There's a rumor going around that user experience (UX) and Agile don't play well together. In this talk, I'll explain that they do -- most of the time! I will draw on my experiences at three large Cleveland companies.

1. UX + Agile – The Good, the
Bad, and the Ugly
by Joshua Randall
for the Cleveland Agile Meetup
April 10, 2019

2. Agenda
• 5 minutes – Introduction: Who am I? Why am I here?
• 5 minutes – What is User Experience?
• 5 minutes – The UX-er and the Agilist Should Be Friends!
• 5 minutes – Why Can't We Get Along?
• 10 minutes – Attempts at Reconciliation
• 10 minutes – The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly of…
• Outside Agency
• Embedded Team Members
• "Internal Agency"
• 5 minutes – Summary and Conclusion
• 10 minutes – Questions and Answers

3. The Always Asked For Slide Deck
(URL goes here)

4. Disclaimers
I represent only myself, not my employer.
Agile and User Experience are both big topics.
This is an informational presentation, not a how-to.

5. Introduction

6. Who am I? Why am I here?
image sources: YouTube; phelch66 on Wordpress

7. Who am I? (really)
• Joshua Randall, UX Designer and UX Researcher at
KeyBank
• Bachelor’s degree in Philosophy
• Master’s degree in UX Design from Kent State University
• 20 years as an I.T. business analyst
• 12 years as an Agile enthusiast (including CSM)
• Fully invested in UX 5 years ago

8. Why am I here?

9. What is UX?

10. UX, as defined by the coiner of the term
"User experience" encompasses all
aspects of the end-user's interaction with
the company, its services, and its products.
Distinguish UX from the user interface (UI).
Distinguish UX from usability.
− Usability is a quality attribute with five components
(learnability, efficiency, memorability, errors,
satisfaction).
source: Don Norman

11. The (Vast!) UX Landscape
source: Darren Hood, 2016

12. The UX Umbrella
source:
@UXLinks on
Twitter

13. source: Jesse James Garrett (jjg.net/elements)
The Elements of UX: Layers

14. The Elements of UX: Software Interface and Hypertext System
source: Jesse James Garrett (jjg.net/elements)
Linear time from
objectives, then
specifications,
then various
types of design,
and only then
completion …
where have I
heard this
before?

15. Agile Manifesto, but no UX Manifesto?
Jakob Nielsen's 10 Usability Heuristics (1994)
1. Visibility of system status
2. Match between system and the real world
3. User control and freedom
4. Consistency and standards
5. Error prevention
6. Recognition rather than recall
7. Flexibility and efficiency of use
8. Aesthetic and minimalist design
9. Help users recognize, diagnose, and recover from errors
10. Help and documentation
Source: Jakob Nielsen (nngroup.com/articles/ten-usability-heuristics/)

16. The UX-er and the Agilist
Should Be Friends!

17. UX and Agile Overlap
User
Experience
Agile
User Storiesoften recommends
User Needs
User-Centered
Design
recognize importance of
are the focus of
is a part of the larger landscape of
should be best friends with

18. some Extreme Programming (XP) principles
and roughly analogous UX and Design Thinking concepts
Think
• Informative Workspace
• Root Cause Analysis
• Retrospectives
Collaborate
• Sit Together
• Ubiquitous Language
• Coding Standards
Release
• "Done Done"
Empathize / Define
• pictures everywhere!
• validate assumptions
• Design Review
Ideate
• not done, historically
• Information Architecture
• Design Systems
Prototype (?)
• ???
sources: James Shore (The Art of Agile Development); Interaction Design Foundation

19. Plan
• Vision
• Release and Iteration
Planning
• User Stories
Develop
• Incremental
Requirements
• Customer Tests
• Simple Design
• Incremental Design
Define / Ideate
• Ideate
• Customer Journey
Mapping
• User Need Statements
Prototype / Test
• not a UX strength,
historically
• Usability Testing
• Simplicity (Dieter Rams)
• Progressive Enhancement
some Extreme Programming (XP) principles
and roughly analogous UX and Design Thinking concepts
sources: James Shore (The Art of Agile Development); Interaction Design Foundation

20. Why Can't We Get Along?

21. So why don't Agile and UX get along?
UX is historically waterfall-y, because…
−Alan Cooper was wrong.
−Kim Goodwin is highly influential.
Also:
−Steve Krug is overly optimistic.

