discovery and delivery. However, that doesn't mean there are different people doing those jobs. If the whole team is responsible for product success, not just getting things built, then the whole team needs to understand and contribute to both kinds of work.
Dual track agile and the UXDX model both convey the approach of design and development working together.
2. Autodesk
Entertainment Creation Products
We make high-end 3d modelling,
animation, visual effects and rendering
software for film, television, games,
and architectural visualization
Our customers make magic.
Dina Salama
John Schrag
Director of Experience Design
former
- software developer
- experience designer
- agile coach
Twitter: @jvschrag
3. Today’s talk
How Agile ruined experience design
First Revelation
Why Agile + UX is an awesome combination
Second Revelation
Making it work for you
Third Revelation
A story in three Revelations
5. The 1990s – Life Before Agile
My team at Alias
Waterfall development
practice
All-unicorn UX team,
led by Lynn Miller
Strong UX practice
Good relationship with
developers, respected
7. 2002: Agile comes to Alias
Jim Highsmith hired to provide Agile Training
Adaptive Software Development
Scrum Meetings
Some aspects of Extreme Programming
UX practice was completely absent from process
8. 2002: Adjusting
Locus of control moved to team level
Developers were more engaged
Devs were driving the train!
Dev teams were super happy!
9. 2002: Adjusting
Developers couldn’t wait for UX activities
We couldn’t provide feedback when the development team needed it
UX team became isolated and ineffective
User Experience Team – not so happy
Photo from
The Darjeeling Limited
10. Failing Strategy
“I’m just going to keep doing my job the way I always have
and telling the team what they need to do.”
“I’m just going to let them go ahead and fail. Then they’ll
come to me begging and let me do my job.”
Actual quotes from actual people
12. Back to Principles
“Business people and developers must
work together daily throughout the
project.”
“The most efficient and effective method
of conveying information to and within a
development team is face-to-face
conversation.”
“Working software is the primary
measure of progress”
“Agile processes promote sustainable
development. The sponsors, developers,
and users should be able to maintain a
constant pace indefinitely.”
“Continuous attention to technical
excellence and good design enhances
agility.”
Simplicity--the art of maximizing the
amount of work not done--is essential.
From the Agile Manifesto
24. What everyone gets wrong about dual track
Devs and Designers on same team
Insight is shared – no “handoffs”
Devs are involved in design
Designers are involved in implementation
Two TRACKS, not two TEAMS
26. How to adapt anything for Agile
Agile practices are:
Time-boxed
Iterative
Incremental
Collaborative
Conversational
Just-in-time
27. How to adapt anything for Agile
Agile practices are:
Time-boxed
Iterative
Incremental
Collaborative
Conversational
Just-in-time
UX practices must be adapted to have the same
qualities, while maintaining their UX value.
28. How to adapt anything for Agile
Old UX practice:
Create a prototype
Plan the test protocol
Find testers
Schedule tests
Run tests
Write a report detailing all found issues
Usability Testing
29. How to adapt anything for Agile
Old UX practice:
Create a prototype
Plan the test protocol
Find testers
Schedule tests
Run tests
Write a report detailing all found issues
Usability Testing
Agile Attributes
Time-boxed?
Iterative?
Incremental?
Collaborative?
Conversational?
Just-in-time?
30. How to adapt anything for Agile
Agile UX practice:
Pre-schedule regular testing
Maintain a pool of testers
Test whatever is ready
Invite team to watch
Report key issues only
Involve developers in solving issues
Usability Testing
31. How to adapt anything for Agile
Agile UX practice:
Pre-schedule regular testing
Maintain a pool of testers
Test whatever is ready
Invite team to watch
Report key issues only
Involve developers in solving issues
Usability Testing
Agile Attributes
Time-boxed ✔
Iterative ✔
Incremental ✔
Collaborative ✔
Conversational ✔
Just-in-time ✔
32. How to adapt anything for Agile
Old UX practice:
Visit many customers
Analyse all the data
Write a report
Create full set of artefacts (personas, use cases, journey
maps, etc.)
