User experience design and agile development: managing cooperation through articulation work

Abstract

Previous discussions of how User Experience (UX) designers and Agile developers can work together have focused on bringing the disciplines together by merging their processes or adopting specific techniques. This paper reports in detail on one observational study of a mature Scrum team in a large organization, and their interactions with the UX designers working on the same project. The evidence from our study shows that Agile development and UX design practice is not explained by rationalized accounts dealing with processes or techniques. Instead, understanding practice requires examining the wider organizational setting in which the Agile developers and UX designers are embedded. Our account focuses on the situatedness of the work by making reference to values and assumptions in the organizational setting, and the consequences that those values and assumptions had for practice. In this organizational setting, cooperation between the Agile developers and UX designers was achieved through ongoing articulation work by the developers, who were compelled to engage a culturally distinct UX design division. Based on this study, insights into culture, self‐organization and purposeful work highlight significant implications for practice. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Usability Work in Agile Systems Development Practice: A Systematic Review

“…An example is the process of acquiring just-in-time system requirements, which has been identified as hindering the in-depth exploration of user requirements (Blomkvist, 2005;Chamberlain et al, 2006). Such observations have resulted in a plethora of solutions existing in the form of guidelines and methodologies (Ferreira et al, 2011) and which form the main focus of our review.…”

“…Further, that researchers have largely ignored situational factors and their influences on methods-in-use in positing solutions to the phenomena (Ferreira et al, 2011). In tandem, differences between these theorized solutions have been found to be mostly superficial, as an examination of their structural foundation reveals them to be focused on common practices and artifacts (Silva da Silva et al, 2011).…”

Scrum in Practice: an Overview of Scrum Adaptations

“…[25]. Ferreira, Sharp, and Robinson (2011) report on challenges of the communication process between development and design teams, highlighting the differences between the different work sub-cultures [11]. Finally, an experience report by Ungar and White (2008) presents the design practice of a design workshop, in which the stakeholders (developers, managers, customer) are brought together to work on lowfidelity prototypes to clearly establish a shared vision before the development itself is commenced [44].…”

“…Extant literature suggests that this strategy can be useful for many purposes apart from geographically distributed development settings, such as large but co-located project teams, or feature driven Scrum teams that focus on UX and usability topics in parallel to a development team. To reap the benefits of a multiplied Scrum setup, research emphasizes the need to establish well working interfaces between the teams [25], as well as to develop a common work culture [11].…”

Competencies outside Agile Teams’ Borders: The Extended Scrum Team

“…Fragmented and anecdotal evidence already hints at Scrum teams still needing additional, external competencies [12][13][14], but this evidence was gathered as a by-product of more general research on communication in agile projects.…”