Integrating UX Into Agile: How To Ensure Your Sprints Result In Usable Software
•
34 likes•4,910 views
These are my slides from my talk at Agile2011 in Salt Lake City. I discuss the challenges of integrating Agile and UX best practices and talk about my UXI Matrix. The UXI Matrix is a modified product backlog format that can help teams visualize and track the UX impact of work done in Agile projects. Finally I illustrate with some examples how the UXI Matrix integrates with Story Mapping, Personas, and can even be used to help teams transitioning to Agile from traditional PRDs and MRDs.
Recommended
Recommended
More Related Content
What's hot
What's hot (20)
Similar to Integrating UX Into Agile: How To Ensure Your Sprints Result In Usable Software
Similar to Integrating UX Into Agile: How To Ensure Your Sprints Result In Usable Software (20)
Recently uploaded
Recently uploaded (20)
Integrating UX Into Agile: How To Ensure Your Sprints Result In Usable Software
- 1. Integrating UX Into AgileHow To Ensure Your Sprints Result In Usable Software Jon Innes Aug 10, 2011
- 2. Overview Do you have a long list of user stories and have trouble organizing and prioritizing them? Want a better way to track dependencies between stories? Do you find it tedious to write “As a user” over and over? Do you find that some stories impact more than a single user type and need a way to track that? Want to figure out how to measure the UX impact of backlog items? Want to track UX work like wireframes, mockups, or user testing more effectively? Just want to learn more about UX and how to integrate it into Scrum?
- 3. Agile & UX Integration Challenges Working code is not enough to create a good UX UX produces deliverables of value other than code UX deliverables are used in many parts of the company UX changes can impact lots of teams, creating chaos UX deliverables often get used by many teams outside of developers UX work may require longer term plans or sequencing User studies may need to be done a sprint ahead or behind User research may take longer than a sprint to complete end to end UX staffing often breaks “self contained team” rule Due to the variety of specialized skills it may be necessary to matrix Some skills needed infrequently, but experience is key to success
- 4. UX & Agile Meet http://www.flickr.com/photos/dearbarbz365/2196169411/in/photostream/
- 5. Compatibility of Agile and UX Values Process and tools Individuals and interactions over Comprehensive documentation Working software over Contract negotiation Customer collaboration over Following a plan Responding to change over Agile info based on www.agilemanifesto.org & www.mountaingoatsoftware.com
- 6. User Experience—A Brief Definition Marketing It starts by something being useful… Functionally, people mustbe able to use it… User Experience Sales The way it looks mustbe pleasing… Desirability This extends to designingan overall user experience Usability Support That includes marketing, sales and support design Utility Executing well on all of these areas is what creates a great user experience
- 8. Marketing oriented, get user to know offering exists
- 9. Get user to integrate offering into their lives and use long term
- 10. Get user to engage with product for initial 1st useThese apply to any type of product or service AND includes more than product design activities Categories based on Dave McClure’s AARRR Startup Metrics for Pirates see: http://500hats.typepad.com/500blogs/2007/06/internet-market.html
- 11. Research User Experience Design SM UX Means Integrated Research & Design
- 12. Six Key UX Activities for Software SM Activities listed based on Norman: The Invisible computer, 1998
- 13. UX OrganizationalIntegration Points Market Research Subject Matter Experts Project Planning Product Management Technical Writing Market Research Brand Strategy Engineering Advertising Sales Quality Assurance Technical Support SM
- 14. Managing UCD within agile projects. Detweiler, 2007
- 16. UX Matters Involve Users UXI Matrix http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agile_software_development
- 17. Changes Via Values and Visibility New Values: UX Matters, Involve Users Involve users early and often Waiting until the end is the waterfall way The definition of “done” can only be determined by users More Visibility: Tracking via UXI Matrix Track UX deliverables—who’s doing what? Have we validated our stories with users? Did the iteration feedback include user feedback? Can they use it? Do they like it? Would they recommend it? Is the UX getting better? What are we doing about it?
