1.
Agile, Lean & Lean UX
- How to make it all work together!

2.
AMRITA AVIYENTE
Founder/CEO, UX Strategy & Design Lead
Date My Wardrobe
Education
BIT, MS IT, MS HFID (Human Factors
in Information Design)
Work Experience
Software Engineer -> 7+ years at
Fidelity Investments (Boston, MA)
UX Research Associate -> User
Experience Center (Bentley
University, MA)
Passion
Tennis, Cricket, Reading, Traveling
Email: amrita@datemywardrobe.com
Twitter: @amrita_ux
Website: www.AmritaAviyente.com
www.DateMyWardrobe.com

3.
Agenda
Agile
Waterfall
Lean Startup
Lean UX/User Research
Questions?
@amrita_ux

4.
WATERFALL
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4

5.
Waterfall
Sequential steps
[ Analysis -> Design -> Dev -> QA -> UAT -> Prod -> Maint. ]
Tons of documentation
Longer release cycles
Well understood requirements
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Waterfall

6.
Shortcomings
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Waterfall
No Accountability, blame game
Team conflicts
Set meetings
Limited business involvement
Difficult to make changes (sometimes too late)
Work Breakdown Structure (WBS)

7.
AGILE
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8.
Agile
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AGILE
http://agilemanifesto.org/principles.htm
Kent Beck– American SWE (Creator of the XP), TDD (Test Driven Dev)

9.
Waterfall/Agile
Waterfall
A lot of documentation
Sequential
Well Known Req
Infrequent Releases
Agile
Limited documentation
Iterative/Incremental
Req not well known
Frequent Releases
AGILE
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10.
Releases
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AGILE
Release
Week 1 Week 2 Week 3 Week 4
Iteration 1 Iteration 2
Day 1:
Iteration
Kickoff Day 1:
Iteration
Kickoff
Last Day:
Retrospective,
Demo
Last Day:
Retrospective,
Demo

11.
Shortcomings
Learning curve
Stressful releases
Continuous customer involvement is not always easy
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AGILE

12.
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SCRUM

13.
AGILE Scrum
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Agile software development framework for managing
software projects!

14.
WAR Rooms
Best Practices
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AGILE

15.
Small Tracks/Teams
(6-8 people/track: 1 analyst, 1-2 app dev, 1-2 DB dev, 2 Qa)
Best Practices
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AGILE

16.
Daily Scrum
Best Practices
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AGILE

17.
Quiet Time (few hours/day)
Best Practices
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AGILE

18.
Restrospective
Best Practices
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AGILE

19.
Pair Programming
Best Practices
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AGILE

20.
TDD (Test Driven Development)
What worked!
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AGILE

21.
How frequently should you be having a product release?
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Q

22.
… a set of practices & principles
aimed at building, testing and
releasing software faster and more
frequently!
Continuous Delivery
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AGILE

23.
LEAN
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24.
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Merchant
Scenario-Mobile App

25.
Lean Startup Concepts
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LEAN
Lean Manufacturing: originated in Japan with Toyota
Production System
Lean is a set of tools that assist in identification &
elimination of waste. As waste is eliminated, quality
improves and cost is reduced.
Validated Learning – Business plans have a set of
assumptions which must be validated as early as
possible

26.
Lean Startup Concepts
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LEAN
 Customer Development: Exercise you go through to find the
product-market fit
 Get out of the Building (GOOB) – Observe the users in real
environments
 Customer Archetype – based on the data gathered. You
need to validate your assumptions for this customer
 Value Hypothesis – Does the product/service deliver value to
customers
 Growth Hypothesis – Test how new customers will discover
the product/service

27.
Lean Startup Concepts
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LEAN
Build
o Turn ideas into products
Measure
o Get feedback from users
Learn
o Learn if a pivot is needed
Build
Measure
Learn

28.
Minimum Viable Product
(MVP)
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LEAN
Build
o Smallest version to test your hypothesis
o Requires least amount of effort and development time
o Lacks many features
o Prototyping plays an important role in building MVP
Measure
o Get feedback – most importantly – act on it!
Learn
o Learning Milestones

