Back to a current favourite of mine: Agile and UE.
Here is the issue: Imagine a client asks you to provide a proposal and costs for designing and building a piece of software to a fixed deadline. They provide you with some high level requirements and asks you to get back with a plan. So, what ussually happens is that you go back with an estimate for the project based on the client briefing and upon client sign off you get started on the project. A few sprints further down the line you realise that you won't meet the deadline because the list of requirements has expanded after closely looking at the client and the user needs.This is a situation that you really do not want to be in. It involves re-negotiating the project scope, revisiting the amount of resources available, and generally risking damaging the relationship with the client.
So what do you do?
- When scoping the project you get the client to commit to an initial discovery stage (not sprint 0) before you get back to them with a clear and accurate proposal
- During the discovery stage ( 2+ weeks depending on the project) you conduct qualitative user research and collect both user and business needs
- You deliver the following:
- Personas
- User Journeys
- (Agile) User Stories
- Interaction principles
- Initial IA
The benefits?
- The discovery stage helps you understand the amount of work required and you can confidently produce estimates you can trust
- The client sees the benefit of the discovery stage
- UE has the time to lay the groundwork for the design and built while developers set up the environment and get ready for the hard work ahead of them.
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