I spent the weekend attending the Agile UX Retreat at Cooper in San Francisco. The retreat brought together an impressive mix of designers, user researchers, developers, scrum masters, product owners and quality engineers.
The central topic of the retreat was how to integrate User Expeience (UX) into the Agile Development Process. At least that was supposed to be the central topic. But somewhere between the afternoon of day 1 and the conclusion of day 2, it became something else entirely. We transcended Agile and UX, we eliminated “us and them” thinking, and we stopped talking about Agile with a capital A. Instead, we focused on what really matters: We all want to make great software… together.
We need to overcome the momentum of tradition
It is time to relieve ourselves of the industrial age thinking that says efficiency is king. It is time for a culture change in software.
- Efficiency needs to yield to effectiveness
- Process needs to take a back seat to products
- Roles need to give way to competencies
- Egos need to die
We are all makers and craftsmen and facilitators, and when it works well we build killer products that change the world. To hell with tradition. Let’s go make great stuff together!
Sounds fascinating. I tried and failed to wrangle an invitation to this event from Anders. Any chance some kind of documentation/report will be put up somewhere?
Thanks!
Tim
Hi Tim! Yes, I fully expect more details to emerge over the coming weeks and months. We’re already tracking next steps. In this post I just wanted to capture my high level feelings (and excitement) from the event.
Craig -
sounds like a great discussion – I also would be interested in any materials that were used during or came out of the session?
Also am curious how the attendees reconciled moving to “effectiveness” simultaneously with de-emphasizing process? what is the balance (the old saying applies: ‘process in development is like spice in cooking – just enough, of the particular ones – makes the dish)?
pfs
Thanks Paul.
I can’t speak for the entire group, these are impressions that I came away with through what I heard and saw while there. That said, my interpretation was that yes, process is necessary and important, but that we should not lose sight of the end goal which is user success. There was also a meme about toolkits in favor of process that was interesting. Ultimately, process exists to help teams create products that users will love.
Your bullet points remind me of the work of Jonathan Kohl; most recently, his article The Next Wave: Valuable Products First, Process Second in Modern Analyst. Jonathan is all about not letting process get in the way of creating value for your users.
Thanks, Shannon. I will definitely have to check that out. I think there’s a lot more to be explored around “self-organizing teams”. If we got closer to truly self-organizing teams, would we see better products and more passionate teams?
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This post was mentioned on Twitter by cvilly: A funny thing happened at the intersection of Agile and UX http://bit.ly/9nMCfh #agile_retreat…
[...] coworker of mine recently wrote (after an epiphanous experience at a retreat focused on how user experience works within Agile methodologie…), “Roles need to give way to competencies.” That sums up my approach to user experience [...]
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