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Agile & Design

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Welcome to the Jira for Designers series brought to you by Design at Scale™ – Academy. In a previous article, we discussed the Definition of Done(↘︎Link) and how it impacts the overall delivery. This article will have a slightly different role than all the previous articles. In this article, we will step away from the tool itself and reflect on the relationship between Agile and Design that can bring more harmony into your product design delivery. Especially by understanding the differences between dynamics and overlaps that create some tension, synergy and healthy competition, driving the organisations to become more agile without losing their entrepreneurial(↘︎Link) and customer-centric(↘︎Link) spirit.

Jira for Designers: One or the Other?

One or the Other?

It is often debated who is in the driver's seat, design or development. You will probably be led by the design stage and gate delivery mode if you are an agency. If you are a development house, you will probably led by the code as your organisation builds the product and services, and your culture and methods will lead to engineering culture. This, in many respects, empowers your product owners to make design-informed decisions for the product and services and deliver it under a variety of development frameworks. For over the last three decades, hundreds if not thousands of designers suffered the consequences of “not having the voice around the table”. Being classed as a minor contributor to Agile Methodology(↘︎Link) by crafting only specific deliverables that drive the code-based delivery(↘︎Link).

Conversely, over time, organisations have realised that design, especially design thinking(↘︎Link), is indispensable to their customers' satisfaction and have started bringing design professionals into heavy development teams. Inevitable friction has arisen, causing several debates about Stage and Gate(↘︎Link), Dual Track Agile(↘︎Link), Scrum(↘︎Link), Kanban(↘︎Link), or any other framework that represents agile framework or thinking. 

With over a decade of tension between heavy believers, the majority of teams settled on a colocated UXR department researching the insights feeding the product delivery. Development teams with an inside that can be adjusted by the product leads in a specific feature team.

This way, the business has given permission to steer the wheel when needed to a more profitable business objective, leaving the customer behind. The reflection of needs, behaviours(↘︎Link), mental models(↘︎Link) and customer objectives were always debated in the teams who barely saw any user.

Jira for Designers: Together

Together.

Until very recently, several companies have reported management changes that have led to the transition to an agile organisation. Leaving the room for insights, research product discovery and prototyping, feeding the product line of delivery.  Qualitative and quantitative insights produce the overhead of refactoring the code by defining and prototyping propositions in the design stage.

For some, this still can be seen as a waterfall. Yet, if we step away from the basic delivery model and look at the overall propositions, it’s essentially design transformation. Stage and gate-led Agile delivery(↘︎Link). Products we support are delivered in scrums and in large organisations managed as Scrum of Scrums, which eventually become Scrum at Scale. To support such an initiative, we have co-developed Design at Scale™(↘︎Link). A scalable method for all the teams that scale design proposition across multiple integrated or colocated design teams.

Together, we can guide product owners, scrum masters and other product professionals on how to eloquently integrate design functions without losing the impact on the overall velocity and decrease the refactoring by enabling designers to do their work by using dedesign-mentionedver-engineering methods.

Jira for Designers: Agile Organisation

Agile Organisation 

Understanding that Agile Organizations(↘︎Link) are not run only on agile but predominantly borrowing agility, which is a quick response to change. This allows all parties to manage and proactively seek organisational improvements across business, design, and development while building propositions with evolving resources.

Atlassian Jira helps all agile organisations shape and track the different stages of product design development, regardless of whether they are in one location or co-located around the world. A single master backlog of all epics helps us unify and standardise the outcomes of these co-located teams. Surprisingly, simple Jira automation(↘︎Link) or Jira Management(↘︎Link) allows us to structure and mirror the tasks so that we can see all performing teams in one place against one organisation matrix. 


More importantly, it creates a layer where the design is no longer just a contributor but defines and fosters the advantages of service design in combination with design thinking and prototyping that truly empowers the development.

Jira for Designers: Design Thinking

Design Thinking 

Design thinking has different shapes and forms. Today, we have reported and documented 275 design methods(↘︎Link) that allow design professionals to combine them and come up with a strategic proposition for very specific challenges in a variety of organisations while still achieving an impact on the customer.

Whether we manage service design sprint(↘︎Link), design system sprint(↘︎Link),  design thinking initiative(↘︎Link),  design research(↘︎Link), user research(↘︎Link), customer insights landscape analysis(↘︎Link), or heuristic evaluation(↘︎Link), Jira Atlassian is the backbone of all our tasks that feeds the knowledge base in confluence and co-creating the knowledge for our development teams.

Jira for Designers: Do not Overthink It – Stage and Gate

Do not overthink it or process it – Stage and Gate 

Atlassian Jira often has a bad reputation as an ugly and overcomplicated software where everybody gets lost in the number of tickets, labels, stages, assignments, and other technicalities. Yes, it’s overwhelming if you let it. My advice for design teams and individual designers is to start with a simple Kanban and share the insights and all findings with the engineering lead to achieve transparency between the teams. If you happen to have joined a big development house and you are quite unlikely to get any customised feed for the design, a very simple recommendation will be using the labels for all your tasks so when it comes to finding what you're working on and would impact it makes on your day-to-day delivery you can simply filter by your name and the labels that you have assigned.

For more insights about how to structure and confluence, please follow the link to Design at Scale™ – Community(↘︎Link). Where do we go into great detail about why certain boards are set up in a very specific way and how designers can leverage the power of these two to their and the department's benefits? 

Happy scaling through design!

Hey, I’m Jiri Mocicka.
London-based Design Director, Trusted Advisor and Author of
Design at Scale™. The method that empowers individuals to shape the future organisation through design.
If you have a question, join our Community and reach out to like-minded individuals who scale design propositions. An online Academy can help you to find your feed in teams of 01, 10, and 100, supported by Grid Magazine and Supply section, where we weekly bring more insights on how to become a design leader in your organisation.

EMT

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