The agile-design dilemma

Soon after we started our agile journey, I began noticing an almost cherry-picked variant of Scrum. Our teams were picking and choosing the parts of the process to follow while ignoring critical mechanisms intended to work together. We were stuck in a cycle of using the same tools repetitively, regardless of whether they were the right fit for the task at hand. Design was often an afterthought, squeezed into sprints without proper consideration or time allocation.

This approach led to frustrated product teams and product owners alongside leadership that felt constantly behind schedule. It was clear that we needed a change.

Reimagining scrum and design integration

To address these challenges, we embarked on a journey to re-implement Scrum in its truest form while simultaneously integrating design methods within our process. We started with education and shifting mindsets. We started by educating our entire team about the value of design in the agile process. And while our team already recognized design’s value, we emphasized that design isn’t just about making things look pretty; it’s about solving problems and creating intentional experiences that benefit users, just as Scrum benefits us by supporting our delivery of those experiences.

In terms of Scrum, we followed a strong Scrum cadence, requiring all participants to participate where required–not just some people some of the time. This ensured our delivery process was wholly intact.

And with that strong foundation, we were able to introduce design-focused activities into our sprints. For example, the introduction of design jams as a precursor to deeper design or development work. The team was passionate and full of ideas, and needed an outlet to express those ideas together; as opposed to filling Scrum ceremonies with discussions outside the event’s main intent. The theory of design jams spurred from the team’s shared knowledge of design thinking methodology.

We found great success with introducing design jams. While not only allowing the team to explore and validate ideas quickly before committing to full development cycles, it also generated positive feedback directly from the product owner and elevated the team’s camaraderie (bonus!). The team was already familiar with concepts like story mapping, flows, and prototyping; however the design jams were an additional tool in our box, which in our Scrum environment was leveraged more often than not.

With the concept of co-creation, the entire development team now felt as if they had a stake in the design process. Just as design was leveraged for development activities where possible. We began shifting towards a dynamic that treated design not as a one-time phase, but integrated design methods and skills throughout the entire development process.

The right tool, at the right time

One of the key themes I want to spotlight is the importance of using the right tools at the right time. In this story’s example, our team moved away from a one-size-fits-all approach, and instead adopted a flexible toolkit that the whole product team could leverage:

• For early ideation: Design jams and whiteboarding flows

• For user research: Interview guides and surveying

• For prototyping: Rapid wireframing for quick iterations and user testing

By choosing the appropriate tools for each stage of the process, we were able to work more efficiently and effectively as a full product team.

Harmonious results

The results of our efforts have been nothing short of remarkable. We shifted from a developer-based culture to one that shared common principles regardless of craft. Design is now seamlessly integrated into our Scrum process, with design actively participating in all aspects of product development. Our product owner, users, and leadership have noticed the difference in our velocity and delivery, with satisfaction increasing significantly since we implemented these changes. Our development team now works together more harmoniously, with a shared understanding of each other’s roles and value.

Our journey has shown that Scrum and design are not mutually exclusive, but in fact, they’re better together. By reimagining our approach to agile delivery and embracing design as an equally shared part of the process, we’ve created a more efficient, effective, and user-centered product development cycle.

When I first started my own agile journey, I had a hard time thinking outside of the sometimes more rigid design box we all were trained in. And just as most things in life, it’s about balance. It’s about adapting your way to allow design and development to work in harmony, always keeping the user at the center of it all.

There have been a few consistent challenges across the multiple teams I’ve organized and managed. In today’s world, talent exists all over the globe, which means our team members do as well. Geographically dispersed, multidisciplinary teams hold immense power when their talents combine. But how do we prevent a disconnected community? And how do we ensure that leadership gains visibility into the team and what they produce? While each team was, of course, unique in what it faced and how it ultimately succeeded, these challenges consistently appeared.

Start with the basics

The concept of building an effective, confident, powerful team meant–for us–moving from a decentralized environment to one that fosters a central connection. The teams I’ve shaped were looking for focus while balancing a sense of belonging. The big idea being one that blended the idea of system and operation with the vibrant support of a cross-discipline community. I’m a firm believer that everything in life is about balance–whether personal or professional. And in the case here, I knew that we had the right ingredients, we just needed to put them together in a way that worked for the collective team.

We started with the basics, something tangible that we all could rally around. The focus set on building an operational foundation. One example of that being a combination of design playbook development, kanban boards, and team rituals (or some might call them ceremonies). In all of my experiences, I could summarize how we approached this through the following three areas:

1. Creating a shared methodology of how we approach our work, from intake through delivery.

2. Sharing the value we’re creating and exposing that progress to each other as well as leaders, all in an effort to drive ownership and provide visibility across teammates and the broader organization.

