Cross-Functional Pairing - What it is and why you should be doing it

This is a talk I gave together with Mike Long and Jef Bekes at the 2011 Balanced Team Conference

Transcript

1. #xpairing #agileux   Photo  Credit:  h,p://www.emagzin.com/wp-­‐content/uploads/2010/06/120308.jpeg  
5. Why don’t we get to pair?!
6. X-Functional Pairing Create an L-Mode/R-Mode Tug-of-War Create a Cross-Disciplinary Loop Get comfortable sharing work in progress Learn to create lean specs
7. Logical, Step-by-step “Gives you the power to work through details and make it happen.” Linear-Mode Rich-Mode Non-linear, Intuitive Holistic, Asynchronous Non-verbal (e.g. visual)
8. Cross-Disciplinary Feedback Loop
9. Get Comfortable Sharing Work in progress
10. Get Comfortable Creating Lean Specs
11. Also…be sure you are doing a complete feedback loop… Think Make Check
12. When is a good time to x-pair? Do this first… Big Picture Design/User Flow/Sketch-level UI Ideal time to x-pair… During a sprint, solving a narrowly defined problem
13. Is it all roses? Less or no continuous debugging Risk of tunnel-vision/solving wrong problem Designer/Developer dynamic can become stressful/aggravating
14. Case Study… Mingle Planner!
15. Product group at Agile software development company Implementing Agile UX practices: •  Design pattern libraries •  Lo-fi sketches > interactive prototypes •  Designing in the browser, refining in the codebase We require our UX designers to be unicorns technical (HTML/CSS/Javascript) and analytical
16. •  Intervening in a project that lacked focus and a conceptual framework •  Collaborative sessions to map out high-level concepts, relationships, and organizing principles •  Analysis by design > rough sketch of key paths and UI Case Study: Mingle Planner
17. Whiteboard Sketch: Product Concepts and Relationships
19. Interactive Pattern Library
21. •  Leverage pattern library to (quickly) build out an interactive prototype (HTML/CSS/Javascript) •  User prototype to validate conceptual framework and UI framework •  Prototype becomes a living document/style guide for developers •  Designing in the browser > designing in the codebase What we did
22. Interactive Prototype (HTML/CSS/jQuery/Highcharts)
24. Thanks! Anders Ramsay - @andersramsay Jef Bekes - @jbekes Mike Long – sequence3@gmail.com P.s. check out pairingproject.org