Waterfall vs. Agile Development

As a user experience architect, I'm nervous about going into my next project using Scrum. I've done it before and unfortunately came out of it feeling like Agile development was an excuse for the programmers to get to skip the design and research phase of a project and jump straight into development. It makes my job harder as a user experience architect because I can't do wireframes and I have to work with user stories when the conceptual framework doesn't feel stable yet. Like deciding how many wheels your vehicle is going to have before you've even decided if it's a car, train, or bike. Or maybe you'll just walk.

As someone who designs interfaces for a living, I am not sure I like the idea of programmers getting started without having a wireframe to work off of. Still, I'm willing to try. At least I'm being involved early in writing the user stories for this particular project, so I feel like I have some control over the experience...perhaps i'll write some that are like, "as a user experience designer, I am consulted throughout the process so that the website doesn't launch until I think the design makes sense and works well" !! Just kidding.

Anyway, I found a presentation by Maria Giudice of Hot Studio that I really enjoyed. It shows a diagram of what I think is a happy compromise: using the waterfall method first and then agile closer to the development phase.

Human-centered design meets Agile Development

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: user-centered ucd)