agile adventures - projects | presentations | my story

CLIENT NAME MM.DD.YYYY 1

AGILE ADVENTURESBrian Lichliter & Kate Fitzgibbon

Introducing Agile

2IXDA Chicago 04.25.18

Taking a Step Back

Finding Our Groove

ExpandingOur Horizons

OUR JOURNEY

IXDA CHICAGO 04.25.18

INTRODUCING AGILE

What’s Next?

An idea that started as a sprint quickly grew into a design project. Finally we were at the point where the client was ready to bring this idea to life.

We had to decide if we were.

4IXDA CHICAGO 04.25.18

AGILE, OF COURSE!

This seemed like the obvious and only solution as we expanded our internal development practice. Agile is literally a development philosophy built on iteratively delivering value to users and we were a design firm centered around iterative design.

So we went with it.


Resourcing is HardFinding great people and keeping them in between contracts is tough.

Contract CadencesWe’re negotiating for months at a time and review processes can hold up work.

As we learned more, we quickly started to see why development at a design firm might have to be a little different than the typical in-house development team or dev-shop.

Inertia to ChangeOur processes, timelines, templates and deliverables all needed to change.

PROBLEMS WITH AGILE


FULL SPEED AHEAD

For Phase 1, were stuck in Wagile world since we had already completed so much design work previously.

At the end of the phase we had a accomplished our objective: a beta app.

But, we made a lot of design changes on the fly and they hadn’t been validated.


TAKING A STEP BACK

NEW CONTRACT, NEW APPROACH

So, time for the next phase rolled around and we decided we needed to reevaluate our process.

We wanted to take a step back, conduct some research and ensure we were building a holistic experience.

We just needed to figure out how to do that while still pushing forward on new features & functionality.


Looking at the work ahead we saw three distinct tracks of work. So, we decided we would do all three concurrently.

Refinement Exploration DevelopmentWe’ll evaluate what’s there, iterating to continually improve.

We’ll clarify paths forward & build together.

We’ll explore and ideate on new directions.

TRIPLE TRACK


IT WAS… A LOT

Design and research split time across two different tracks of work while trying to support ongoing dev requests.

Our developers struggled to keep up-to-date with exploration and refinement tracks. This led to them not understanding the bigger vision.

On top of all that, there was a lot of re-work of existing features. This made it seem like we weren’t making enough progress.


PROS

12

CONS

Included User Evaluation

Explored & Built New, Tested Features

Designing within Development Constraints

Felt Like Separate Teams

Refinement & Exploration Overlap

Difficult to Prioritize Designer Time


FINDING OUR GROOVE

2 Tracks

14

1 Team


DUAL TRACK AGILE

15

Release Goals

Discovery

Discovery

Delivery

Delivery

Delivery

Delivery

Discovery

Product Backlog Sprint Backlog

Discovery

Delivery

Delivery

Shippable Code!

Sprint PlanningSprint Demo

Sprint Retrospective

Discovery stories

Delivery stories

75% Designer’s time25% Developer’s time

25% Designer’s time75% Developer’s time


Prioritize story

Develop hypothesis

Develop design recommendations

Evaluate designs with users

Draft discovery epic / story Create designs

Hypothesis supported

Refine story & designs

Backlog

Later Now

Added to a future development

sprint

No Yes

Backlog freezer

Create acceptance

criteria

Converted to a development

story

AGILE DISCOVERY PROCESS

PLANNING & PRIORITIZATION PREP & DELIVERYDESIGN & ITERATION

We developed a research cadence to push features forward while still making time to evaluate the overall experience.

RESEARCH CADENCE


ALWAYS EXPLORING

We’re curious and are continuously looking for ways to improve. The lesson we’ve learned is to carefully consider why you are doing things a certain way.

New processes are likely to have risks and costs associated. You might lose productivity or create unexpected pain points.

But, you might just end up with something way better than you expected.


EXPANDING OUR HORIZONS

READYING FOR LAUNCH

As EcoCRED grows and evolves, the capabilities needed are evolving as well.

Right now we are working on a communication strategy, storytelling, roll out coordination, planning post-launch research, and much more.


FORWARD MOMENTUM

Big Idea

21

Prototyping Product Development

Branded Content

Email Campaign

Communication Strategy

SocialMedia

AnalyticsDashboard


Yesterday

Today

THANK YOU

22

Kate FitzgibbonDirector, Design Research

[email protected]

Brian LichliterSenior Experience Designer

[email protected]

Questions?

23

agile adventures - projects | presentations | my story

Documents