(November 2008) Agility and User Experience: The Final Frontier
Posted: October 17th, 2008 | Author: Robert Barlow-Busch | Filed under: Events | Tags: agile, ux | 6 Comments »Thursday November 20, 2008
5:30 to 7:00 pm
Accelerator Centre
Meeting Room #2
295 Hagey Blvd., Waterloo
[Map]
Last year, at our 7-Minute Soapbox event, Declan Whelan gave one of the night’s most popular presentations, titled “Tips for integrating user experience and agile development” (if you missed the event, check out the video here). We’re happy to announce that in November, Declan will be exploring this topic far beyond a 7-minute time limit. So if you enjoyed his earlier teaser, be sure to join us next month!
Event description
These are the voyages of star-struck UX’ers. Our mission: To explore strange new worlds. To seek out new ways to meld UX practices and agile development. To boldly go where no UX’er has gone before.
Well, perhaps a tad over-stated. But as agile development crosses the chasm and becomes mainstream in many organizations, there are significant challenges to putting in place effective user experience practices.
Declan Whelan will provide an overview of agile principles and practices, highlighting the potential dissonance that can arise when they’re combined with traditional UX methods. He will then draw on practices used by UX professionals on agile teams to show how these challenges can be overcome. Be prepared to rethink what you currently do to provide a leaner, more iterative approach that will deliver incremental value to stakeholders and users.
We’ll have plenty of time for discussions. So whether you are currently doing UX on an agile team, just testing the waters, or trembling in the face of working with agile teams, come on out. It is indeed a bold new frontier!
About the speaker
Declan Whelan is an active software developer and agile coach. He is also a professional engineer with twenty-five years of experience in a wide range of software industries including the financial, medical, educational, and manufacturing sectors. He has started three technology companies and has consulted with many other technology organizations in Canada.
Declan is a certified Scrum Master and a member of the IEEE Computer Society, Agile Alliance, and Scrum Alliance. His focus is on working in the trenches with teams to deliver better software value, quality, and time-to-market through agile principles and practices.
Another good source for understanding usability within agile is Alan Cooper’s keynote from Agile 2008. I blogged about this after the conference and added my take on it (having spent 5+ years in that space).
Hi there,
Just letting you know I’ve tried joining the mailing list more than once and never got any response. Checked my junk mail and didn’t find anything there either. Help?
Thanks,
Erica
@erica – Sorry about the mailing list, Erica. I’ve just added you. FYI to everyone that our signup process will change next month. Details coming soon.
Hey Bob, I took some quick notes during tonight’s activity, can email them to you later tonight so you have something to post if you like? You can always flesh it out more as you like and add more context then my quick scribbled notes?
@erica – Very generous of you! Sure thing, I’m sure people would appreciate the resource. If you’d like to email your notes to us at uxgroup@gmail.com, I’ll get ’em online.
Thanks for joining us at last-night’s full-house event!
Hey Bob,
Just thought I’d let you know I sent the email that evening. Wondered if my email was lost or screwing up, as another person tells me they lost my email as well. Possibly it went in the junk folder since there was an attachment?
In the meantime, looking forward to the next event!!