Determinants for Successful Agile Collaboration between UX Designers and Software Developers in a Complex Organisation

Abstract

Agile and User centred design processes have been reported to frequently putting contradictory demands on people working within these methodological frameworks. The current research addresses this point by focussing on the crucial relationship between software developer and designer. An online survey, a contextual inquiry and a diary study were employed with 107 developers and designers in a large media organisation to determine the factors for success in agile development cycles. The results from the survey show that while developers and designers have similar levels of satisfaction with agile processes, there are differences in the factors predicting those ratings. Developers are happier with the wider teamwork but want more access to and close collaboration with designers, while the latters' concern was the quality of the wider teamwork. Additional contextual inquiries and a diary study with pairs of designers and developers reflected the survey findings that close cooperation (and proximity) was essential for improving communication, reducing inefficiencies, and avoiding suboptimal products being released. However, organisational processes, the setup of the work-environment, and managerial traditions meant that this close collaboration and localised decision-making was found difficult to maintain. Results from the survey, the contextual inquiry, and the diary study found six factors for success from collaborations emerged.

Development Of Undergraduate Students Course Recommender System

“…According to Jones and Thoma [25], "Agile" refers to a process in which users' requirements or functional needs are described through iterations with the collaboration of selforganizing and cross-functional teams. This "Agile" approach advocates adaptive planning to counter the traditional plandriven approach, and it encourages the continuous improvement of solutions.…”

Understanding Collaborative Practices and Tools of Professional UX Practitioners in Software Organizations

“…Despite current literature on UX, we still lack an updated understanding of UX practitioners' collaboration practices that holistically consider organizational factors, tools, and workflows. Changes in workplace culture due to the COVID-19 pandemic mean that some factors traditionally fostering collaboration, such as sitting next to each other [53], may be more demanding to implement. Furthermore, it is not clear from previous work how UX designers collaboratively move between tasks in the double diamond design process, particularly in larger organizations where a designer may only work in a specific phase of the process.…”

“Merging Results Is No Easy Task”: An International Survey Study of Collaborative Data Analysis Practices Among UX Practitioners

“…This phenomenon was echoed in the free-form responses as many respondents mentioned that even though they worked on a team with other UX practitioners, only one person was responsible for analyzing all usability testing sessions for a single product in the company. Another vital factor to successful collaboration is having effective communication between colleagues [48,98]. Thus, we asked respondents what type of communication they use most often to discuss work-related content with their colleagues.…”