Here is how UX Design Integrates with Agile and Scrum

(Part 2 of this post can be found here.)

Despite having co-written an award-winning book on the topic and lecturing, teaching and coaching on the topic for nearly 10 years now, I still get many questions — mostly from product managers, executive leaders, and technical managers — on how to integrate UX and Design into the scrum process. It’s a challenge that continues to plague most organisations mainly because the reason scrum was brought in was not to do more thoughtful, customer-centric work but rather to ship more code faster.

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I have worked first-hand on and with teams that have bested this challenge. Those experiences are captured in my writings, books, and classes. Recently, I’ve had the pleasure of working, along with my co-author Josh Seiden, with some smart, progressive members of the Agile and Scrum communities. Together we’ve been working to build a framework that spells out — step by step — how Scrum and UX design integrate. One exercise we did individually was to overlay UX and Design activities on top of a well-founded model of scrum. The diagram below is my attempt at that exercise.

As you review it, please note the following caveats:

• This is by no means a comprehensive listing of design activities. There aren’t enough post-its in the world to cover that. :-)
• I use the word Design (often with a capital D) to serve as an umbrella term for all…