Usagility - Integrating Agile and User Centered Design

Agile and User Centered Design can work together with the right tools and knowledge. We know. We're doing it.

A 1-day training course and surgery

Agile software development recognises that software development is a human powered process where imagination and innovation is fundamental to the creation of well crafted software. The power of adaptive planning allows us to deliver products to market faster and quickly react to feedback.

A focus on the User Experience is achieved through User Centered Desgin. A valuable user experience is created when software addresses the needs of real people. To do this we must put those people at the center of the design process. A user-centered approach ensures the planning, design and development of products remain grounded in information about the people who will use them.

This course is about people. People design software, people build software and people use software. You can't get away from people! We don't know your people so we won't prescribe solutions. Instead, you will:

• Go back to the first principles of Agile and UCD so you have a deeper understanding of why we use the two approaches and what they can offer.
• Learn about process patterns that are working for real world teams so you can adapt them to your environment.
• Discuss specific problems in your environment. The group of attendees is kept small to ensure there is enough time for a full and focused discussion.

Articles

• How User-Centered Design Can Put User Stories in Proper Context
  User stories are a lightweight mechanism for gathering and verifying user requirements on Agile projects. Unfortunately, it is easy to lose the context of stories. Find out how techniques from user-centered design (UCD) can help avoid this problem.
  30th June 2009
• Agile and UCD: Building the Right Thing, the Right Way
  When integrated, Agile software development and User-Centered Design (UCD) allow development teams to extract the right information from their users, to verify assumptions, and to validate design decisions.
  16th June 2009
• Getting Agile With User-Centered Design (PDF)
  Agile practices go a long way toward providing value to our customers. But in today's market, we must endeavor to adopt a more user-centered approach to create products our customers can't live without.
  1st November 2008