How To Succeed In Agile Teams? Be imperfect!
IxDF - Interaction Design Foundation
IxDF (Interaction Design Foundation) is the Global Leader in Online Design Education, with over 183,000 graduates.
If, as a UX designer, you’ve ever worked in an agile team, one of the biggest challenges is time. It may be unrealistic to deliver polished designs within a week, but that expectation often burns us out. However, it doesn’t have to be this way.
Agile teams function in a fundamentally different way than a design agency. So, as a designer, you must change how you work. Now that doesn’t mean skipping research or sweating over creating the most polished assets. The truth is somewhere in between—in other words, you need to let go of “perfection”.
So, in our article on agile working, learn how to embrace imperfection instead!
What is Agile Development?
New to ‘agile development’? We define it as:
An iterative software-development methodology which teams use in projects. Self-organized, cross-functional teams frequently analyze circumstances and user needs to adapt projects.
If you want to get a deeper understanding, then read this article.
Innovation vs Incremental Improvement
We don't always have that luxury of being innovative. It could be due to budget, time or other constraints. If deadlines are tight and resources are limited, many organizations (even agile ones) opt for incremental improvement to their products instead of trying to dream up cutting-edge new features.
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Both innovation and incremental improvement come with their own set of challenges—one is not necessarily easier than the other.
Find out more about both of these approaches and how the research and design process differs, depending on a team’s goals.
Upcoming Webinar: Evaluating Your UX Maturity
Building or joining a UX team can be a rewarding or painful experience. That depends in part on how serious your organization is about UX design.
So, how do you evaluate your organization’s UX maturity (how well it uses UX design overall) and how you can improve things, if necessary?
In this upcoming Master Class webinar, Frank Spillers will give you practical tips for using maturity models. He’ll tell you the more critical tasks you’ll need to do to make sure UX design succeeds in your workplace.
You’ll learn:
And don’t forget, you’ll get a chance to submit questions to Frank at the end.
Even if you can’t attend the webinar live, register to get access to a recording that you can watch anytime afterwards!
𝐇𝐅𝐈-𝐂𝐔𝐀 (Certified Usability Analyst) | UX Design | Pega UI / UX | SharePoint UI / UX | UX Evangelist | Learning Interaction Design | Human Engineering | UX Award Winner | Google Certified UX Design Professional
1yAs a UX Designer focussing on the user's experience, it's time to evolve with the agile team as a problem solver. We face different minds (Business, Technology, Users and Product team). Let's improve every stakeholders experience by solving their problem. That is help each achieve their goal. It could be simple sketch, wireframe, or a whiteboard brainstorming that depicts the solution. Happy Agiling with UX.
Product Manager | Technical ICT Business Analyst I Product Owner and SAFe® Product Manager | IIBA member
2yOften I have worked in teams with just me (one designer) with 6 testers, 6 developers. Often the issue is not the 'quality' but due to under resourcing and product planning. There is a lot of pressure to do things very quickly. When the team has a resource inbalance of designers will often result in issues with not being able to send designs/spec to dev quickly enough (often devs waiting for work, the designer becomes the blocker) and also designers also manage reviews/ redesigns as a result of high priority defects. Get the right resourcing balance is the goal.
Principal at Optimum Performance Training, LLC
2yWell said Shari! (Great to see you here!) I jumped through the same hoops for 8 years at NSA. They appreciate usability— and Agile makes it all work for everyone.
Driving Success at the Intersection of Product & Project Management. Proven Communications, and Team Leadership Expert | Business Consulting & Coaching | 🛡Security Awareness Enthusiast🛡 | I’m the one!
2yGreat points. In my experiences working in a designer role and later in my career as a product manager, I've seen both sides of this. Incremental improvements are something to strive for. At the same time, designers need to be given the time to go through their process.
Designer | Fashion specialist | Creative strategist | Innovation researcher
2yMarina B.