[IxDA Discuss] IxD in agile environments

[Allison Beckwith]

On Feb 12, 2007, at 3:08 PM, Robert Hoekman, Jr. wrote:

> Anyone doing IxD work in an agile programming environment? If so,  
> what are
> you doing to make it work with agile processes? Is it succeeding?  
> What are
> the problems you've had?

Like Josh, we have been following our own "home-brewed" version of  
Agile development for that past year. We are a young company, so this  
was the plan from the beginning.

We work in short (1-2 week) iterations. Deliverables may include task  
flows, wireframes, a prototype, and new functionality added to the  
working product. The project typically starts with an iteration zero,  
where we (usually the designer and project lead) do things like  
gather requirements, identify goals, document ideas, and outline the  
first "chunk" of functionality (goals, and activities that support  
those goals). The next iteration, or series of iterations, is focused  
on that particular chunk. I usually try to work 1-2 iterations ahead  
of development.

Our team is small, so we all sit in one big room. I interact with the  
developers daily, and with clients daily to weekly (depending on the  
project). We like to approach projects as a collaborative activity,  
and when our clients are local, we have regular in person meetings.

My biggest problem is staying far enough ahead of the development  
team to allow enough time for feedback and refinement. Also, because  
requirements may change at any time, one small change may impact a  
number of design decisions, and I don't always have enough time  
available to go back and reevaluate. So yeah, I guess my biggest  
problem is timing. The development team may only need a few days to  
implement something that took several weeks to design, so finding a  
good balance there can be tricky.

My other gripe about Agile is agile developers. ;-) Not all of them  
are bad, and most of them are *excellent* developers. It's just that  
some of the agile developers that I have worked with are very vocally  
against *any* sort of upfront design (see this blog post written by  
my business partner: http://www.robbyonrails.com/articles/2006/08/30/ 
agile-interaction-design), and so find my work to be pointless ("I  
could have done that"). My work has been called waterfall one too  
many times. :-P


-- 
Allison Beckwith
Co-Founder & Creative Director

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