Properly integrating User Experience Design into an Agile world has a lot of people scratching their heads lately and asking the question “How does it fit?” This last February, over the period of 2 days some of the brightest minds in the Agile, UX, and Development fields got together to answer that very question.

Agile UX Retreat 2010 Group

Spearheaded by Anders Ramsay, this self-organized group of just over 30 people included names such as Alan Cooper, Jeff Patton, Lane Halley, Chris Nodder, Ward Cunningham, and the list goes on and on. Even I was there… not sure why though… must have been a mix up (Thanks Citrix!!). Either way it was an event like no other I had ever attended.

Day 1

The foyer window at Cooper offices... BEAUTIFUL!

Immediately after entering the Cooper offices in San Francisco we were all in awe as we took in the breathtaking views seen from the 27^th floor of the building. However, this completely self-organized group did not waste a single moment. Led by Anders Ramsay, and with the help of Lane Halley and others, we quickly assembled ourselves in a large conference room, cleared out space for us to collaborate in and off we went.

First were introductions. We each interviewed a person whom we had never met before. We then introduced that person to the rest of the group and recited what that person was hoping to get out of the conference. I was able to interview Scout Addis, Owner of Graceland Heavy Industries and a very experienced product owner and interaction designer. As I questioned him I quickly came to realized that the caliber of people in this room was far superior to any other group of people I had previously had the pleasure of collaborating with (Apart from the Citrix Online UX team that is!).

Interview and idea stickies

After interviewing Scout, like the others before me, I placed his “Why I’m here” thought on a yellow sticky note and stuck it to a sheet at the front of the room where everyone could see. One by one everyone followed suite. At the end of the exercise everyone had a pretty good idea of who was present and what he or she was hoping to get out of this retreat. The sticky notes had everything from “Where does UX fit within an Agile world?” to “Have fun, think and learn”.

Previous to the Retreat, Anders asked us to prepare a topic to present or discuss, to the group. So, for the next activity we wrote down our topics for discussion or for presentation onto sheets of paper and taped the paper to the dry-erase board. We then arranged them into specific categories such as “Agile + UX Design”, “Start ups”, “Product Owner”, “Future of Agile UX”, etc. I swear I was getting high off of the abundance of sharpie fumes in the air. Next up, Lane and Anders had everyone take part in a “dot” voting activity were everyone could place a dot on the paper containing the topic they wanted to hear or discuss the most. Up to 10 dots could be used per person. It was amazing to see all these activities take on a life of their own. It was completely organic. My buddy Kris Niles made a great observation, he said, “If you think of a normal conference and then think about what we are doing here it’s like comparing a waterfall format meeting to an agile format meeting”. Well said! After the voting was done, all the presentations that had 8 votes or more were able to choose a time slot to present.

Discussion topics on the wall

After the topics where decided upon, no time was wasted. Alan Cooper was first up, then William Petri, then Ian McFarland, and on and on. The topics were intriguing, the discussions were inspiring, and the participation was very well balanced. For such a large group you would think that discussions would be, at a minimum… chaotic! But that wasn’t the case at all. Everyone was thoughtful, well spoken, and often times many of us were about to fall out of our seats laughing thanks to comments from the likes of Alan Cooper and Chris Chandler! Meanwhile, Chris Nodder was all over the room taking pictures while still finding the time and the focus to interject at key moments to steer the conversation towards paradigm changing topics.

There were many gems that I picked up during our initial day, here are a few:

“If you work really hard to please your customer you will most likely fail. If you work really hard to please your user you will most likely succeed.” ~Alan Cooper

“Give the customer what they didn’t know how to ask for.” ~Anders Ramsay

“Don’t look at people that are using your product, look at all the people that COULD potentially be using your product.” ~Chris Nodder

“An increase in proximity improves fidelity.” ~Jeff Patton

As we neared the end of the first day we jumped into a “fish bowl” exercise. The exercise consisted of 5 chairs that were set in the middle of the room. 4 chairs were filled, while one was left open. When someone had something they wanted to add that person would jump into the empty chair and one of the people sitting down would have to get up and leave the “fish bowl”. Everyone was told at the beginning of this activity that they would know if it was their turn to get up and leave the seat. Sure enough whenever someone sat down in the empty seat, someone got up and left the conversation. It was a pretty amazing activity for discussion.

(left to right) Ward Cunningham, Alan Cooper, Tim McCoy, and Chris Nodder in the fishbowl

As the end of the day neared, for our last activity we did a retrospective. We looked at what worked and what didn’t and then planned for the next day. We then went around the room and everyone gave their “top of mind thought”. So whatever was on your mind, you voiced it.

Just as fast as the day started, it ended. Going to bed that evening my head was spinning. I’m glad I got a good night sleep because the next day was going to be even more intense than the first.

