What options do we have to integrate a UX/UI team into our Scrum process?

Although this question doesn’t come up all the time, it certainly comes up enough that sharing how our team made the decision to keep the Design team work outside our scrum team’s sprint could be helpful to others.

 

Just to give you some background, this team has been focusing on the intake of new projects, how we define new projects and what information is needed to ensure we make good business decisions in the future.  And, since this post references some processes in a previous post, you may want further clarification, so check it out here.

 

Our team has had many organizational changes over the years so we decided to take time to evaluate our agile practice and our teams to see how they were doing.  During our reviews, we heard that our design team wanted to understand how they would participate in our scrum practice and previous attempts weren’t going well.  So, to keep our discussion simple and make a decision quickly, we had leads from Product, Design and Tech review two options that we could use to plan and execute with consideration for how design/UI/UX is integrated into the process we continue to evolve.  Take a look and come prepared with your input on which option you believe works the best for your team.

 

Each option assumes…

 

…for each new project that is approved and moves to the “COMMITTED” status, we will have release planning with all teams invited (product, design, tech, ops, etc.) before we begin so that everyone understands the goal of each release (if there is more than one per project) and what high level features are being requested.  

…at the end of the release planning session, each team comes up with their estimated schedule to complete the project and each release/milestone along the way. This is the way we create the CPE (Concept Phase Estimate) and projected completion date and the project moves to the “READY” status in our Intake workflow.

 

 

Option 1 = Design iterations of a user story are done prior to team sprint planning

 

Option 2 = Design and Dev of a user story is done in same sprint

1. Features and scope from the approved project are prioritized within each release by the Product Owner
2. The first set of features (highest priority) are broken down into user stories by the Product Owner focusing on the “what” and “why” but not the “how”
3. First set of User Stories are presented to the Design team and the Tech at the same time during the sprint planning session
4. Sprint commitments are made on which stories Design and engineering can complete in the sprint
5. Product and Design are available to the scrum team for questions and tweaks to the design during the sprint
6. Design and Dev are done in parallel on the same stories during the sprint
7. Product Demo is held the last day of each sprint to demonstrate each completed story and gain Product Owner acceptance

Early in the discussion, most people were already on board with Option 1 but we continued to discuss examples so that we all understood how it would play out in the day to day ceremonies that our teams already had such as Release Planning, Sprint Planning and daily stand ups.  We agreed that leads from Product and Design would continue to attend the sprint planning and daily stand ups as needed by the team.