Last week, like any other week, we worked quite a lot on projects done in Agile. Nowadays there always seems to be a few of these going on, and new ones being planned.
Our relationship with agile is interesting, as we are neither big or small agile house ourselves. We are an Interactive Design consultancy which means that we get to work with both big and small companies, experienced and not-so-experienced product owners and see different scrum management software used by coders who all seem to see sprint & iteration work a bit differently from each other.
The amount of design we do in and for Agile Scrum projects is therefore quite high and we see several interpretations of “how it should be done”. Being in this position gives us quite a good understanding of the potential problems that can happen in a project when certain criteria is met.
Some of this know-how was already shared a little while ago by our Sami in the UX Lx conference. Several important points are described in his presentation. One main idea is that design tasks should be known 2 sprints ahead. This gives enough time for necessary design tasks: user research, design iterations, prototyping etc., and makes sure that when coding starts in 1-2 sprints, the basics design problems are already solved and everybody knows what needs to be done.
Typically this pre-planning works initially very well for sprints 0-2 maybe, but then starts to fall apart when the original task order is changed in the Scrum. Suddenly it seems more difficult to see 2 sprints ahead. Also the sprint starting right now might end up having different tasks than originally planned 2 sprints ago. This is what forces the design into playing catch-up with the coding.
How all of this can be solved is will be our task for the rest of the year. I think we need to add to Sami’s manifesto and create a Nordkapp Agile Manifesto which includes clear action points for all stakeholders and what they need to do and when for an agile project to succeed.
Work
Sami will be lecturing in Aalto University Business School next week about User Experience Design. Program includes paper prototyping, layouts and sketching and what not. See more here.
Generally people are super excited about new iPhone & iPad projects they are working on. Foamcores are filled with hand drawn and computerized UI drafts and there seems to be workshops related to these every week. What’s extra fun to see is that our newer people are heavily involved in these as well. Apparently they’re also feeling happy about this kind of work.
Until next week, people.
Photo cred Defensive Scrum (Rugby term) by P D
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