Panel: There's more than one way to skin a cat: Integrating UX into an Agile environment
Sample submission from Janice James, Kate Walton, & Jon Innes
Panel: There's more than one way to skin a cat: Integrating UX into an Agile environment
Janice James et al. |
Short Description
Each panel member will share a case study example of how they successfully (mostly) integrate UX methods into an agile development environment. Discussions will include examining pros and cons of each method and challenges encountered. Audience members can consider each of the methods and determine how they might create a more optimized solution for their own work environments. Long Description Each panel member will describe a case study example of how they successfully (mostly) have created and/or participated in a development environment where UX has been integrated within an Agile methodology. Their discussions will begin with an overview of the different work environments for each of the case studies in which the different methodologies are implemented. Panel members will also examine pros and cons of each method, the challenges encountered with each and solutions they've implemented or are considering. Each of the case studies will provide audience members a cross-section of different experiences allowing them to determine how they might create a more optimized UX/Agile solution within their own work environments. Potential topics that panel members will address include:
Time will be allowed for audience participation so that attendees can share their own experiences as well as ask panelists questions. Panelist Bios & Position Statements Panelist 1 With 25+ years in the field of User Experience, Panelist 1's expertise comes from 9 years as principal of her own company, <Company Name>, and as the creator and manager of UX programs at <Company, Company, and Company>. She also served as Director of UX at USABILITY COMPANY and is currently a UX Strategist with COMPANY NAME. She is principal founder of <International UX organization>, serving as President for five years and on the Board through 1999. She is a contributing author of <Publication> and co-author of a UX BOOK. I’ve worked within an agile environment on two government projects, each bringing different experiences. And, I find that my own experiences differ further from others’ who have tried merging UX with Agile. Challenges range from developers never having been exposed to any form of UCD to sprints being too short to allow for much UX work at all to front-end developers disregarding our designs in favor of their own implementations. I know—these challenges don’t sound so different than those coming from working within a more traditional development environment. Yes, the challenges and tradeoffs come with our territory. Still, I’ve found that adapting to Agile requires far greater flexibility and much more letting go of ingrained principles. So, although not a new topic, I believe this is one that warrants more exploration so we can end Agile projects feeling we’ve added value and helped create a better user experience. Panelist 2 Panelist 2 has worked in multiple corporations in both the U.S. and Europe to create usability programs and develop user experience teams. She is currently a UX Director at COMPANY. where her latest project has revolved around developing and leading a UX program for COMPANY in an ‘ever-evolving’ agile environment. Her experience hasbeen shaped from a Master’s degree in Human Factors Psychology + 19 years of experience working in the U.S. and Europe across many industries including travel, e-commerce, health, education, financial, and energy. She is a contributing author of UX BOOK. It's easy to see the advantages of an agile approach when it's implemented well, but it does have its challenges - particularly for the UX practitioner. UX professionals have to fight to find their place within the agile environment; they have to find a way to provide the most value while trying to support the flexibility that agile provides. Sometimes, the UX approach can appear to be at odds with Agile. How you develop a UX program depends on several things: the corporate environment in which you work, the project objectives and structure, and the team culture and capabilities. My most recent experience includes building a user experience program tailored to an agile environment in a large organization. I've learned that defining a good UX program in Agile is a job never complete as there are always opportunities for adjustments and fine-tuning to make the fit more effective and efficient. Panelist 3 Panelist 3 is founder of a product design management consultancy that specializes in helping companies improve their design & research practices. His experience spans a wide variety of domains including consumer and enterprise software, consumer hardware, IT projects, and e-commerce website design. He has led UX projects for several members of the Fortune 1000, such as <Company, Company, and Company>, both as a consultant and a member of an in-house team. He is also a Certified Scrum Product Owner, with extensive experience integrating Agile and UX in both large distributed teams and early stage startups. Agile comes in many forms. Much of what applies in early stage startups will not work in larger organizations. Working in a small startup as the sole UX person you may have to wear many hats that are unfamiliar to those coming from UX teams in large companies. At a company with less than 8 engineers, I’ve acted as the Scrum Product Owner as well as my other day jobs. This included spending time helping the teams create and groom a product backlog. In addition, I had to wear the hats of UI QA, visual designer, researcher, and interaction designer. On another project, I was part of anAgile rollout where we moved from working as part of a large UX team. Here the challenge was individuals often got stuck working across several development teams. My UX team mates and I found ourselves spread too thin and ineffective. Goals Panelists will share their successes and failures at implementing a UX strategy within an Agile environment. From the cases presented, our overall goal is to provide participants a spectrum of issues, challenges and other considerations, and resulting solutions that were implemented across different sized corporations and industries. In the discussion of the case studies, panelists will provide participants the following:
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