- 18. 6b 6a 1 2 3 4 5 List Users List Stories Groom Estimate Assign Track Track Bonus: Add hyperlinks to deliverables
- 19. Common Questions & Answers Isn’t this just a product backlog? Sort of, but with additional information Start with your backlog and just build off of it How do I collect UX metrics? See www.measuringux.com Also consider just tracking what UX things you create What “design” metrics do you capture Start with do you have a design for the story Consider tracking intermediate work like wireframes Another good one is “do we have assets” (e.g., icons)
- 20. More Questions & Answers How does this relate to Patten’s Story Map stuff? His technique is a great way to start The UXI Matrix includes UX tracking and metrics Can I use something else other than Excel? Sure, but I suggest you start simple Why not use sticky notes? Teams I work with are distributed and like electronic stuff The UXI Matrix has calculations on it, and hyperlinks I can print it out or share it on a server
- 21. Story Map Example www.agileproductdesign.com/writing/how_you_slice_it.pdf
- 23. Persona Example
- 24. UX & Agile Meet UX Agile http://www.flickr.com/photos/dearbarbz365/2196169411/in/photostream/
- 26. UX Methods and Deliverables Methods Deliverables
Editor's Notes
- There was a famous commercial tag line for peanut butter cups: "You got your peanut butter in my chocolate! You got your chocolate in my peanut butter!". Two great tastes that taste great together." Agile and UX are like this, two different things that can work well together.
- Just over 10 years ago, not far from here at Snowbird the Agile Manifesto was written to define the values of “lightweight” methodologists who wanted to change the way software was developed. The fact we are here today is testament the impact of that meeting. At the time of that meeting another large change was already underway in the software community. User Experience work had crossed the chasm from best practice to common practice during the internet boom. Unfortunately there was little cross pollination among the UX and Agile communities. Let’s review the compatibility of these sets of values.
- One of the problems when discussing user experience design is that many individuals and organizations don’t view it holistically. Contrast that to Apple, where design includes everything from the ads to the store, from product boxes, to genius bars, and in store training classes. Consider how a focus on solely producing working software would impact a company who wants to excel at providing a holistic experience that would have to be coordinated with marketing, sales, support, etc.
- Dave McClure, famous internet entrepreneur and investor has advised startups to think about 5 key types of metrics using his AARRR acronym. I’ve listed the first 4 here which are UX centric (revenue metrics are beyond the scope of this talk). Note how these don’t emphasize development centric things like releasing code that Agile methods like Scrum focus on. That’s a big source of the reasons people struggle with integration Agile & UX. UX metrics and activities are not captured in burn down charts.
- One of the common sources of confusion is that Scrum and other Agile methods assume a product owner or surrogate user is available to the users to help them define requirements and is in a position to define them and verify the UX is good enough. UX recognizes that requirements for mass market products and services often require significant research and iterative refinement even before development. Good UX is always the result of research that is closely coupled with design.
- Another problem integrating UX into Agile is that UX work is very specialized, and is typically performed by more than one person because it would be very hard to find someone who could do all of the necessary work at a high level of quality. Just having one of the UX specialists for each of the above areas would create a team of 6 without developers!
- Each of the 6 UX focus areas listed actually produce value to various parts of the organization, but often go overlooked as they cross the functional silos found in many companies.
- There have been several publications analyzing how to integrate Agile with UX over the years. Take for example this image from an article from Mark Detweiler in Interactions magazine in 2007.
- Or this one by Uday Gajendar highlighting the holistic and iterative nature of good UX work…
- So now looking at theposter image for Agile that appears on Wikipedia what’s missing? How can we integrate UX?
- Change only starts when people embrace new values. Tracking objective progress towards the desired outcome by making it visible is key. I’ll assume you care about UX and design, or you wouldn’t be here. If your team cares about UX then they’ll be interested in this too. The secret sauce in UX is user involvement. The more user involvement throughout the process the more effective your iterations will be. Recognize the definition of done is like the definition of obscenity, you know it when you see it. Recognize you are not the user so you can’t judge done, only your users can.
- Here’s an example from a project I did with a customer. I presented this at UPA 2011 this year (with James McElroy). It shows how we used the UXI Matrix to help the team transition to being more agile while retaining some of their existing UX best practices.
- Agile & UX are like peanut butter and chocolate. Great ideas that CAN work great together. However you have to have a recipe. Otherwise you’ll end up with a gooey mess. Question for the audience. Does Agile fit into UX or does UX fit into Agile?Hint: The peanut butter would never hold the chocolate well, but it makes for a great center.