Agile Management

Agility

● Agility is the ability to move and adapt quickly and easily in response to change.
● It involves effective communication between all stakeholders and integrating the
customer into the team.
● Agility prioritizes rapid, incremental delivery of working software.

When To Use The Agile Model

● The Agile Model is best suited for projects where new changes need to be implemented
frequently and at a low cost.
● This model allows for flexibility in incorporating new features or rolling back changes with
minimal effort.
● It is also beneficial when limited planning is required to start the project and when
end-user needs are expected to change dynamically.
● The Agile model allows for continuous feedback and adaptation based on customer
needs, leading to a more desirable finished system.
● It provides more freedom and flexibility to both developers and stakeholders compared
to rigid sequential development methods.
● This flexibility allows important decisions to be made later in the process when more
information or resources become available.

12 Agility Principles

The 12 Agility Principles prioritize:

1. Customer satisfaction through early and continuous delivery of valuable software.

2. Embracing changing requirements, even late in development, to the customer's
advantage.
3. Frequent delivery of working software in short timescales (weeks or months).
4. Daily collaboration between business people and developers throughout the project.
5. Building projects around motivated individuals, providing them with the necessary
support and trust.
6. Face-to-face communication as the most efficient method of conveying information
within a development team.
7. Working software as the primary measure of progress.
 8. Sustainable development, allowing sponsors, developers, and users to maintain a
consistent pace indefinitely.
9. Continuous attention to technical excellence and good design to enhance agility.
10. Simplicity and maximizing the amount of work not done.
11. Emergent architectures, requirements, and designs from self-organizing teams.
12. Regular team reflections to improve effectiveness and adjust behavior accordingly.

Agility Methodologies

The source describes several agility methodologies including:

● Extreme Programming (XP)

● Adaptive Software Development (ASD)
● Dynamic Systems Development (DSD) Method
● Scrum Agile Process

Extreme Programming (XP)

● XP is an object-oriented approach that includes a set of rules and practices within four
framework activities: planning, design, coding, and testing.
● XP Planning involves creating "stories" that describe the required features and
functionality written by the customer and assigned value based on their business value.
The XP team assesses the stories and assigns a cost in development weeks.
● XP Design emphasizes simplicity (KIS - Keep it Simple). A simple design is preferred,
and the design provides implementation guidance for a story. The XP team uses CRC
cards as the only design work product. XP recommends creating an operational
prototype of the software.
● XP Coding suggests developing a series of unit tests before writing code. This enables
immediate testing upon code completion, providing instant feedback to developers. Pair
programming, with two people working together at one workstation, is also
recommended for real-time problem solving and quality assurance.
● XP Testing prioritizes creating unit tests before coding, implementing them in a
framework for automation. Integration and validation testing can occur daily. XP
acceptance tests, or customer tests, are specified by the customer and focus on the
overall system.

Adaptive Software Development (ASD)

● ASD, proposed by Jim Highsmith, is designed for building complex software and
systems.
● It emphasizes human collaboration and team self-organization.
● ASD consists of three phases: speculation, collaboration, and learning.
 ○ Speculation: The project is initiated, and adaptive cycle planning is conducted,
using information like the customer's mission statement, project constraints, and
basic requirements to define release cycles.
○ Collaboration: This phase emphasizes trust and open communication within the
team, allowing for constructive criticism and assistance without resentment. It
recognizes the importance of individual creativity while working together
effectively.
○ Learning: ASD teams learn through focus groups, formal technical reviews, and
postmortems. Focus groups provide feedback from customers on delivered
increments. Formal technical reviews allow team members to assess software
components for quality improvement and learning. Postmortems encourage
introspection, addressing the team's performance and processes for continuous
improvement.

Dynamic Systems Development (DSD) Method

● DSD is an agile approach that focuses on meeting tight deadlines through incremental
prototyping within a controlled project environment.
● It involves a life cycle with five phases:
○ Feasibility Study: Establishes basic business requirements and constraints of
the application.
○ Business Study: Determines the functional information requirements to deliver
business value.
○ Functional Model Iteration: Develops incremental prototypes that demonstrate
functionality to the customer.
○ Design and Iteration: Reviews prototypes from the functional model iteration to
ensure they are engineered effectively.
○ Implementation: Deploys the latest increment into the operational environment,
even if not 100% complete.

Scrum Agile Process

● Scrum, developed by Jeff Sutherland in the 1990s, aligns with the Agile Manifesto and
guides development activities through framework activities, including requirements,
analysis, design, evolution, and delivery.
● Scrum Agile Principles encourage:
○ Small working teams to enhance communication, minimize overload, and
maximize knowledge sharing.
○ Adaptability to technical and business changes for optimal product development.
○ Frequent software increments that can be inspected, adjusted, tested,
documented, and built upon.
○ Partitioning of work and personnel into clean, low-coupling units.
○ Constant testing and documentation throughout product development.
○ The ability to declare a product "done" when deemed appropriate.
The source also includes a list of software development models for further study: Waterfall
Model, V-Model, Incremental Model, Spiral Model, Concurrent Model, Unified Process (UP)
Model, Extreme Programming (XP), Adaptive Software Development (ASD), Scrum Model, and
Dynamic Systems Development Method (DSDM).

