Experience Driven Agile - Developing Up to an Experience, Not Down to a Feature

Experience Driven Agile:
Developing Up to an Experience, Not Down to a Feature

Kaleb Walton & Brian Anderson

Copyright © 2012 Kaleb Walton, Brian Anderson, Michael Hughes and Terri Whitt

We Expect You to Leave With


Knowledge of how to drive agile development
with user experience

A glimpse of experience driven agile at scale

Two new agile survival tools you soon won't be
able to live without!


Who Are You?

Product Owner 
Developer

Scrum Master 
UX

Agile Coach 
Other?


Familiar?


What Caused It?

Loose requirements 
Confusion of how

Lack of context stories play together

Real stakeholder MIA

Tire shortage


The Agile Gap
Traditional


Agile doesn't directly address
Development Features 
Ineffective prioritization

Unstable development with constant rework,
thrashing and delay
Experience

Inconsistent, frustrating and low-value
product experience
Optimal

Miscommunication and misunderstanding
about your product outside of development

Agile facilitates communication primarily
Experience focused on Development of Features

The gap is not in either of those - it’s in the
Development Features integration of Experience


How Do You Get Them to Think
“It's an Elephant”?


Product Backlogs Fail at UX


Elephant = Intended experience

Features of elephant = Epics & user stories in
your product backlog

Blind Scientists = Developers, product
managers, delivery leads, sellers, marketing,
executives and everyone in between

What do your stakeholders think of your
product backlog?


What We've Tried

User Stories and Epics

Contrary to INVEST

Experience is expressed in multiple stories/epics

Use Cases

Lacks context and
motivational trigger

Too detailed, task-specific
and time consuming

Meetings

Takes time away from development

Slow and expensive


What About Story Mapping?

Getting closer, but should
this really be an afterthought?

How Do You Incorporate
User Experience?


Drive Agile With Experience:
Meet Your Two New Survival Tools


The “Pitch”


Quickly conveys background of problem,
Effective Prioritization and
proposed solution and statement of value Assignment of Work Items

Shirt-size estimates make for easy The problem is that systems
managers spend too much time
prioritization (story points are fine too) prioritizing and assigning their
team's daily work efforts.

Sprinkle in risk and value to make Imagine if Systems Manager
prioritization even easier Plus offered better prioritization
capabilities and automated
assignment based on definable

Prioritize dozens of experiences, not business rules.
hundreds This solution would result in
reduced cost for systems
managers by enabling more

General format: efficient work assignment,
The problem is <problem>. Imagine if leading to better response times.
<solution>. This solution would result in
<value statement>.

Lightweight precursor to...


The “Scenario”


Borrowed from UX discipline

Paints a clear picture of an entire experience

Extremely versatile and ready for use outside
development

Our definition:
“A real-world example of a person's
experience with a product, describing context
with a problem and a proposed solution.”


Telling a Story


Example Scenario

EFFECTIVE PRIORITIZATION AND ASSIGNMENT OF WORK ITEMS

PROBLEM
Mary, a systems manager at ABC Health, is responsible for a team of 12 system administrators who
handle steady state support of their health care systems and network. One of her biggest time sinks
is prioritizing and assigning her teams daily work efforts. The tool she uses, Systems Manager Plus,
doesn't give her any prioritization features except for the ability to sort on a 'priority' field when
reviewing work items.
As she spends half of her time prioritizing she ends up working over time to tend to her other duties.

SOLUTION
After a major update Mary signs into Systems Manager Plus, heads to the work items area and is
pleasantly surprised to see a number of new prioritization capabilities. There are more fields
available to sort and filter, as well as a “smart assignment” system that enables her to specify rules
that will result in automatic assignment to specific members of her team.
Mary creates a few rules, applies them to existing work items, and is excited to see that over a
quarter of the items were automatically assigned. She proceeds to sort and filter the remaining work
items to prioritize and assign to her team. As more work items trickle in she notices that many of
them are being auto-assigned.
These improvements have enabled Mary to focus less on prioritizing and more on doing.


Easily Pull Out Stories and Epics

Additional sorting capabilities
As a systems manager I want to sort work items by
additional fields such as created date, severity and
platform so that I can more effectively prioritize them.

Additional filtering capabilities
As a systems manager I want to filter work items by
additional fields such as created date, severity and
platform so that I can more effectively prioritize them.

Smart assignment system (epic)
As a systems manager I want to specify assignment rules for the system to use to
automatically assign work items so that I don't have to assign every work item manually.

Apply new smart assignment rules to existing work items
As a systems manager I want to apply new smart assignment rules to existing work items
so that I can use smart assignment on work items created after the smart assignment
process has executed.


Scenarios Are Agile

Just Barely Good Enough and Just in Time: Fidelity
naturally matches immediate need.

Ya Ain’t Gonna Need It: Does it enable the scenario?

Minimum Viable Product: What is
the minimum experience someone
would pay for?

Lightweight: Low cost to develop,
flexible and quick to communicate.

Better Contract: More reliable
as it's written in terms of Experience
rather than Features.


When Do You Incorporate
User Experience?
 Before iteration 
All of the above
 During iteration 
Never
 After iteration


Basic Experience Driven Agile
Involvement Over Time by Role
Scrum Masters, Developers
Product Owners, and Testers
UX Analysts, Architects and Stakeholders

Product Backlog
Product Mgt

Iteration Backlog
Activities

Pitches Scenarios Stories

Estimate, Valuate Estimate
Assess, Prioritize


Experience Driven Agile At Scale
Involvement Over Time by Role
Product Owners, and Testers
UX Analysts, Architects and Stakeholders

Portfolio Backlog
Product Mgt

Product Iteration
Backlogs Backlogs
Activities

Pitches

Scenarios Stories
Scenarios

Estimate, Valuate Prioritize Estimate
Assess, Prioritize


UX in Experience Driven Agile
Collaboration Over Time
Product Owners and Testers
Architects and Stakeholders

Strategy Portfolio Product Release Iteration Day

Pitch consideration, estimation, valuation,
risk assessment and prioritization

Scenario collaboration, development, review,
estimation, and prioritization

Scenario breakdown, wireframing,
story breakdown and clarification

Stakeholder & customer reviews


What Did You Think?
 Thought provoking 
Want to learn
 More of the same more

Indifferent


Questions?


Contact Us

Kaleb Walton Brian Anderson
kalebwalton@gmail.com user.experience.guy@gmail.com

Thanks to Other Experience Driven Agile Contributors

Michael Hughes, Ph.D Terri Whitt
michaelhughesua@gmail.com tw30306@yahoo.com

http://experiencedrivenagile.com


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