Posts Tagged ‘process’

The Limits of Iterative Development

by Hugh Beyer

One of the ongoing questions in Agile development is whether and how much up-front design needs to be done. This is my perspective.

Agile 2011

by Hugh Beyer

I’m back from Agile 2011. Another week spent in one of the most beautiful parts of America, with sunny days in the 70’s—spent in windowless, air-conditioned rooms with a bunch of computer geeks. I wouldn’t have had it any other way. The Agile conference continues to be one of the more exciting conferences around, and [...]

Trust the Process

by Larry Marturano

“This is never going to work. I don’t get it.  Why are we doing this?” “Don’t worry, Cody.” I’m teaching one of my 16-year-old son’s friends how to do an affinity analysis on some data he’d collected for a high school “critical thinking” project. Sometimes I’m not sure how I get myself into these things. [...]

Simple Methods for Reliable User Involvement

by Hugh Beyer

Hugh will be presenting at the Agile conference again this year, talking about basic techniques for getting users involved in your Agile sprints. From the conference program: One of the difficult problems faced by an Agile team is that of getting reliable user input. Since Agile projects depend on minimal up-front planning and specification, user [...]

Phase 0

by Hugh Beyer

Has any Agile project ever kicked off without a Phase 0? I don’t think so. But if you’ve been working happily without a Phase 0, I’d like to hear about it.

Digital Publishing: A view from the trenches

by Shelley Wood

It’s a huge challenge for a print publishing company to transform into a technology company. Here are some of the pitfalls.

The Role of the UX Professional on an Agile Team

by Hugh Beyer

Making compelling products and applications

Innovation Comes from Watching Users

by Kelley Wagg

GM’s experience studying drivers shows that a close analysis of user behavior can indeed lead to innovation.

Agile’s Just a Fad

by Hugh Beyer

“Agile is just a fad.” Somebody said that to me the other day, and I’m sure you’ve heard the same if you’re involved in Agile development at all. I had the usual half-defensive, half-annoyed reaction one has when on the receiving end of such a remark. But then I started to mull over the question. [...]

Changing Minds is Hard Work

by Hugh Beyer

I’ve been telling people for years that thinking is hard work. At the end of a day building an affinity when everyone’s brain is completely fried even though all they’ve done for the day is stick Post-its on the wall—“See, thinking is hard work!” I say with a chipper smile, and everybody hates me. This [...]

Is Analytics the Answer?

by Larry Marturano

It’s been fascinating over the last several years to watch the big hairy technology battle of our age play out—Google versus Apple. This is a clash of ideologies in how they approach design.

The Agile 2010 Conference: Agile Grows Up

by Hugh Beyer

I’m on my way back from Agile 2010, the main industry conference on Agile methods and tools. If I had to choose one theme for the conference, it would be something like “Agile Grows Up”—not only has Agile become mainstream, but the community is starting to recognize and tackle the real issues of doing development in organizations.

Does Contextual Inquiry Interviewing Only Work in the US?

by Shelley Wood

People sometimes challenge me (politely) with reasons why Contextual Inquiry (CI) interviews can’t work with their specific industry or user population. Usually I go into some variation of my standard explanation with examples related to their situation to illustrate how CI does work, and why. But then the participants in a Contextual Design workshop in [...]

InContext Does Agile

by Hugh Beyer

There’s a fair backlog of news from the Agile world that I want to share with folks. We’ve been involved in working with Agile teams, and working out the relationship between Agile methods and user-centered design for some years now. Here are our latest activities.

Where is Nokia?

by Karen Holtzblatt

I walked out of Verizon yesterday having just ordered the Motorola Droid X. I was pretty excited to try it out, having waited for Verizon to get something I wanted. “You know what was conspicuously missing?” my husband said as we walked out of the store. “Nokia!” we said together. Where is Nokia in the [...]

Agile development at CHI

by Hugh Beyer

I attended CHI 2010 week before last and it was interesting and insightful as usual. There were lots of great ideas, interaction paradigms and insightful research being presented. But one topic was not much addressed by official conference sessions, but was common in the hallway conversations: how to deal with agile software development. I go [...]

Front End Zen

by Larry Marturano

How do you deal with the fact that your desire to measure innovation can kill it? Great innovation is more Buddha than Black-Scholes. Find your innovation Zen.

Executing in the Fuzzy Front End

by Larry Marturano

It’s strange how the concept of execution gets linked almost solely with operations. What would happen if we applied “execution” to the “fuzziness” of development’s front end?

A Long Term Affair

by Kelley Wagg

I’ve used numerous marketing processes and many development lifecycles during my career but it wasn’t until I encountered Contextual Design that I fell in love.

Essential Agile

by Hugh Beyer

The essential core of agile is fast iterations tested with user feedback. Everything else is there to make that core work better, faster, or in a more organized way. Throw away everything else if you must but don’t trade off this core. Let me explain why…