22. Alan Cooper was wrong
The Inmates are Running the Asylum, Chapter 3: Wasting Money
"Generally, programmers aren't thrilled about the
iterative method because it means extra work for them.
Typically, it's managers new to technology who like the
iterative process because it relieves them of having to
perform rigorous planning, thinking, and product due
diligence (in other words, interaction design). Of course,
it's the users who pay the dearest price. They have to
suffer through one halfhearted attempt after another
before they get a program that isn't too painful."
Poor Alan! Can you show me on the doll where
the bad software development process hurt you?

23. Alan Cooper was wrong
Inmates, Chapter 12: Desperately Seeking Usability
"Iteration never creates great products."
Inmates, Chapter 13: A Managed Process
"Getting to the right product is always a matter of iterating.
It always takes several tries to get the details right. With
interaction design done in advance, the number of
iterations it takes can be reduced significantly. There is
enormous cost in each new version of a product, so if you
can reduce the version count from, say, four to two, there
is a lot of time and money to be saved."
LOLWhut?
At least make up your mind!

24. Kim Goodwin is highly influential
Designing for the Digital
Age is used as a textbook
in many UX programs.
First book to explain how to
do a UX project (the way
agencies do one, anyway).
"the Bible of UX"
image source: Wiley Publishing

25. Goodwin sometimes mocks Agile…
Designing for the Digital Age, Chapter 12: Defining Requirements
"Many software engineers throw up their hands and say
it’s impossible to understand the requirements until you
start building the thing, so we should all just use agile
methods to iterate until we get there. […] The engineers
who think a textual requirements document can never
provide a complete or accurate picture of the eventual
product are also correct; there’s no way to have
stakeholders agree on a complete and accurate list until
they have something to look at. It’s not necessary to
build the product to figure this out, though; it’s cheaper,
faster, and more effective for designers to 'build' the
product in sketches."

26. … or damns Agile with faint praise
Designing for the Digital Age, Chapter 21: Detailed Design
"Agile methods are most successful with small teams of
skilled engineers who are working on fairly simple
products. These methods fail on large-scale IT projects."
"Agile methods and Goal-Directed Design are similar in
that both involve iterative approaches, small teams, and
an emphasis on frequent communication and visible
work product. For the two approaches to work together,
engineers need to agree that designers have something
important to add, and that it’s best for the design team to
do their own 'iterations' in sketches to reduce the amount
of time wasted on badly articulated requirements before
the first coding sprint begins."

27. In fairness, Goodwin is on to something here:
Designing for the Digital Age, Chapter 21: Detailed Design
"With the current popularity of agile software engineering
approaches, many designers are being asked to provide
'light' documentation, such as sketches with a few notes. This
can work well if you have an established visual system, a
relatively uncomplicated product, and a small engineering
team working closely with you. However, large or distributed
engineering teams can’t all collaborate closely with you, and
the more engineers there are on a project, the greater the
likelihood of inconsistency in skills, judgment, and
interpretation of loosely defined specs. Less-skilled engineers
are likely to take shortcuts based on what’s easier to code if
there’s any ambiguity in the spec. Any time you don’t have a
very close relationship with the engineers, such as when your
company is outsourcing development, specificity is essential."

28. Steve Krug is overly optimistic
Don't Make Me Think (originally 2000; 3rd ed. 2014)
Rocket Surgery Made Easy (2010)
• Krug is one of the fathers of discount usability
testing.
• From "a morning a month" to "a morning every
iteration". Eek!
• Recruiting people is the killer. You can't move that
fast unless it's someone's full-time job or you
outsource the job.
• Remote, unmoderated testing is another solution.