Day 2

All the walls and windows looked something like this

The day started in a flurry. Reorganizing chairs and throwing scrolls of large sheets of paper all over the windows and walls in preparation for some serious sticky note placement. We were then gathered together and asked to go around the room and append sticky notes to the day’s previous thoughts that were contained on white sheets of paper that spanned half the room. The sticky notes that we appended said things like, “How to surface something that hasn’t been done”, “Innovation is not delivered by just one discipline”, “Great Topic”, “I agree”, etc.

After applying our thoughts to the day’s previous notes. We were asked to write down what our “Big thought or idea” was for the conference on a sticky note, or notes, and place it somewhere on OURSELVES. What??? We then were asked to walk around the room to view everyone else’s “big thought” and discuss. This activity was awesome! There was no hiding your opinion or your idea. It was out in the open for everyone to see and to ponder.

We then began a “root-cause analysis” exercise. This was another new exercise for me. To begin with we placed a “Big Question” at the top of the whiteboard up front. It stated, “How can we create effective and successful products in a post-agile / post-ux world?” We then asked questions that would help us answer this root question and so on and so forth. Through this exercise we were able to identify key blockers that needed to be resolve to answer the root question. This type of activity was a big one to take on and time was limited so, unfortunately we had to cut it short for the time being.

Lane Halley getting us started on a "Root Cause Analysis"

Afterward we moved on to another fishbowl round and discussed those big thoughts we had. The conversation was intense and inspiring. As we discussed I felt as if we were really digging into a whole range of important things. We were able to get more specific and granular within this fish bowl round. After a quick and delicious pizza lunch, we jumped right into a presentation by Desiree Sy on “Fit and Finish”… Great slides! After Desiree, I was then able to present my slides and thoughts on how UX & Agile fit together. Kris Niles then followed me up. Kris presented on his experiences as UX/Product Owner. A lot of great thoughts were shared in response to these presentations and as the day progressed we all had the feeling of momentum and that we were very close to discovering something big.

As we moved on we revisited our “root-cause analysis” activity. To get more done in a short time frame we split up into separate groups and focused on different “Top Thoughts” that were connected to the “Big Question” such as, “How can we continually evolve on ways to work together?”, “How can we change culture & mindset?”, “How can we sell the vision?”, etc. Once the clock ran out we all gathered again and went from room to room to view each group’s thoughts and action items for solving those questions that were written down. Unfortunately, we weren’t able to completely answer the big question but we made some great headway and touched upon some important blockers that need to be overcome in order to create effective and successful products in a post-agile / post-ux world.

Afterward, we gathered back together again for one last “hurrah”. Many expressed the feeling that we were on the verge of something big. We were encouraged to keep the momentum going. I know that we all felt extremely grateful for Anders and all his time spent organizing this retreat. Also to Alan Cooper and Ed Niehaus for providing the Cooper offices, to Atomic Object for a wonderful dinner, and to Pivotal labs for a fun welcome reception! We were grateful to Lane Halley as well for being a big driver on the activities and organization of the group throughout both days. And to everyone else that helped make this experience what it was, thank you. For me I am so thankful that I was able to be a part of something so unique and important and to be surrounded by some of the smartest most talented people I have ever met.

What did I get out of it?
So now that everyone has the gist of the goings-on at the agile UX retreat, I would like to share a few major things that I got out of it.

We should value competencies over roles
When it comes down to how and where UX fits into agile we discovered that it’s not about “fitting” UX into one role or another. It is about matching up competencies to areas of responsibility, seeing where they fit best. As a UX designer I may have multiple product owner competencies and I may have development skills as well. If that’s the case where do I belong? The Product Owner Team or the Development Team? The answer is…BOTH and we work as a whole. As Scout Addis said, we need to be the Glube (glue + lube) within agile. Below are two slides that I used during my presentation that help to convey this position:

UX/Agile - Roles and Competencies

We should value “We” over “Us & Them”
This goes right along with working as a whole. From the Customer on through the developer. Chris Nodder really drove home the fact that we need to get away from the “Us & Them” or the “Us vs. Them” mentality. In order to create the true transparency needed to develop a highly collaborative team we need to avoid of the “Us Team” / “Them Team” mentality.

We should value product over process
Alan Cooper made a great statement. He said, “Many people seem to not care about delivering good products. Instead they focus on good code, good design, etc.” We have the tendency to get so caught up in process, beautiful design and perfect code that we run the risk of letting the overall product itself suffer. So, while it’s great to have a pixel perfect design and immaculate code, we still need to ask ourselves: Is this what my user wants or have I created a beautiful piece of useless junk?

Obviously these are huge values that can be expounded upon infinitely and there are many other topics that we touched upon that are big game changers in the agile arena so I encourage everyone reading to tackle some of the same question we tried to answer during the conference:

• How can we create effective and successful products in a post-agile / post-ux world?
• How does UX fit into an agile world?
• Words create worlds. If we dump words such as “owner”, “client”, “designer”, what new world do we create?

Final thought… Let’s keep the momentum going!

By: Jeremy Johnson