How to design software architecture & UX in an Agile environment.

1. Architecture and UX at NoNameTechnology How to design architecture & UX in an Agile environment? © 2011 Geoff H Wing Geoff H Wing, PMP, CSM 2011/05/16

2. The Challenge for Architecture & UX FIXED Features Time Resources Agile Design Architecture Design Resources Time Features FLEXIBLE For UX and architecture, we want features to be fixed. In Agile, we want time & resources to be fixed. BUT © 2011 Geoff H Wing

3. The fractal as an Agile metaphor Fractal: something where the smaller bits iterate to make the whole. What happens at a small scale also happens at larger scales. © 2011 Geoff H Wing

4. Terminology: Agile Enterprise“Fractals” Smaller © 2011 Geoff H Wing

5. Architecture / UX is not always Agile © 2011 Geoff H Wing

7. Iterations are short and numerous (i.e. two week duration)

8. Teams might be working on more than one concurrent project© 2011 Geoff H Wing

9. Top-down Architectural Planning & Agile Implementation Some UX and technical infrastructure needs to be planned because they are pervasive: UX affects entire customer experience so must be designed from end-to-end. Technical infrastructure can affect foundation for an entire product. How can architects & UX work with agile implementation teams to create their designed solutions? © 2011 Geoff H Wing

10. Implementing UX Architecture Implementation Teams UX team Release Planning Team (Product Manager, Product Owner, UX architect, ScrumMaster) Analyze and Prioritize Epics Create UX epics From UX backlog, assets & design, implement UX in a release. Break down epics  features  stories  tasks. Plan implementation of UX across future releases Decide epics for each release, picking from UX backlog Estimate size of epics Create UX backlog (prioritized epics) Ensure size of work “WIP = Work In Progress” does not exceed team capacity. Support the Implementation Teams: Supply UX design Supply UX assets Assist teams in breaking epics into features, stories & tasks. © 2011 Geoff H Wing Kanban “pull” system

11. Kanban? Kanban: a lean “pull” system where the UX / architect team pulls UX epics from a prioritized backlog at a rate that matches the Implementation Team’s capacity. Provides visibility into UX / architectural epics that need to be done. Allows UX / architect team to balance amount of UX versus Feature implementation work the Agile teams are doing. Helpful for UX / architect team to be advisors to the implementation teams, rather than being implementers. © 2011 Geoff H Wing

12. Recommendations Use Kanban approach for architecture / UX scenarios where a top-down design approach is best. Enable the benefits of emergent & bottom-up agile approach by having Agile implementation teams do architecture / UX work where possible. Keep architecture / UX team focused by doing things that implementation team cannot: UX design, UX assets. And by taking role as advisor to teams when they are implementing. © 2011 Geoff H Wing

13. References Agile Software Requirements: lean requirements practices for teams, programs, and the enterprise. Dean Leffingwell, 2011, Addison-Wesley © 2011 Geoff H Wing