29. Attempts at Reconciliation

30. Early Efforts (2003, 2005)
Gary Macomber and Thyra Rauch (IBM),
Adopting Agility at USE 2003. "Described
and sketched out the intertwining of UX and
Development during an Agile process."
Lynn Miller paper presented at the Agile
Development Conference 2005. Mentioned
"interconnected parallel design and
development tracks."

31. Staggered Sprints (Desirée Sy, 2007)
source: Journal of Usability Studies

32. Dual Track Agile (Marty Cagan, 2012)
source: Silicon Valley Product Group blog

33. The Lean UX Cycle (Gothelf & Seiden, 2013)
image source: Lean UX / O'Reilly Media

34. Seems like they're glossing over some things….
image source: Sidney Harris, sciencecartoonsplus.com

35. Lean UX User Validation Schedule
image source: Lean UX / O'Reilly Media
Great idea! Turns out it's really hard, though….

36. Design Sprint (Google Ventures, 2012-2016)

37. The Design Sprint Promise
"Working together in a
sprint, you can shortcut the
endless-debate cycle and
compress months of time
into a single week."
Really? That
seems too good
to be true. How
exactly do we
do this?

38. The Design Sprint Operational Details
"On Monday, you’ll map out the problem and pick an
important place to focus. On Tuesday, you’ll sketch
competing solutions on paper. On Wednesday, you’ll
make difficult decisions and turn your ideas into a
testable hypothesis. On Thursday, you’ll hammer out a
high-fidelity prototype. And on Friday, you’ll test it with
real live humans."
"With your team (and your research findings!) in one
place, figure out what you’re going to do next. Usually,
you’ll want to update the prototype to fix some problems,
create a new higher-fidelity prototype, or decide to focus
on a new set of questions and assumptions to tackle.
You’ll almost certainly want to plan another design sprint
to continue designing your product."

39. the Design Sprint isn't Agile – it's fast waterfall
• Monday: map out problem; pick place to focus
• Tuesday: sketch competing solutions on paper
• Wednesday: make difficult decisions; turn ideas into
testable hypotheses
• Thursday: create a high-fidelity prototype
• Friday: test it
• Thereafter:
• update the prototype
• create a new higher-fidelity prototype
• focus on new set of questions and assumptions
• plan another design sprint

40. NN/g puts its finger on a problem (2017)
from "Agile is not Easy for UX" by Page Laubheimer
"The orthodox Scrum process doesn’t work well for UX,
because UX wasn’t originally considered in the Scrum
definition. Scrum is a technology-centric process,
focusing on small, independent units of work (typically in
the form of user stories) that make sense from a
computer-science perspective, but are tricky from a user-
centric standpoint. Users don’t interact only with small
parts of our designs in isolation, they use our products to
accomplish larger goals, and all pieces of our designs
must all work together harmoniously to provide a good
user experience."
source: Nielsen Norman Group (nngroup.com/articles/agile-not-easy-ux/)

41. AUX3 (Smith, Rauch, and Moyers, 2019)
source: Journal of
Usability Studies

42. All These Diagrams Remind Me of Sawblades

43. The Good, The Bad,
and The Ugly

44. "The Good, The Bad,
and The Ugly" (in
English)
1966 film directed by
Sergio Leone
Clint Eastwood,
Eli Wallach,
Lee Van Cleef
features one of the all-
time great scores by
Ennio Morricone

45. UX model: Outside Agency
Good
agency can
be purely UX
focused
Bad
contract
negotiation
over
customer
collaboration
process
differences
between
agency and
internal
teams
Ugly
fixation on
"comps"

46. UX model: Embedded on Product Team
Good
true, cross-
functional
team
Bad
UX-er can be
overwhelmed
by amount of
work
embedded
UX-er unlikely
to be equally
good at all
aspects of UX
Ugly
skill level
differences
from team to
team can lead
to jealousy
and work
spilling outside
the team

47. UX model: "Internal Agency"
Good
Center of
Excellence
model
protects UX
team from
politics
Bad
there's a
gatekeeper
spread thin,
so hard to
build deep
domain
expertise
Ugly
may lead to
us-vs.-them
mentality

48. Summary and Conclusion

49. Summary
• UX encompasses all aspects of the end-user's
interaction with the company, its services, and its
products.
• UX includes both UI and usability, among many other
disciplines.
• Agile and UX should be friends because both put
users' needs at their center.
• But, UX's roots include hostility towards and
misunderstanding of Agile.
• Attempts at reconciliation typically propose parallel
tracks and frequent handoffs.
• UX models (external agency; embedded on a team;
"internal agency") each have strengths and
weaknesses.

