The Agile Process
Lately, I’ve noticed a paradigm shift within the industry: we’re finally moving away from the traditional agency ‘waterfall’-style process towards truly ‘agile’ process. For as long as I can remember, ‘Agile’ has been a buzzword within the development community. It seems only now is the agency and startup world finally fully embracing this approach. I recently attended webvisions in Portland and found that it emerged as a major theme across presentations. Many spoke of their switch to keynote for rapidly iterating clickable prototypes; Dennis Kardys spoke at length about visual moodboards, style guides, prototypes and providing a toolbox for ‘future friendly’ design.
So what’s the point of agile process, exactly? I was fortunate enough to get started with agile development quite early in my career, and I very quickly realized the benefits of working in this way.
Firstly, consider the unbelievable pace of change in digital technology. New hardware and software seem to emerge almost weekly—software especially has seen an explosion in startup culture. What this means is that larger, well funded and staffed corporate teams are now competing directly against small, lean and agile teams of developers. These small teams move fast—and in today’s market, that’s a huge advantage. Even an inferior product can win market share… as long as it’s the first to market.
However, speed isn’t the only benefit of an agile process. Agile process is cyclical: you get more iterations of design, development and testing in a given timeline. This is critical for ensuring your product or service is as robust as possible in terms of its design, functionality and user experience.
Finally, one of the best aspects of an agile process is that it pulls UX, design and development out of their own unique silos. An agile process forces these separate teams to work together and rapidly build, test and refine prototypes. Collaboration between teams often leads to insights and innovation you simply wouldn’t get if these teams were working independently.
At Make, one of our key goals has been to refine and develop our digital process. We are creating systems that allow us to rapidly build and test our basic clickable prototypes and craft an elegant experience from the outset of a project. This team-driven operations method also ensures that we review strategy, design and production at key project milestones and progressively modify the outcome. Working with a lo-fi prototype also allows the design, UX and development of a project to all be considered simultaneously—which is critical in terms of solving difficult user experience challenges.
Digital consumers are more savvy than ever before, and they demand products and services that are fast, efficient and easy to use. An agile process isn’t just another tool in your kit: it’s absolutely necessary to help teams produce the best product they can.
We admit, truly embracing agile process in an agency environment can be a real challenge. This is especially true if you are working with larger clients who have their own internal approval and testing requirements. It requires a certain level of trust between agency and client in order to rapidly iterate and improve the product. Simply put, agile isn’t for every project and client. However, integrating even some agile techniques into your existing process is a sure way to help deliver the best possible product to your client and the best growth for your company.
Links & Resources:
http://boagworld.com/digital-strategy/agile-web-design/
http://www.cio.com/article/174650/What_an_Agile_Process_Looks_Like
http://martinfowler.com/articles/newMethodology.html
http://alistapart.com/article/gettingrealaboutagiledesign
http://uxmag.com/articles/change-on-a-dime-agile-design
http://designshack.net/articles/business-articles/understanding-agile-design-and-why-its-important/
http://www.mountaingoatsoftware.com/articles/introducing-an-agile-process-to-an-organization