29.
Minimum Viable Product
(MVP)
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LEAN
MVP Rule
o Remove any feature, process, or effort that does not contribute directly to the
learning you seek
Pivot
o Change in course/strategy
o Can lead to more significant growth
o Requires a lot of courage
Post MVP/CMVP
o Decision: Pivot or preserve!
When to Pivot?
o If hypothesis proven to be false, pivot now. Save effort, time and money

30.
Concierge MVP
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LEAN
CMVP (Concierge Minimum Viable Product):
o MVP where you manually guide your user through the solution to
a problem
o Short term solution to help you learn how to solve a customers
problem
o Mainly used for invalidating company’s growth model
o Helps decide when pivot is needed
o Can happen even if initial MVP is successful
o E.g.: Manual delivery of coupons (before building software)

31.
@amrita_ux
Q
How to decide which features to include in MVP?
(Mobile payment app?)

32.
What features to add in MVP (mobile payment app)?
 Merchant App
o Accept Payments through smart phone
 Customer App
o Register
o Add Credit card
o Make Payment
Don’t worry about-
Transaction History (merchant app)
Social Media check-in (consumer app)
Etc.!
Back to Scenario
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33.
How important is quality and design in an MVP?
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Q

34.
Zappos (online shoe retailer)
o Founder Nick Swinmurn
o It is better to observe real customer behavior rather than ask
hypothetical questions
Date My Wardrobe (P2P wardrobe sharing service)
o Started with shoe share service idea
More Lean Examples
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35.
LEAN
MVP
Fail quickly and cheaply on order to succeed
Build-Measure-Learn
Pivot
Don’t wait for the product to be built in order to learn
Observe the customer behavior rather than ask what they
want. Many times they may not know what they want
Lean Startup Recap
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36.
LEAN UX - User Research
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36

37.
Foundations of Lean UX
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LEANUX
LEAN UX
DESIGN
THINKING
AGILE
LEAN STARTUP
PRINCIPLES

38.
Design Thinking
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LEANUX
“Design thinking is a discipline that uses the designer’s
sensibility and methods to match people’s needs with what is
technologically feasible and what a viable business strategy
can convert into customer value and market opportunity”
- Tim Brown (CEO, IDEO)
Take a “people first” approach, imagine desirable solutions
Ideation, prototyping, implementation and learning steps
Solution focused approach to problem solving

39.
Lean Startup/Lean UX
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LEANUX
Build
Product
MeasureData
Learn
Ideas
Think
Make
Check
LEAN STARTUP + UX = LEAN UX
Eric Ries Build-Measure-Learn Feedback loop Think-Make-Check UX Cycle

40.
Role of Prototyping in
Lean UX
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LEANUX
 “Lean UX is where Prototyping shines”
 - Jeff Gothelf (UX Designer and Author-Lean UX:
Applying Lean Principles to Improve User Experience)
 Allows the designer to build the product experience putting in
minimum amount of effort and iterate based on feedback.
 Choose the right tool for prototyping based on what is to be
learned from the MVP
Fidelity Tool
Paper Prototype Paper
Clickable Wireframes – Low OmniGraffle, MS Visio
Medium Axure RP, Adobe Illustrator
High Code

41.
What are the similarities/differences between UCD (User
Centered Design) and LeanUX?
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Q

42.
UCD/Lean UX
UCD
Learn from users
No Agile concepts
No Validating Hypothesis
No way to measure design
outcomes
LeanUX
Learn from users
+ Agile concepts
Validating Hypothesis
Measure design outcomes
LEANUX
@amrita_ux
Lean UX = UCD + agile + lean

43.
Lean UX/AgileLEANUX
@amrita_ux Lean UX is Agile
Cross Functional Teams
o Developers, designers, product owners work together
o Greater accountability + faster design process
Limited Documentation
o Enough to communicate the design
o Since requirements may change, easier to manage
documentation

44.
Traditional/Agile/Lean
UX
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LEANUX

45.
LEAN UX is Data Driven
Don’t assume that a new design/feature is better than what
came before
Test Everything
You can’t learn if you don’t measure!
Example – Facebook registration process
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LEANUX

46.
LEANUX
Lean UX
o Look at a product as a set of hypothesis (rather than a set of
features)
o Lean UX is not about adding features. It is about
understanding customers problems and validating if you are
correct.
Validate
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IDEA DESIGN
PRODUC
T
Validate Validate