50. Recommendations
• Sit together. (Even if "they" don't let you.)
• Talk to each other!
• Build design systems, pattern libraries,
coding standards.
• Be willing to refactor.
• Do UX research.
• Plan. (Yes, it's part of Agile.)

51. Questions and Answers

52. Stuff to Jot Down While I Take Questions
Joshua Randall on…
• email: joshua.randall@gmail.com
• LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/joshua-randall-3931257
• Twitter: @jrAccessibility (I mostly lurk)
User Experience Professionals Association (UXPA), April 24, 6:00 PM, Sherwin-
Williams Hinckley Industrial Parkway office – UX maturity models
uxpacleveland.org/events
Cleveland Accessibility Meetup, April 29, 6:30 PM, Independence branch of
Cuyahoga County Public Library – recap of CSUN (the big accessibility conference)
www.meetup.com/Cleveland-Accessibility-Meetup/
Cleveland Product Meetup
www.meetup.com/Cleveland-Product-Meetup/

53. References

54. References
Cagan, Marty. "The internal agency model." Silicon Valley Product Group blog.
2014 September 25. svpg.com/the-internal-agency-model/
Cooper, Alan. The Inmates are Running the Asylum. 2004. Sams.
Dam, Rikke and Siang, Teo. "5 Stages in the Design Thinking Process". 2019
March. Interaction Design Foundation. www.interaction-
design.org/literature/article/5-stages-in-the-design-thinking-process
Design Council. "The Design Process: What is the Double Diamond?"
www.designcouncil.org.uk/news-opinion/design-process-what-double-diamond
Garrett, Jesse James. "The Elements of User Experience". 2000.
www.jjg.net/elements/
Goodwin, Kim. Designing for the Digital Age. 2009. Wiley Publishing.

55. References
Gothelf, Jeff. "How to build an Agile UX team: the culture." Smashing Magazine.
2011 October 18. www.smashingmagazine.com/2011/10/how-to-build-an-agile-ux-
team-culture/
Gothelf, Jeff and Seiden, Josh. Lean UX. 2016. O'Reilly.
Knapp, Jake. Sprint: how to solve big problems and test new ideas in just five
days. 2016. Simon & Schuster.
Krug, Steve. Don't Make Me Think, 3rd edition. 2014. New Riders.
Krug, Steve. Rocket Surgery Made Easy. 2009. New Riders.
Laubheimer, Page. "Agile is not easy for UX." Nielsen Norman Group. 2017
September 24. www.nngroup.com/articles/agile-not-easy-ux/

56. References
Miller, Lynn. "Case Study of Customer Input for a Successful Product." Agile
Development Conference. 2005.
Müller, Thiago. "Struggling to find the best format for your UX team?". 2018 June
10. UX Collective (Medium). uxdesign.cc/struggling-to-find-the-best-format-for-
your-ux-team-a5cce8000b0b
Naji, Cassandra. "How to build an in-house UX team." Usability Geek. 2017 June
14. usabilitygeek.com/how-to-build-in-house-ux-team/
Nielsen, Jakob. "10 Usability Heuristics for User Interface Design". 1994. Nielsen
Norman Group. www.nngroup.com/articles/ten-usability-heuristics/
Norman, Don and Nielsen, Jakob. "The Definition of User Experience". Nielsen
Norman Group. www.nngroup.com/articles/definition-user-experience/
Smith, Carol; Rauch, Thyra; and Moyers, Hannah. "AUX3: Making UX Research
Track with Agile". 2019 March. Journal of Usability Studies.
uxpamagazine.org/aux3-making-ux-research-track-with-agile/