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Dovetailing usability with the lean, mean, agile development machine…
By admin | September 8, 2008
To date I haven’t found much notable on the subject of how usability fits into the agile development methodologies and I’m not sure if that’s because there’s not much written on the subject or that I haven’t come across it yet…
So I was pleasantly surprised to find Marc McNeill’s piece on ‘User Centered Design in Agile Application Development‘ (PDF) on the ThoughWorks website. It makes some good points about how well UCD fits with Agile as they both share a similar process and philosophy and it makes the case for making sure that UCD is part and parcel of an agile application development for a number of very strong reasons (not least usability!). What I especially like is that it clearly explains the business benefits of doing so.
It’s always been obvious to me how easily agile development fits with internal IT development teams. What I have found less easy to understand is the best way to cost and manage an agile project when it is being delivered by an external IT/web technology supplier. The whole agile methodology runs counter to the traditional way IT services and projects have been delivered… Fixed price and fixed scope up front.
Thankfully times are changing and enlightened clients are buying in to the benefits that agile brings and consequently they are contracting development services in a completely new way.
An interesting point made in Marc’s paper is that UCD can bring to agile an “improved basis for estimation”. That’s got to be good thing for all involved in managing the project. This, combined with a “better understanding of the problem” and allowing “rapid testing and validation of story concepts before time consuming coding” all add up to some very convincing reasons if you’re not already doing it.
The visual blueprints and models created as part of the UCD activities are vital to bringing all parties involved into the picture and focused on easy-to-understand representation of the software being created. This raises the interaction and involvement of all parties, quickly and cheaply, or as Marc puts it “provides a clear, sociable visual representation of the project vision”. This includes the end user for whom it is said that “the interface is the software”.
Wisdom has it that keeping at least one iteration head of the development cycle is the neatest way to ensure UCD is segued into the Agile process. The integration of UCD into Agile requires both parties to modify their behaviours and create a joint solution that cuts both ways changing both for the better, or for the greater good of the product.
Here’s some of the good stuff out there I’ve found on the subject relating to how IA / UCD / UX in Agile works in pracice:
From the horses mouth, Twelve emerging best practices for adding UX work to Agile development by Jeff Patton
On the ground advice, Agile + UX: six strategies for more agile user experience from Austin Govella
The ‘Design Studio’ (workshop) approach video from IxDA Interaction 08
In charming Post-it note presentation format Leisa Reichelt’s disambiguity - Waterfall Bad, Washing Machine Good slides from IA Summit 07
You can find plenty of discussion on the subject here: http://www.ixda.org/discuss.php?post=28227
And finally, Adapting Usability Investigations for Agile User-Centered Design by Desiree Sy in the Journal of Usability Studies
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