Earlier this year, we asked Agile practitioners at the UX Conference to share tips or techniques that have contributed to the success of their Agile projects.

We received 125 responses from professionals in USA and Singapore. The respondents worked in various-size companies and held different job responsibilities, ranging from UX designers and developers to product owners and project managers. (Obviously, there is some potential bias in this respondent pool which does not include the many companies that don’t invest anything in user experience. However, it is fair to say that the survey responses do reflect practices in organizations who care enough about UX to send their staff to user-experience training.)

Top 10 Key Tips for Successful Agile Projects

Here are the most popular techniques reported by Agile professionals:

Tip #1. Allow time for release planning and story mapping.

Respondents reported that spending time at the start of projects to properly plan for releases is worth the investment:

“Place more effort in planning, design, and specification.”

“Be involved at the earliest stage.”

“Spend more time in the planning phase and then focus on refinements and tweaks. Get buy-in before starting the project.”

“Block out business time early, get sign off on everything.”

“Do proper and extensive planning in the beginning of the sprint. Allow sufficient time to deal with inevitable blockers.”

Collaborating with stakeholders from the beginning allows teams to develop a shared understanding and a common vision for their projects. This shared vision guides team members throughout the project, helping them prioritize user stories and make the right trade-offs along the way.

Some teams employ story mapping during release planning to help stakeholders collaborate with other team members in creating the product backlog. This activity often uncovers new opportunities and helps teams group and prioritize user stories.

UX involvement in release planning keeps the focus on the broader context, identifies knowledge gaps that require future research, and gathers information (e.g., by running appropriate user studies) to inform team decisions before the project begins. When teams allocate time for discovery work and research at the beginning, they reduce wasted effort later on.

“Include the discovery process before Agile kicks off for chartering, persona development, and story mapping.”

Tip #2. Conduct UX activities ahead of the sprint.

Many people reported challenges in trying to fit both design and development for the same feature into a single sprint. Two weeks is usually not enough time to conduct research, create wireframes and designs, AND do the development work for the selected user stories.

The most common advice for overcoming this challenge was to stagger the UX/UI and the development work stream so that research and design are completed before the sprint begins. For example, UX creates the screens in sprint 1. Then development takes the completed designs and codes them in sprint 2.

“I worked one sprint ahead as a UX/UI lead. I would work with the scrum master and product owners to prioritize projects in the backlog and fulfill the UX/UI requirements a sprint before production. My time had to count differently toward the sprint, omitted from velocity, but very efficient.”

“Research and design should stay at least one sprint ahead. Give yourself time to do thorough user research and test your designs.”

“Make sure to design as much upfront so you can prototype and test concepts before development needs to start.”

“Spend investigative time during sprints in anticipation of needs for the upcoming sprints.”

“Have mockups ready for sprint planning.”

Working ahead of the development stream gives designers time to think through and test assumptions with real users. Staying ahead allows the entire team to review mockups and identify potential issues before the design of that feature is ready for the sprint.

The size and complexity of the project affects how far ahead of development UX designers should work. Most practitioners report designing ahead by 1 to 2 sprints.

This is a coordinated effort that requires communication among team members. Just because designs are completed (or mostly done) before the development sprint does not mean that the UX designer simply hands off the designs to the developers and moves on. While UX designers should constantly plan ahead, they must also support the current sprint, advise the team, and make adjustments as necessary.

Moreover, all team members, including project managers, product owners, and engineers, should work closely with the UX designer throughout the process so that when the design is “ready,” everyone is in sync. The back- and front-end developers need to understand and support the designs, interactions, and user flows.

Tip #3. Cultivate a collaborative culture.

Soft skills can hold the keys to success in Agile projects. The respondents identified healthy collaboration as a main factor in success. This finding is not surprising; after all, in the Agile Manifesto, individuals and interactions are valued over processes and tools. Good communication is essential in any software-development organization, whatever its process methodology. However, collaboration is even more important in Agile settings, where delivery times are short and time-boxed.

Some organizations chose design-thinking techniques such as ideation and brainstorming to encourage discussion and tear down silos that often block effective communication and teamwork.

“Collaboration has been critical.”

“Close collaboration with other roles in the team has [helped us] arrive at agreements sooner in the process.”

“Constant ongoing collaboration with all team members. We use sketching and whiteboard sessions; journey-experience maps help capture the omnichannel experience.”

“Share info together in cross-functional teams. Communicate more with developer and designers.”

“No putdowns and no dismissal of ideas in early stages.”

“Involve everyone on the team and welcome everyone's suggestions and ideas.”

“Keep the relationship between the business analyst, designer, and engineer close.”

“Meet regularly once a week to update and know the progress. Focus on things to help one another accomplish the work.”

“Daily standups, iteration demos, biweekly pulse meetings, and interaction with management.”

In modern software-development environments, UX is heavily involved in defining how online products and services are developed. As such, the role of UX has expanded to include communication. UX can be the catalyst for good collaboration by involving team members in activities such as usability testing, and field studies, but also group design ideation and brainstorming.

Tip # 4. Think iteration, not perfection.

Many people in our study favored an iterative design process. Start with low-fidelity prototypes (sketches, wireframes) and iterate based on user and customer feedback. In other words, fail fast, fail often.

“Work in low fidelity as long as possible to keep aesthetics out of it.”

“Go with the fast and dirty wireframe approach.”

“Fail fast and iterate with many options.”

“Don't try to be perfect.”

“Work iteratively.”

“Iterate and test often.”

Wireframing is a natural fit for Agile processes because it allows team members to test their design ideas quickly, before investing too much effort and time. Design flaws caught early on are much easier to correct than those discovered after the feature has been coded.

