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What does agile environment really mean?
over 8 years ago from Christopher Dunn, ui designer & developer at Crain Communications Inc
Bevan Stephens, over 8 years ago
Great answer!
Andrew Zimmerman, over 8 years ago (edited over 8 years ago )
I believe the goal of lean UX (and the principle behind moving design work out of waterfall) is to have the team in close proximity, both physically and in skillsets/roles. In that model, I believe a designer can work within an agile shop, but I agree with Mr. Criswell in that the designer's primary role will be during product ideation and prototyping.
Having recently been certified in scrum, I have to agree that kanban is a better fit for my current employer. ^ _ ^
Company culture will likely be the determining factor in whether an agile methodology is successful.
Mitch Malone, over 8 years ago The collaboration between designers and engineers in product/software organizations is key and I really do not think either Scrum or Kanban enable this very well.
When collaboration is important to the organization's culture, then it's easy for designers and engineers (and every team) to collaborate.
Most of what I hear about these days are around two agile methodologies, at least where I'm at in the SF Bay Area - Scrum and Kanban (although, I guess there's some debate on if Kanban is Agile). I'm not the expert on these by any means, but here are some ramblings...
Agile manifesto is the higher level guidance. 1) Working software over documentation. 2) People and interactions over process and tools. 3) Customer collaboration over contract negotiations. 4) Responding to change over following a plan. Agile works for up to approx 50 teams, then the guidance is to move to something like the Scaled Agile Framework.
Scrum is usually better for complex work. It's time boxed so it forces you to complete slices, if you will, to enable faster learning and iteration. This is why a lot of startups do Scrum.
Kanban came out of Toyota manufacturing and it's about continuous flow, visibility, and improvement. It's not supposed to be time boxed. Flow is managed with WIP limits. It's usually better for known, repeatable work where you can concentrate on 'getting stuff over the line'.
Overall, the work should be driving the process. Not the team's decision on how they want to work. Just like in Engineering where you choose the right tools/language to solve the problem.
One final note, as it's Designer News. This is purely my opinion and you can of course disagree, but I don't think either of these frameworks are ideal for creating the best UX/product possible at companies. The collaboration between designers and engineers in product/software organizations is key and I really do not think either Scrum or Kanban enable this very well.