Deliver to development
User Research
33. How to adapt anything for Agile
Agile UX practice:
Talk to users regularly
Focus on upcoming research needs
Mix methods (e.g. usability test + card sorting + interview)
Incrementally improve personas, maps, etc.
Explain insights to developers continuously via storytelling
User Research
Agile Attributes
Time-boxed ✔
Iterative ✔
Incremental ✔
Collaborative ✔
Conversational ✔
Just-in-time ✔
34. How to adapt anything for Agile
Old UX practice:
Design the whole UI up from in great detail (BDUF)
Write down every detail in a long document
Review with stakeholders in a big sign-off meeting
Pass to developers to implement
Writing a design spec
35. How to adapt anything for Agile
Agile UX practice:
Replace BDUF with VDUF (Vague Design Up-Front)
Detailed design one sprint ahead only
Pictures and callouts – just a few pages
Talk through the design with developers
Visit with developers while they are building it
Speccing a design
Agile Attributes
Time-boxed ✔
Iterative ✔
Incremental ✔
Collaborative ✔
Conversational ✔
Just-in-time ✔
37. We started to present/publish on the topic
Miller, Lynn. “A Case Study of Customer Input for a
Successful Product”. AGILE 2005
Schrag, John. “Using Formative Usability Testing as
a Fast UX-design Tool”. UPA 2006
Sy, Desirée. “Adapting Usability Investigations for
Agile User-Centered Design”. Journal of Usability
Studies (JUS), May 2007
38. So did others
Macomber, Gary and Rauch, Thyra. “Adopting Agility”. USE 2003.
John Armitage. Are agile methods good for design? interactions, 11(1):14–23, 2004.
Stefan Blomkvist. Towards a Model for Bridging Agile Development and User-Centered Design. Springer
Netherlands, 2005.
Stephanie Chamberlain, Helen Sharp, and Neil Maiden. Towards a framework for integrating agile
development and user-centred design. In 7th International Conference on Extreme Programming and Agile
Processes in Software Engineering, XP 2006, volume 4044 of LNCS, pages 143–153, Heidelberg, Germany,
2006. Springer Verlag
Larry L. Constantine and Lucy A. D. Lockwood. Usage-centered software engineering: an agile approach to
integrating users, user interfaces, and usability into software engineering practice. In ICSE ’03, pages 746–
747. IEEE Computer Society, 2003.
P. Hodgetts. Experiences integrating sophisticated user experience design practices into agile processes. In
Agile Conference, 2005, pages 235–242, 2005.
39. What did we call it again?
Parallel Track
Staggered Sprints
Dual Track
41. Our experience was not unique
“I sometimes forget how miserable my first year in
Agile development was...Eventually I adapted, and
I’ve never been more content.”
-Jeff Patton
@jeffpatton
43. We go Agile (again)
I was asked to lead this effort (because I complained so much)
Made mistakes, learned a lot
Autodesk M&E Division Agile Transformation
57. Culture Eats Process for Breakfast
Practice grows in fertile soil
Find champions, then clone
Beware of Heroes
Who rules your roost?
Watch your incentives
Use inclusion to maximize ROI of your diversity
Choose your scrummasters wisely
And you never see it coming
Gulfoss Falls, Iceland. Picture from my collection
The product development group chose to adopt the Adaptive Software Development process along with Scrum meetings and some elements of Extreme Programming.
Public domain image from Wikimedia Commons
Things that didn’t work: staged spec writing
Putting UX activities into the backlog
Splitting our sprints
Photo from my personal collection - Scotland
Explain items. End on time-boxed. Problem is that we can’t all be focused on the same things devs are focused on, because we have to think ahead, research and be ready
We need to time-travel
Clarify validating code
Punch up communication
Daily scrum,
“When you see the separate track, working on different times…
Practices that fit into a Dual-Track Framework
In 2006, Alias was acquired by Autodesk, who at the time was still using a waterfall process. Our Agile practice was squashed like a bug, and we went back to the old way of doing things. It was only then we realized how much better things were with Agile.
Photo from my personal collection - Scotland
Is this the next Agile? No – Lean is a way to figure out what you need to build – Agile is the way to build it. They work together great because