Tip #5. Participate in scrum meetings.

Out of the four scrum ceremonies, daily standups (scrum meetings) received the most unsolicited nods from our respondents. Scrum meetings are typically held at the same time each day and time-boxed for 15 minutes. The main intent of scrum meetings is to keep everyone on the team updated on progress and recognize impediments that need to be removed.

“Have daily short scrum meetings.”

“Our daily standups with developers make it easy to ensure we’re on track.”

“Daily scrum meetings are key.”

“Limit each person to 2 minutes only, with a timer. Otherwise they'll talk forever.”

“Daily quick status meetings to keep everyone on task.”

“Participate in short standups.”

People sometimes object to daily scrum meetings, because, together with all the other meetings for grooming and planning, demos, and retrospectives, they eat up precious work time. However, the results from our survey reveal that this ritual is useful in keeping the team updated and synchronized so it can respond to change, as necessary.

Based on the findings of this research, if you’ve dropped daily standups from your process, perhaps it’s worth taking another look and giving it a chance. Look closely at other factors that may affect people’s willingness to participate: how well these meetings are conducted, and whether the discussion involves UX-related activities.

Tip #6: Turn user research into team-driven events.

People reported usability testing as a positive factor in teambuilding and influencing decisions. Even with compressed schedules, Agile teams are able to incorporate user research into their process. This finding dispels the myth that user testing is too time consuming or expensive. Teams are making it work: weekly user testing (Testing Tuesdays) are one possible approach.

The respondents encouraged turning usability testing into a team event, where members (and stakeholders) observe the sessions and participate in debrief discussions.

“Be sure that all stakeholders are present at research sessions.”

“Presenting hard [user] data has swayed decisions.”

“Have developers and product owners participate or observe usability sessions.”

“Conduct research and testing in enough time for sprints. Plan ahead as much as you can.”

“Meet as often as possible after testing to make sure you are all on the same page.”

“Set up weekly meetings to present findings from the week before.”

Making design decisions together based on user data, rather than opinion or untested assumptions, propels teams forward more quickly.

Tip #7: Secure strong stakeholder engagement.

Our respondents emphasized the importance of stakeholder involvement at critical points. This notion is consistent with Agile principles: Value customer collaboration over contract negotiation. Contracts are important and useful, but when they get in the way of effective collaboration, they impede progress.

Organizations applied different strategies for collaborating with stakeholders. The techniques used range from assembling a core leadership team early and partnering key UX members with clients, to inviting clients to user-testing sessions and to giving high-level presentations frequently.

“Have continuous conversations with stakeholders and engineers.”

“Engage leadership in every major step of the project with big-scenario presentations (5-10 minutes).”

“Organize a leadership team first.”

“Make your blockers visible to key stakeholders.”

“Have UX embedded with business stakeholders.”

Tip #8: Set explicit roles and responsibilities.

Many respondents emphasized the need for team members to understand their individual roles and the roles of their peers. For Agile to work effectively, members need to know what is expected and what falls within their realm of influence.

“Absolute separation of positions is essential.”

“Run sharing sessions with the product owner, client, and users about Agile processes and what is expected from them.”

“Have a separate scrum master and product owner.”

“You need a strong scrum master.”

“Be aware of how your development team works.”

In traditional Agile methods, team composition and roles are fairly defined, except for user-experience practitioners. In fact, traditional Scrum teams don’t include UX. Since UX roles and processes might be new or feel unfamiliar to other team members, it is especially important to set expectations and help people think about user experience in the context of Agile.

Providing clarity on each person’s roles and responsibilities and on who has authority in various situations improves collaboration by minimizing misunderstandings and wasted energy on turf wars.

Tip #9: Host training and onboarding sessions.

Agile team members emphasized the importance of educating clients, new team members, and outside teams on the adopted Agile UX processes.

“Hold ‘Lunch and Learn’ to helps others understand the process.”

“Stay on top of the method and continue to explain it.”

“Conduct training, indoctrination.”

“Have cross-functional training sessions.”

“Train across teams.”

“Follow ceremonies. Educate clients about them.”

“Provide open-to-all training, independent of the projects they work on. Offer small chunks of guidelines or best practices, and explain WHY they are so.”

In Agile environments, it’s fairly common for team members to get shuffled from one team to another. While this practice is not ideal, it is often the reality for many organizations that have limited resources.

Training offers an opportunity to educate staff on the accepted UX and Agile practices. Agile provides a framework for delivering products, but how UX is integrated in this framework will vary across organizations or teams.

In addition to educating your immediate team, reach out to outside teams and business units. Setting proper expectations makes communication and transitions run smoother.

Tip #10: Modify your method until it works.

As Agile teams mature, they experiment more with different Agile and UX techniques and tailor them to match their environment. Apply iterative design not just to the user interface, but also to your project methodology.

“We continuously review each aspect of Agile and modify it if it's not working. Retrospectives and project postmortems are great help.”

“Educate the team on most Agile methodologies. Let them decide which elements from each to use. Since teams are self-organizing, they should decide what's best for their process. They own it.”

“We prefer a process where we have a longer time without fixed iterations.”

Agile provides a framework for structuring your work, but does not dictate how to run your project. It encourages teams to be self-organizing, reflect on ways to work more effectively, and adapt as necessary to pare away unneeded complexity.

Advanced software-development teams are becoming more multidisciplinary and fluid than ever before. Successful teams often take hybrid approaches. Agile and UX methodologies were invented in response to the pitfalls of traditional methods. Both Agile and UX methodologies have its merits and can work together if we place less emphasis on the rules and more focus on the outcome.

More findings from our research on projects that integrate Agile development and good UX design are presented in the full-day training course on Lean and Agile UX.