Please note that this information is based solely on the provided source. You may want to
consult additional resources for a more comprehensive understanding of these topics.
Introduction to UXDD

● UX encompasses the overall effect a user feels from interacting with a system,
device, or product. This includes usability, usefulness, and emotional impact during and
after interaction. The interaction can be broad, including simply looking at or thinking
about the product.
● Usability is a practical aspect of UX, focusing on elements such as effectiveness,
efficiency, and user satisfaction. It's a misconception to equate usability with being
"user-friendly" or solely about visual appeal.
● Functionality is crucial, but a quality user experience can often be more important.
A product with a superior UX often outperforms products with more features, as seen
with the iPhone's success over the Blackberry.
● Emotional impact is a key component of UX, influencing feelings like pleasure,
aesthetics, and deeper emotions. While user satisfaction has always been considered
in usability, the focus on emotional aspects has increased.
● A good user experience isn't necessarily about high-tech or "cool" features. It
extends beyond technology and involves creating designs that meet user needs and
facilitate a dialogue between creator and user.
● UX is primarily an internal experience for the user. It's the totality of effects felt
internally as a result of interaction and usage context. While performance-related
aspects of usability can be observed externally, the user still experiences their effects
internally.
● You cannot design a user experience; you can only design for it. Usability and UX
are relative to the user and the usage context. The same design can lead to different
experiences depending on the user and the context.
● Training should not be a substitute for good usability. Attempting to fix usability
issues with training is costly and often ineffective. Investing in good UX design from the
start can lead to increased productivity and reduced errors and costs.
LifeCycle of UXDD

UX Design Lifecycle

● The UX design lifecycle is a cyclical process represented as a wheel

with four main activities: Analyze, Design, Prototype, and Evaluate.
● Analysis involves understanding the business domain, user work,
and needs. This includes activities like contextual inquiry and
analysis, requirements extraction, and the creation of
design-informing models.
● Design focuses on conceptual design, interaction behavior, and the
look and feel of the product. Sub-activities include design ideation,
sketching, creating mental models and storyboards, and design
production involving prototyping and iteration.
● Prototyping involves realizing design alternatives. It's often done
concurrently with design and involves creating prototypes of varying
fidelity to represent the evolving design.
● Evaluation is centered around verifying and refining the interaction
design. It uses rigorous and rapid evaluation methods to determine if
UX targets and metrics are met and if the design fulfills usability and
business goals.
● The entire UX lifecycle is evaluation-centered, with the results of
each activity evaluated through testing, inspection, analysis, and
feedback from customers and users.
● The UX design lifecycle is a template that needs to be adapted to
each project, selecting the parts and sub-activities that best fit the
project parameters.

Choosing a UX Process
 ● Project parameters that influence the choice of process instance
include risk tolerance, project goals, resources, type of system,
development culture, and project stage.
● Process parameters include rigorous UX processes, rapid and
discount methods, data collection techniques, and agile UX
processes.
● Experienced practitioners might not need to follow every detail of a
rigorous process, as their expertise and intuition may suffice.
However, a defined process can be helpful for unfamiliar tasks, much
like a recipe for an experienced chef.

System Complexity Space

● Defining a process for system design is challenging due to the

varying complexity of systems.
● Systems can be categorized based on interaction complexity
(intricacy of user actions) and domain complexity (technical
intricacy of the work field).
● Low interaction complexity involves simple tasks, while high
interaction complexity requires more elaborate user actions and
potentially specialized skills.
● Domain complexity is influenced by the intricacy of the system's
workings, collaborative aspects of the work, dependencies,
communication channels, and compliance rules.

UI/UX Team and Their Roles

● Building the UI/UX team is an early-stage activity.

● Key roles within the team include:
○ User Researcher: conducts contextual inquiry and analyzes
the work domain.
○ Users, Representatives, Customers, and Subject Matter
Experts: serve as information sources.
○ User Interaction Designer: focuses on ideation, sketching,
conceptual design, and prototyping.
 ○ UX Analyst/Evaluator: plans and conducts UX evaluations,
analyzes problems, and suggests solutions.
○ Visual/Graphic Designer: designs the look and feel, branding,
and assists with visual aspects.
○ Technical Writer: handles documentation, help systems, and
language aspects.
○ Interactive Prototype Programmer: develops high-fidelity
prototypes.
○ UX Manager: oversees the entire UX process.

Importance of Contextual Inquiry

● Contextual inquiry is an early UX activity to gather detailed

descriptions of user work practices.
● Its goal is to improve work practice and inform system design.
● Understanding work practice is crucial for creating a system design
that fits the work process, which may differ from designers'
assumptions.
● Contextual inquiry is essential because users may struggle to
articulate their work processes accurately, and key details are often
hidden beneath the surface.
● It eliminates the need for assumptions and guesswork about user
needs, as the team gains a thorough understanding of users' actions,
needs, and thoughts.
● In the early days of usability, practitioners were often brought in late
in the project, resulting in limited impact and a lack of authority and
respect.

Scope of UX Presence

● The historical context of UX involvement shows a shift from limited

involvement to a more integrated and influential role within project
teams.

Please let me know if you have any other questions or need further
clarification.