User eXperience Design with Scrum – Overcome identified challenges of UX designers

This is a very informative class for somebody that faces this challenge such as myself. This class provides valuable insights, identifies problems, and provides solutions without being wordy or too long winded. — A. Edmunds

Very informative and also very well-sited to great UX process materials and articles online. I learnt a lot. It is nice to know that I am not the only person facing these challenges. — H. D. Kol

Integrating UX design within Agile is a real challenge, and several approaches are available:

• Some of them state that it is better to run a separate design sprint along with development sprint. And this design sprint should go ahead of development sprint.
• Few are in opinion of running a design sprint parallel with development sprint.
• Few others are in favor of an integrated sprint where UX designers, developers and testers work together as a scrum team.

This course mainly focuses on the last approach, integrated sprints, that works really well in many aspects.

Shifting from traditional product-development processes like Waterfall to modern Agile frameworks such as Scrum can be a challenge for UX. We must learn a whole new set of nomenclature, adapt to new timeframes in which to complete our research or design work, and step outside of our comfort zones to collaborate with cross-functional partners, many of whom we’ve never worked with before. Once we start making these changes, we quickly realize there’s a lot more to Agile than simply working in time-boxed sprints. Unlike Waterfall, Scrum has many recurring meetings that are typically referred to as ceremonies, including daily standups (also known as daily Scrum), backlog refinement (also known as backlog grooming), sprint planning, demos, and retrospectives. As UX people move to Agile, they may wonder whether they need to attend each ceremony and what they should do to adequately prepare and participate.

“Being part of a scrum team, developers, testers, and UX designers can better contribute to complete their tasks in a sprint, and hence produce a quality product.”

However, there are few challenges a UX designer face while working in an integrated scrum team. This course lists these challenges along with few recommendations that can help to overcome these challenges. What you will learn:

• How to include UX into Scrum?
• What is the UX designer role within a Scrum team?
• How to maintain open communication?
• How to influence product success?
• How to productively contribute to the team?

NB: Much of the discussion in this course will focus on the Scrum framework for Agile, but many of the concepts can be applied to other Agile approaches as well.