RE: Agile Processs On Usabilty or User Experience

Thanks William for your Reply here are my comments:

 

From: agile-usability@...
[mailto:agile-usability@...] On Behalf Of William Pietri
Sent: 26 mai 2009 17:15
To: agile-usability@...
Subject: Re: [agile-usability] Agile Processs On Usabilty or User
Experience

 

Hi, Eric. Welcome to the list!


Lacroix, Eric wrote:

        Just Wondering if Anyone as some sort of report on how to get
Usability and user Experience Designer get introduced into an Agile
Scrum team.


I could think of a variety of things you might mean by that. E.g.:

1.       How do I persuade a team to pay attention to usability?

[E.L.1]: This is already done.

 

2.       How do I persuade management to pay for a UX designer?

[E.L.1]: This is already done.

 

3.       I just hired a UX designer. How do I integrate them into my
Agile team?

[E.L.1]: We are having UX but we are looking to move from a waterfall
approach to an Agile/Scrum processes approach.

 

4.       We have a UX department which has normally worked pretty
separately from our development teams. Now that our developers are going
Agile, how do I get them to work together?

[E.L.1]: Here we are.

 



Is any of those what you're after?

[E.L.1]: Yes.


Also, it can help people to say a little more about your context. For
example, how long has the team been nominally Agile? How long are their
iterations, and how often do they release? Is your product for an
internal audience, shrinkwrap, paid web app, or free web app?

[E.L.1]:Here some details:

I'm working for an ISV (Independent software Vendor) in Canada, we are
releasing around 9 major version of different product per year. All
those product are Desktop application running on Microsoft Windows.

We have internally a role called "User Experience Architect", the role
is responsible:

*         To build in concordance with the project manager the product
personality (Envisioning the product) when we start building a new
product from scratch. This may include pattern, concept, extensibility
and platform definition.

*         For an existing product when the Business analyst start
analysis a new requirement  the UX build a Lo-Fidelity prototype,
depending on the audience and the complexity we may use different or
several techniques: Ink Sketch using Alias Sketchbook, Microsoft
PowerPoint, Adobe Photoshop, Microsoft Expression Blend and Visual
Studio for interactive prototype. Most of the time we try to stick with
Ink Sketch using Alias and a Tablet PC. The difficult part of that step
is to make toe software simple and usable by respecting the software
platform.

*         When the Use Case writer start writing is use case document
(requirement analysis is now completed at that point) the UX is
responsible to build the Hi-Fidelity document. That document represent
the final screen that will be implement by the development team (Later
on the Technical writing team will provide and review all text as a grid
attached inside the document). We are using Microsoft Word and Photoshop
to generate those. Those documents are getting referenced by the Use
Case and the Test Case. Plus they get a peer review approval from:
Business Analyst, Use Case Writer, Test Case Writer, Tester and
Developers.

So far we are investigating on how to use Agile/Scrum process for the
next Generation of software (a more start from scratch project). And on
how to include UX into that process. Here a couple hint on some items we
are looking at from a more technical stand point:

 

*         We already decided to go with the WPF technology from
Microsoft;

*         We are expecting that UX are going to design Hi-Fidelity using
Expression Blend and then later connect the UI to the code using
DataBinding. This may require our UX team be a bit more technical.

*         We already build a proof of concept to export the Hi-Fidelity
document from blend to a readable exportable format that will be require
by Use Case Writer, Test Case Writer, Tester for reviewing to content
and for baseline(I didn't mention but we are looking for CMMI level
2.0).

 

And some of the concern I do have:

*         How do we plan UX (usability, pattern and so on) on the long
term using Agile/Srum, using and ISV muti-year release;

*         How do we manage UX when you need to scale and have multiple
Agile/Scrum team (4-8) working on the same product but different
modules.



Looking forward to the details,

William