Tag: agile

Over-reliance on lean methods

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Our products don’t exist in a vacuum, nor should our processes. From my perspective, there is an over-reliance on methods such as Agile, Lean UX and design sprints that rush product teams towards short term solutions when building technology. These rapid processes make it easy to forget that
problems shift based on our perspective and complexity increases at different scales.

Linear processes often simplify the types of questions asked and time spent unpacking the problem, making it difficult to design a product that can handle complexity at scale.

Aly Blenkin: Designing Responsible Technology

MVP issues

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The fundamental challenge we are up against is that doing the right thing well is generally more expensive and time-consuming than doing the least you can get away with and figuring out how to defend it. For example, the Lean methodology and the Minimum Viable Product technique are supposed to help reduce waste and increase the timely flow of useful feedback. In practice, they are used as cover for rushing to a less thoughtful solution without considering the context or the long-term implications.

Designers have found themselves having to fit their work into these popular methods without an opportunity to critique their place in the surrounding system. And critiquing the elements of a system is a fundamental tool of design.

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The concept (value centered design) I’d like us all to agree on is that we need to design products and services that make their users better off, make money, and don’t fuck up society or the planet.

Erika Hall: Thinking in Triplicate

Build less

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One of the common misconceptions in software development is that we’re trying to get more output faster. … But if you get the game right, you will realize that your job is not to build more – it’s to build less. Minimize output, and maximise outcome and impact.”

Jeff Patton, User story mapping, p. xli

Project Management Triangle and Agile

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For team members working in an agile software development environment (if you are not already, it is simply a matter of time), the principles of the old Project Management Triangle still apply. How the cost, scope, and schedule are balanced will always determine the quality (i.e. success) of the project, and this needs to be assessed with each project (i.e. the client requirements). Unfortunately, no one is immune to senior management and project managers trying to upset the balance of the PM Triangle by reducing costs, tightening deadlines, and adding features in the specification (most likely to try and make a sale).

UX and Agile: Tying the knot by Michael Lai

UX strategy and agile process

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UX strategy can provide the strategic guidance that agile doesn’t attempt to provide. As Liam Friedland, Senior Director, User Experience at Informatica, puts it: “Agile is a process; ergo a set of tactics. Agile is not a strategy. Sun Tzu provides us with a good understanding of the relationship between these two: ‘Strategy without tactics is the slowest route to victory. Tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat.’”

Paul Bryan: Is UX Strategy Fundamentally Incompatible with Agile or Lean UX?