As designers working alongside agile squads, at some point we’ve all felt out of place. We’ve wondered how to sync our work as efficiently as possible with development teams; we’ve felt that our timelines and focus are different, that we don’t have enough room to develop and test proposals, or that we simply take one-off requests with no strategic involvement and no empathy for users and customers.
For many, the change of perspective and integrating into agile environments is a big challenge, but it’s precisely by accepting and understanding the differences we have as designers that we’ll be able to create more effective integration strategies. In general, we have creative, detail-oriented, problem-solving profiles, and we always want to improve or iterate on our proposals. We’ve found in ways of working such as design thinking the perfect refuge for exploring problems and generating solutions focused on people’s perspective, but our work doesn’t end there; we also get involved in the development processes and future iterations of the products and services we design, to ensure the best possible implementation in the market.
In this dynamic we interact with other frameworks used by product and development teams, such as Lean and Scrum; at this point it may sound familiar to hear concepts like MVP, backlog and sprint, or ceremonies like planning, daily and review. Without realizing it, we’re immersed in different processes, methodologies or frameworks at the same time, and questions start to come up about the limits of each one and how they relate to and complement each other.
Design thinking
It starts from empathy, taking as its starting point the formulation of a problem as an open question, where a solution is assumed to exist but isn’t suggested up front. Across its different stages, empathize, define, ideate, prototype and test, we go through processes of divergence and convergence until the result is a proposal or solution prototype based on people’s needs within the context analyzed.
Lean Startup
Its central axis is efficiency; in this case the starting point is a hypothesis for solving a problem. It’s an experimental process in which you learn by building and measuring in order to arrive at a minimum viable product.
Scrum
It’s a framework in which a product’s features are prioritized to generate continuous improvement iteratively in cycles, or sprints. Through this framework, a big problem can be broken down into small parts that keep adding value to the product or service.
Despite the notable differences, these processes complement each other very well. We can approach the design of new products and services from a research stage to empathize with users’ needs, through to defining design proposals or solution hypotheses. These proposals will be the initial engine for getting to a minimum viable product by building and measuring; afterward, we can iterate on this product as many times as necessary to increase its value. This interplay between the 3 processes isn’t necessarily linear. In many cases we don’t take on projects from their birth; in seeking to improve products iteratively, we’ll often need to get to know our users better, starting a new empathy process from which new hypotheses about that product will be defined.
As designers, being able to move fluidly between processes, depending on the nature of the projects, can be the key to improving the answers we provide and optimizing our operations, from a strategic, cross-functional perspective, so we can interact holistically with every area involved in an organization.
Benefits of design work in agile environments.
- Collaboration and communication with other teams develop.
- People’s and the team’s capacity can be measured through sprints.
- Work processes are optimized.
- A constant search for feedback is encouraged.
- A sense of responsibility and an agile mindset take hold.
- Team satisfaction and motivation increase as value is continuously added to products and services.
- Adaptive leadership is encouraged.
- Customer and stakeholder satisfaction increases, since they can see results continuously.
Things to bear in mind in agile design teams.
- Build your own backlog and work on the best-structured, best-defined items.
- Encourage communication with POs, developers and stakeholders.
- Align planning with the team and POs so everyone has the resources and information they need in each sprint.
- Keep in mind that design deliverables can be the starting point for items in development teams’ backlogs. In these cases, allow for the time needed before development.
- Remember that any design activity or task can be broken down into parts. The final proposal’s design isn’t the only deliverable.
- Encourage the use of metrics to measure the impact of the team’s work.
Credits
Product designer focused on improving the usability of products and services, with 15 years of experience creating feasible proposals that humanize technology through user-centered design and agile methodologies.
