These are slides from a talk I have given at Agile UX NYC, the IA Summit and UX London. For the UX London version, I also added some slides on Lean UX from the Lean UX Roundtable panel I participated in.

1. flickr.com/photos/educaofisicablog/6008878481/
Learning to Play UX Rugby
Why your agile ux adoption is failing and what to do about it.
@ANDERSRAMSAY / #AGILEUX
Saturday, December 1, 12

2. My introduction to Agile...
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Saturday, December 1, 12

3. My introduction to Agile...
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Saturday, December 1, 12

4. My introduction to Agile...
Feeding the beast
“There’s a whole team of developers and I’m the only UX designer.
They’re building features faster than I can design them. I can’t keep up!”
Half-Baked UX
“Our PO’s under pressure to deliver the next release and signing off on
features despite crap-ass usability. Help!”
Sprint Tunnel-Vision
“Yes, we technically delivered all the features this sprint, but looking at
the big picture, the design’s an incoherent mess!”
AGILEFALL/WATERFAGILE
“Yup, we’re Agile. We’ve been sprinting and doing stories and what-not
for about nine months now and are almost ready to start development.”
@ANDERSRAMSAY / #AGILEUX
Saturday, December 1, 12

5. One source of the problem...
“What is the Agile process?”
“Where does the UX designer fit into an Agile
team?”
“How do I fit my UX design work into a couple
weeks?
“What does an Agile functional spec. look like?”
“When do we hand UX designs off to devs?”
“How does a UX designer work 1-2 sprints
ahead of developers?”
etc.
@ANDERSRAMSAY / #AGILEUX
Saturday, December 1, 12

6. One source of the problem...
“Where on a bicycle does the steering wheel go?”
@ANDERSRAMSAY / #AGILEUX
Saturday, December 1, 12

7. @ANDERSRAMSAY / #AGILEUX
Saturday, December 1, 12

8. Traditional Relay Race
- Team members mostly run alone.
- Communication occurs mainly through document hand-offs.
- One big crossing of the finish line.
@ANDERSRAMSAY / #AGILEUX
Saturday, December 1, 12

9. PM
GD
Dev
BA
Biz
UX
Agile Rugby Game
-Intensive and continuous collaboration.
-Communication through direct collaboration.
-Reach the finish line early and often to win the game.
@ANDERSRAMSAY / #AGILEUX
Saturday, December 1, 12

10. Our top goal is to…but what’s
most important is that we…tho
what we really must do is to… But I
thought…
Whaa…?
What
about…?
A Relay Race Meeting
Not designed for collaboration.
Slow debugging of issues, differences in understanding.
@ANDERSRAMSAY / #AGILEUX
Saturday, December 1, 12

11. A Rugby Game Meeting Workshop
An intensive passing game across roles/perspectives.
Iterating toward shared understanding.
@ANDERSRAMSAY / #AGILEUX
Saturday, December 1, 12

12. Collaboration-Centered Design
A new UX designer toolkit...
Buy a Feature
Cardstorming
Collaborative Chartering
Design Studio
Dotvoting
Experience Mapping
Ideation Clearinghouse
Paired Interviews
Product Box
Product Road Map
Provisional Personas
Speed Boat
Story Mapping
...and many more.
@ANDERSRAMSAY / #AGILEUX
Saturday, December 1, 12

13. Traditional UX
Design, Usability
What are we making?
Startup
Lean UX Agile UX
Measuring,validating Collaboration,
product/market fit. Delivery
Are we making How do we
the right thing? make it?
@ANDERSRAMSAY / #AGILEUX
Saturday, December 1, 12

14. Visioning
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Saturday, December 1, 12

15. Design Studio (Divergent Variation)
Capturing the imagined final product. Can be completed in an hour or less.
Focus/ Warmup/ Sketching
Critique
Boundaries Raw Materials Timebox
@ANDERSRAMSAY / #AGILEUX
Saturday, December 1, 12

