Agile Principle #4, “Business people and developers must work together daily throughout the project.”
Agile's principles make it clear that developers are expected to work directly with product owners/customers to design and develop the product. There’s no mention of UX or user/design research in the process.
When Agile Works with UX
There are some Agile concepts that are actually great for UX (i.e., user stories and iterative development). So, some companies/teams have put in the work to force-fit UX into their Agile process. They require user stories based on UX research and use iterative development for prototyping and design testing.
When Agile Doesn't Work with UX
However, out of the box, Agile does not promote UX discovery and design activities and many companies/teams fail to tailor their Agile process to support UX work. So, I often hear statements like “we’re Agile, let’s just get it out there and see what users think” and then put some UX stories in the backlog and move on to other features... repeatedly prioritizing other things over UX.
What To Do?
When interviewing for positions where you will be on an Agile development team, I strongly encourage UXers to ask lots of questions about how they have integrated UX into their Agile process.
What about you?
What’s been your experience with UX in Agile teams?
[image description:Top: To the right of the word “expectation” are two stick figures (one representing Agile and the other representing UX) high-giving each other. Bottom: To the right of the word “reality” are the same two stick figures but the Agile figure is kicking the UX figure in the head.]