3. Developing routine behaviors that support not only the value we’re creating every day, but also our community of practitioners.

There’s no community without culture

The culture of community inherently supports and pushes the limits of what we can do on our own. I wholeheartedly believe that we’re stronger together than we are as individuals. And I always strive to make that evident by showcasing how teammates work together in harmony, whether delivering on a shared program or cross-collaborating during our ceremonies. A typical snapshot of ceremonies has looked like:

1. Weekly design syncs, where team members meet to kick off each week and align on current priorities.

2. Weekly design critiques, giving teammates an opportunity to collect feedback and drive consistency in our delivery.

3. Asynchronous collaboration through team channels and threads.

4. Monthly organization team syncs, which focused on cross-team dynamics and learnings.

5. Quarterly retrospectives, where teammates could share openly and freely about what’s working and what wasn’t.

I’ve used similar formats with other teams based on the team’s primary directive. In all my experiences, I’ve found this format to be successful in creating both a shared and individual sense of accountability while also ensuring the team’s culture doesn’t fall away in service of delivery. When approaching these team dynamics with a creative mind, the idea of balance continues to percolate with persistence.

Empowering = Leading

Which leads me to briefly touch on how I view the future of work. The last main theme I’ve found to be vital in any team–or for that matter, any person’s success–is empowerment. Empowering a designer, an advisee, or a teammate has a profound impact on the future of their craft. Empowerment is a catalyst for greatness. Teams and contributors should be empowered to make decisions, not simply for the sake of moving fast and getting things done, which of course speed is an effect here, but empowerment leads to many other positive components to a successful working environment. Trust, integrity, impact–to name a few. As a team works together in an empowered environment, they’ll further their connections in cross-collaboration, skill sharing, and both giving and receiving feedback. I find it to be vital that a team be empowered to further cement trust within the organization.

While this is only a summary–albeit a brief one–of how I’ve found success building united teams, this serves as a glimpse into the making of modern teams. While simplified, I do believe that happy designers (or creators in general) can create their best work in environments where there’s intention, connection, and empowerment.

Process ≠ Prescription

Designers within the teams I’ve worked on have regularly requested guidance. Generally, that guidance has looked like one of two things: a process, a methodology, a playbook; or a template for a designer to follow. But once those designers have that playbook or a template, they’ve typically succumbed to it. Primarily in that they view the process as a prescription, allowing for little freedom of thought and creativity. And then pair this with an environment where tools and methods could be akin to, comparatively speaking, the Wild West. Meaning that designers had free choice in what tools or methods they used in any given situation. When designers moved on from one effort to the next, their toolset and the direction of said toolset would change based on their lead. We now have a cycle that’s setting no one up for success.

This challenge led me to developing a standard for the team which I had influence over. I began with the idea of mixing together simplicity and support. With the amount of noise and sheer quantity of tools, technologies, methods, practices–you name it–I saw the need to narrow the scope of what we used and how we used it. And to underscore the simplified toolbox, there was a need for a supportive approach in coaching its use. (Read more on empowerment)

Share a common way of working

We started this journey by creating a design flow. This flow is generally what we all know within the design community and goes by many names and flavors. For the sake of this discussion, I’ll reference the 5Ds: discover, describe, design, develop, and deploy.

This flow was also supported by the introduction of the design brief, where designers would gain a shared understanding and vision of the effort. Given the environment we’re in was a development-centric one, we opted for a design process that explicitly incorporated those phases of work in an effort to better represent the element of time within the process of creation. This also lended itself to the idea of supporting a lean UX process and the practice of Scrum on our development teams. (Read more on agility)

Leverage a toolbox

With the idea of an expected flow laid out, we also needed to curate the right tools and how best to use them. Through our journey, we’ve used a broad set of the expected tools we all know. From Sketch and InVision, to Adobe XD, finally landing on Figma. For our team, as we progressed through tools over the years, we’ve found that Figma—with its consistency and its regular feature updates—is the tool that can support our developer-friendly flow.

In addition to Figma, we developed file recommendations, which included elements such as file organization, layouts, documentation samples, and tips for collecting and managing feedback.

The right tool for the right moment

Now I could talk all day and get in the weeds about the foundation toolset we curated, but what I’ve found to be more impactful is the idea that the most successful designers not only have the right tools but, more importantly, know the right tool to use at the right time. With a simplified toolbox, designers aren’t hindered with the paradox of choice and can focus their attention on the challenge versus the means to the end. And when paired with coaching and a supportive environment (read more on empowerment), designers have the potential to do their best work and co-own that success with their teammates.

At the end of the day, supporting designers with an intentionally focused toolbox and a supportive process, we can create the building blocks for confident designers, powerful teams, and more successful products.