16. Cardstorming
- Warms up brain and hands.
- 3-5 minute timebox.
- Each participant writes as many
features they can think of on
separate stickies.
- Becomes a feature palette for
sketching.
@ANDERSRAMSAY / #AGILEUX
Saturday, December 1, 12

17. Design Studio (Divergent Variation)
Capturing the imagined final product. Can be completed in an hour or less.
Focus/ Warmup/ Sketching
Boundaries Raw Materials Timebox
@ANDERSRAMSAY / #AGILEUX
Saturday, December 1, 12

18. Sketching Timebox
- 5m timebox.
- Ensure safety.
- Everyone in the room sketches.
- Sketch individually.
- No rules.
- Clarify that this is research, not
design.
@ANDERSRAMSAY / #AGILEUX
Saturday, December 1, 12

19. Design Studio (Divergent Variation)
Capturing the imagined final product. Can be completed in an hour or less.
Focus/ Warmup/ Sketching
Critique
Boundaries Raw Materials Timebox
@ANDERSRAMSAY / #AGILEUX
Saturday, December 1, 12

20. Critique
- 2m round-robin, then open crit.
- Take careful notes, attach to the
respective sketches.
- Look for and work to resolve vision
differences.
@ANDERSRAMSAY / #AGILEUX
Saturday, December 1, 12

21. Designing with Workshops
Learning, applying, and recombining workshop patterns.
Generating Raw Materials
e.g. with Cardstorming
Working in small timeboxes
Intensive, focused, productive
Cross-disciplinary Collaboration
E.g. with pairing, timeboxed critiques, pitches.
@ANDERSRAMSAY / #AGILEUX
Saturday, December 1, 12

22. Detailed Design
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Saturday, December 1, 12

23. Tete-a-tete Pairing at NeedFeed: http://nerdfeed.needfeed.com/blog/2011/10/pairing-desks/
Pairing
An intensive one-on-one passing game.
Continuous problem debugging and knowledge distribution.
@ANDERSRAMSAY / #AGILEUX
Saturday, December 1, 12

24. Mike Long, Thoughtworks Studios
X-Pairing (Cross-Functional)
Designing across dimensions.
Allows for less/lighter documentation, fewer hand-offs.
@ANDERSRAMSAY / #AGILEUX
Saturday, December 1, 12

25. paper build html/css
A cross-dimensional passing game
Each medium/perspective informs the other.
@ANDERSRAMSAY / #AGILEUX
Saturday, December 1, 12

26. Designing while building
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Saturday, December 1, 12

27. Designing while Building
- Supporting the current sprint
- Preparing for the next sprint
- Maintaining a whole product
More a logistics than design challenge.
@ANDERSRAMSAY / #AGILEUX
Saturday, December 1, 12

28. Automate Collaboration with Cadences
Apply Agile approach to planning to help ensure whole team is designing together.
Can also be applied to field research, usability testing and other UX activities.
@ANDERSRAMSAY / #AGILEUX
Saturday, December 1, 12

29. Research
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Saturday, December 1, 12

30. Traditional UX
Design, Usability
Startup
Lean UX Agile UX
Measuring,validating Collaboration,
product/market fit. Delivery
@ANDERSRAMSAY / #AGILEUX
Saturday, December 1, 12

31. Agile says...
SHIPPING = DONE
@ANDERSRAMSAY / #AGILEUX
Saturday, December 1, 12

32. SHIPPING IS ONLY
THE BEGINNING
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Saturday, December 1, 12

33. Outcome-Driven Research
“Is this user-friendly?” vs “Would you pay for this?”
Continuous rather than up-front research, enabling integration with Agile.
@ANDERSRAMSAY / #AGILEUX
Saturday, December 1, 12

34. Learning to Play UX Rugby...
“Keep doing what you’re doing,
but do it smaller, faster and continuously.”
—William Pietri
@ANDERSRAMSAY / #AGILEUX
Saturday, December 1, 12

35. Thanks!
@andersramsay
andersramsay.com
designingwithagile.com
@ANDERSRAMSAY / #AGILEUX
Saturday, December 1, 12