Most of the approaches that look to combine User Experience (UX) design and Agile delivery are flawed; these approaches might be well-meaning, but by trying to force design work into sprints means work is rushed and done poorly or missed altogether.
Although it has been among the trending topics for a few years, the Design System subject doesn’t seem it’s vanishing from discussions between designers and developers anytime soon. And there is a reason for that.
Design Sprints have changed the way businesses create new products and services. But how do they relate to Agile development sprints? And how can the two be connected so that Scrum teams deliver higher quality products in less time?
The Google design sprint framework is a five-phase framework developed by Google that helps answer critical business questions through rapid prototyping and user testing. The design sprints let teams reach clearly defined goals and deliverables and gain key learnings. According to Google, this process helps spark innovation, encourage user-centered thinking, align teams under a shared vision, and get faster to product launch.
If some consider Scrum as an Agile project management framework, many people consider that is is more a product management approach. Anyway, Scrum is about understanding the need of the customers to deliver value. In this context, the concept of “personas” can be used to support user-centered design throughout a product development cycle by focusing on the characteristics of key user segments.
DUCAT is a free assessment and benchmarking online tool that aims at creating awareness for user-centered agility and enable companies to easily assess the status of their projects. The tool provides a 360 degrees assessment to investigate the team’s perspective and process. These results are completed with the users’ evaluation of of the product.
Agile has become the de-facto standard for innovating new products in software development. But an Agile project needs good product management and good UX design to succeed. Fitting UX in with product management and Agile can be uncomfortable for UX designers. Once you get it, though, you’ll never want to work any other way.
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