Agile or awkward?
CHI 2008 panel
Reinoud Bosman
Information Architect
MediaCatalyst, Amsterdam
reinoud.bosman@mediacatalyst.com
MediaCatalyst.

MediaCatalyst
Digital marketing agency
› Amsterdam, Malta, New York
› 70+ people, 15+ nationalities
› Clients: Sony Ericsson, Philips, OMA, Reebok, Sony, Canon
Services
› Branding strategy & planning
› Information architecture & design
› Copy-writing
› Technology
MediaCatalyst.

MC-Agile
No continuous client-developer involvement
› UX / BA act as client ‘representative’
User Experience responsibilities
› Functionality
› Wireframes / Sitemap
› User Research
› Usability Testing
Business Analyst responsibilities
› Scrum Master
› User Stories
› Product Backlog
MediaCatalyst.

Agile project example
Distributed teams
› Amsterdam – User Experience & Design
› Stockholm – Development
Daily scrums
› Team scrums – 9am
› Cross scrums – 2pm
4 week sprints – UX/BA team one sprint ahead
› Week 1: Concepting
› Week 2: Stakeholder Feedback
› Week 3: Refinement
› Week 4: Specification & Prioritization
MediaCatalyst.

MediaCatalyst.

Statements
MediaCatalyst.

Trust
“An Agile development process cannot function without a high levels of trust.
Trust between designers, developers, managers & clients. Without trust
scope discussions will arise and a transition to waterfall is inevitable”
MediaCatalyst.

Trust
› Fixed budget, flexible scope. › Scope discussions always lead to de-
prioritization. No ‘minimal scope’.
› Easy to de-prioritize functionality, which › Potential for misuse: over-estimating to
is a more realistic project approach. force de-prioritizing & introduction of new
requirements (scope-creep).
› Shared responsibilities between project › Thorough understanding of development
and stakeholders. process.
MediaCatalyst.

Communication
“Agile demands good communication. Only by communicating the team can
keep an overview of what the requirements are and what’s being developed
and spot the gaps that will fall during the prioritization process”
MediaCatalyst.

Communication
› Daily scrums shorten communication › Scrum-dependency: little communication
lines outside of scrums (especially in
distributed teams)
› Anticipate and react to de-prioritization of › Requirements team need to pay special
functionality. Opportunity to refine and attention to development support. Risk:
fine-tweak designs. they’re focused on designing next sprint
functionality
MediaCatalyst.

Iterative design?
“Only development is iterative. Requirements should be finalized upfront.
Only then the product owner can make a balanced judgment on which
requirements can be de-prioritized. If requirements are still discovered during
the project control becomes impossible.”
MediaCatalyst.

Iterative design?
› Continuous testing delivers functionality › Easy to drill-down and refine designs, but
that’s closer to client’s requirements and doesn't support exploring different routes
user’s need very well
› Re-prioritizing: scope creep is minimized. › Essential functionality is easily de-
Something comes on, something drops prioritized: hard to keep track of final
off product-scope (need for good tracking &
reporting tools)
› Pro-active monitoring of estimations. If › Pushing functionality into the next sprint
estimations are high on essential can lead to something never getting built
functionality, maybe it’s time to rethink (cascading requirements)
the design
MediaCatalyst.

Thank you
Reinoud Bosman
Information Architect
MediaCatalyst.
reinoud.bosman@mediacatalyst.com
MediaCatalyst.