Process and time.
Time. Our fourth dimension. And very important when designing a process to quickly and effectively built better products, as it turns out.
During the past week I’ve been learning how to scope down my ideas for this product, to fit into a two-week sprint cycle, rather than an EPIC. Epics will come later. But for now, it’s all about optimization.
This, as mentioned previously, is one of my blind spots, simply because the last product I worked on wasn’t there yet. Moving to a product that’s been going for a few years now, there’s some stuff to optimize.
Optimization is actually pretty good at fitting into a two-week sprint. And I was pretty determined to include design deeply in this process, to start small in bringing the user voice right into the sprints with us.
Enter, the Des/Dev Sprint.
In between writing issues in Jira, I began designing a process to sync design work on features and functionality with the agile sprint.
Focusing on clarity, accountability, speed, decision making and collaboration I came up with a Spec, Design, Decide, Design, Decide, Develop stage-gate model to apply to the Product tinkering I would be doing.
I wanted to give Design the extra user information that wasn’t and isn’t always clear from the outset, but which is critical when designing for the person on the other side of the screen.
The link between design and development really is feeble, and it needs some solid backing to bring it together. Tools help, like Asana, Invision and Jira. But they only help when they work together, without barriers (looking at you Invision).
Here’s my first des/dev sprint process, with adjustments to be expected along the way.

Originally published at http://www.kristinavuletic.com on July 30, 2017.