47.
LEANUX
Landing Page Test – Have a landing page
• Signup button (e.g. to get an early signup)
o Tool: Launchrock
o Drive traffic using AdWords, Facebook Ads
Show people real product (or close!)
o User Interviews
User Research for
Validation
@amrita_ux

48.
LEANUX
When
o Great to understand detailed motivations towards a particular design
o Conversation needed (not finite answers)
o Environment independent
o A few users available
Structure
o Structured (closed questions), Unstructured (open-ended Q), Semi-structured
(mix of both)
Facilitator Tips
o Interact informally (to keep it comfortable)
o Observe the user
o Let the user think (silence is acceptable)
o Come back on track if user distracted
o Use mod guide (moderator’s guide) as a guide (not a rule)
o Restate when necessary
User Research -
Interviews
@amrita_ux

49.
LEANUX
What is important?
o Contradictory info to your research
o What frustrates the user
o Feedback on design and future ideas
Note: watch for body language
Remote?
o Acceptable if environment doesn't play a role
o Tool: Facetime, Skype, Hangouts, Webex
User interviews are a great way to incorporate user insights into
the product/service requirements
Interviews
@amrita_ux

50.
What
o Surveys for large amounts of data
o Can be administered online or offline
o Can be complex (based on how many results you get)
o Good way to observe trends
o Iterative - Good to get survey reviewed by someone
o It’s OK to pilot the survey with smaller set of users
When to use?
o Answers are finite (conversation not required)
o Large amounts of data needed
User Research - Surveys
@amrita_ux
LEANUX

51.
LEANUX
How?
o Write clearly, focus on data needed from users
o Whether MCQ format or free text responses are needed
Tools
o Web-based (Survey Monkey), emails, paper based
Format
o < 5 minutes, set expectations
o Include subject of survey, purpose and your contact information
o Better to have multiple surveys of smaller length than have one
long survey
Surveys
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52.
LEANUX
What?
o Study of a person or a group through OBSERVATION
o Information is recorded from different vantage points
o Minimal or no interaction, focus on observation. Can have follow-
up interaction
When?
o Complex domain
o Study the real environment
Look for?
o Terminology (new), frustrations, inefficiencies, challenges
User Research -
Ethnography
@amrita_ux

53.
LEANUX
If your product/service doesn’t have any competitors, go do more
research!
 Competitor Testing
o Run a usability test for a competitor product/service (alone or with
your product)
o You are not fixing their mistakes. Make sure you don’t make them.
 Landing Page Goal – To convert visitors to users
o A/B test – to see which landing page is doing best
o fivesecondtest.com – To get feedback on your landing page.
 Focus on Branding, Messaging & Call To Action
 Never give a guided tour to the user during testing (e.g. while
showing a prototype)
User Research
@amrita_ux

54.
Lean UX Recap
Lean UX
o Lean UX is about validating hypothesis
o Lean UX is User Centered
o Lean UX is Agile
o Lean UX is Data Driven – Think of Metrics
o Lean UX fast and cheap (sometimes) –Think of Waste
o Lean UX is Iterative (always) – Think of MVP
User Research
o Interviews
o Surveys
o Ethnography
@amrita_ux
LEANUX

55.
LEANUX NYC 2013LEANUX
@amrita_ux
 “There are no best practices for Lean UX. We are dealing with unknown unknowns.
The land of innovation -Will Evans (Director-
UX, TLCLabs)
 Don’t listen to users, instead watch their behavior
- Tomer Sharon (Author, “It’s Our Research”, Sr. UX
Researcher, Google)
 Your user is a person. Treat them like one! (Use natural language)
-Bill Beard – Creative Director of Copy (TheLadders)
 Designers are expected to be perfect all the time. And agile doesn’t work that way.
Designers must adopt a sustainable pace (instead of coping with Agile)
- Jonathan Berger -
Designer/Developer (Pivotal Labs)
 Nothing kills a new idea faster than common sense
- Luke Williams (Exec Director, Berkley Center for Entrepreneurship
and Innovation)
 Good UX = Good Business

56.
@amrita_ux
Agile/Le
an/Lean
UX Q’s?

57.
AMRITA AVIYENTE
Founder/CEO, UX Strategy & Design Lead
Date My Wardrobe
Thank You!
Email: amrita@datemywardrobe.com
Twitter: @amrita_ux
Website: www.amritaaviyente.com
www.datemywardrobe.com