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Collaborative Product Owning: Inviting Users into the Agile ProcessJoshua Ledwell@jledwell

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Background Why customers in sprint demos? Others ways to get user feedback Preparing customer participants How to moderate Achieving internal buy-in Enhancing customer participation General questions and answers

Outline

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Background

New feature setNew market

New user type

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http://www.agileforall.com/intro-to-agile/

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A natural progression of Agile My domain knowledge was limited Satisfy a few “lighthouse customers” Customers and users were invested

Why invite customers?

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If you are practicing Agile UX:

How do you get user feedback working within an Agile framework?

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Jennifer (Jen) McGinn and Ana Ramírez Chang. RITE+Krug: A Combination of Usability Test Methods for Agile Design. Journal of Usability Studies, Vol. 8, Issue 3, May 2013, pp. 61-68.

Desirée Sy. Adapting Usability Investigations for Agile User-centered Design. Journal of Usability Studies, Vol. 2, Issue 3, May 2007, pp. 112-132.

UX research, Agile style

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Work with sales and product management to identify target customers.

Email to briefly explain the concept and gauge interest.

Sign non-disclosure agreements (NDAs). Give a kickoff presentation to show them

where we’ve been and where we think we’re going. 1-3 times per year.

Optional: Visit the customer site so they’re not just a voice on the phone.

Goal: Recruit 3 customer firms and 2 – 3 individuals apiece.

Recruiting customers

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How does this work? Phone and online screen sharing meetings, every two

weeks. Currently alternate Wednesdays at 9am Eastern. Quick meetings, ½ an hour or less.

Live demo! We show you what we did. You tell us what you think.

Internal stakeholders and other customers also attend.

Preparing customers

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Keep in mind … Progress may seem slow. We aim for consistent participation or else you might

lose context.

If this is not going to work for you … Sprint demos are not the only way to participate! We’re also planning interviews, usability tests, and

more

Preparing customers

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Subject: Comments from Sprint Demo

Hello, I have watched the video, I have the following comments:

Electrical Panel 7763:Good solution, no comments

IDs 7590:Good fix, what happens to the element ID when swapped over? This is a loaded question. We use element ids to export models to navisworks and use the ID as an analogue for time to show how the model has put together from designers.

Sample feedback

!!!

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Reveal and redirect“So how will that work when I [real world scenario]?”

“How would you want it to work?”

“I like that.” “Tell me more about that. What part do you like? Why?”

“That reminds me I need something else changed, let me tell you about that.”

“Thank you for that. Let’s set up a separate meeting to discuss it. Do you have any thoughts about the demo?”

“Are you going to ship it like that?”

“What would happen if we did ship like this?”

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When customers argue with each other When customers argue among themselves

Also, train your team

Moderating excited participants

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Before Developers talk about code throughout the demo.

After Focus on eliciting stakeholder responses. After the demo is over, the team stays in the

room and discusses what they heard. During the sprint we say, “Let’s see what the

customers think.”

Changing the conversation

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“I was skeptical two years ago – I thought it would be a distraction – but I’ve changed my mind.”

“We get valid, real world use cases instead of theoretical.”

“You can learn a lot just listening to customers talk.”

“We often get feedback that we probably should be working on something else.”

Team members in their own words

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Find The Bright Spots: We’re already meeting with key customers under NDA.

Script the Critical Moves and Build Habits: We already meet regularly and demonstrate to internal stakeholders.

Shrink the Change: Let’s start with just a couple of customers.

Achieving internal buy-in

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Achieving buy-inFrom: Development Manager

PM/PO/UX’s – Josh and I had a discussion yesterday about including customers in our team demo meetings. This is a topic that has come up a number of times in the past. As we’re making an organizational change in this direction, this seems like the right time to pick this up and make it happen. We need someone to drive this effort, so I’m looking to this group for options for this role.

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Demos are too superficial to get definitive feedback Managers won’t let users participate Risky to let customers see our slow real-world

progress Sales will object

We decided to test the waters at customer visits …

Concerns from stakeholders

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Responding to stakeholder concernsFrom: Me and my UX colleagues

Our contacts at (Customer A) and (Customer B) are ready to participate in our sprint demos. During our visits, we explained what we are asking for:

• that they would be short meetings at the same time every two weeks

• very small incremental views of progress• we’d want to ask them questions

and we didn’t hear any problems or doubts. Our (Customer B) guy in particular pressed us on when we could start and why we hadn’t started already. --Josh

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If you were to adopt this method:

What objections or barriers might you need to overcome in your organization?

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Kickoff meetings to give context Send user stories 1 day ahead Prompt for feedback Note all responses, but focus on the demo If a customer can’t attend, send the recording

Lessons learned

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Listen and pivot Implement delighters Spread the practice to more internal teams Don’t try to scale, use different methods

Improving the method

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Questions and comments?

Thanks to my colleagues who helped with this presentation!

Joshua Ledwell, Principal UX Designer, Autodesk@jledwell #UXPABOS14