How Design Thinking and Agile Can Be Friends

Agile methodologies do not traditionally allot space, time, or processes for user experience design. Some teams try to accommodate design via separate design sprints that are somewhat coupled to the team's backlog, but these are typically performed two or three sprints ahead. Increasingly, designers are demanding that teams do big, upfront design phases outside of a team's backlog, followed by agile development sprints to implement the design. As markets mature and competition increases, more and more companies must become design-focused or even design-led. Ian and Mary will show you why pure agile practices require design to be performed within a sprint while the product backlog item is in development. Having a validated long-term product vision from the lean methodology may be the key to harmonizing the needs, processes, and roles of user experience design with the desire of agile teams to be self-sufficient. Learn how to incorporate design thinking into your agile methods, without disconnected, upfront, waterfall prerequisites.