Agile or Awkward:
Surviving and Flourishing
in an Agile/Scrum Project
Miles Rochford
CHI 2008, Florence
8 April 2008
All opinions expressed in this presentation are the author’s own
and do not necessarily represent the official view of Nokia.

About me
• Software/web development background
• Last six years: IA and UX practitioner
• Now: Design Specialist at Nokia Design
• Range of different projects, including both
agile methods (scrum, xp) and waterfall
• IANAAE!

Project background
• Agency-side web application development
• Integration with SSO, sync platform, third-
party web services
• UK launch, then global rollout
• Short timeframe, only 4 months
• First agile project for UX/creative teams

Agile goes global

Where does UX ‘fit’?
• Creating the experience vision
• Producing design deliverables
• Acting as user advocate to dev team
• Being part of the dev team

Creating the vision
• ‘Sprint Zero’ – repurposed for UX
• Get everything settled in advance, ready to
go... but life isn’t like that
• Often not long enough to develop effective
design vision, depending on customer
• Sometimes can be very long (>2 years)
• Considerable UX resource required

Producing deliverables
• Working ahead of development team, usually
one sprint (sometimes two) in advance
• Short sprints (two weeks) can be very hard
• Handover to visual design before
development – not agile people
• Constant battle between new work, old work
and current work – what wins?

Acting as advocate
• Development team often too focused on
customer needs, rather than user needs
• Sometimes BA can work against UX
• Some lack of appreciation for UX role
• Front-end developers who grok’d UX and
creative (and vice versa) valuable allies

Part of the team
• Scrums, telcos, wikis, subversion, IM
• Colocate, colocate, colocate!
• Same room as front-end team
• 5,000 miles from back-end team
• Separation from agency-wide UX team
• Long-term resourcing for UX an issue

Today’s challenges
• Distributed teams, different organisations
• Research, concepting, design, specification
and development over long timeframes
• Limited ability to commit design resource on
an ongoing basis (agency and client side)
• Integrating hardware, software and services
• Involving end-users as stakeholders

Question
• Does an agile methodology deliver a better
user experience [than other alternatives]?
• If it cannot, why should UX practitioners
support and participate in the process?