Agile technology is the latest product management technique that has recently taken the market by storm. It has managed to supersede its senior competitors such as linear, waterfall development and is now the talk of the hour for all software development companies.
The job of a product manager is to analyze and come up with a product strategy that will maximize the sales. In collaboration with the investors, other stakeholders, they are supposed to come up with a tactic that will ensure that it reaches its goals within a short amount of time. In this case, qualitative and quantitative background research goes into making these product strategies successful. These details regarding a product are organized in a product roadmap and sent to the stakeholders.
Agile technology influences the next few vital steps of a product roadmap.
Main objectives of Agile Technology
- Agile technology values interactions and individual participation over processes and tools performance.
- It prioritizes and puts more faith in the function of the software over comprehensive documentation.
- It values customer participation and customer collaboration over technicalities of contract negotiation.
- Agile technology is flexible in its functionality. Even though it is prompt in its ability to come up with a plan, unlike most technologies it is quick to respond to changes and come up with necessary changes in its initial plans.
Designing via Agile Technology
While designing the user interface through Agile technologies, the designer must perform four different roles to make the most out of it. They are namely; Concept Designer, Product Designer, Design Support, Design Validation.
- Concept Designer- This involves producing a rough structure of the design or framework that the designer makes before the fast-paced sprint cycle of the development process is initiated. Without a rough design in hand, it becomes difficult to run the development process. Oftentimes, the development process runs parallel to the designing process that happens outside of the team. This task involves:
- UX vision is set for the target product
- In order to prepare a rough structure, one needs to research and prototype it.
- Gain insights on the product by working closely with the product manager
- Developing the design system
- Branding the product by identity designing
- Product Designer- The designs should be prepared mostly before the development process begins. In this order of working, the developers will not have to wait for the design to be ready before they begin with the programming.
Often the team schedules their activities in such a manner that the development process begins right after a rough design plan is submitted before the team. This eliminates any chance of delay and makes the work process go smoothly.
- Design Support– Even though designs are made ready before the development process starts, pixels for the designs are never specified. That is why as the implementation process starts, designers need to work closely with the developers to make sure that the designs are modified, and made to look better in order to satisfy any needs that the developers might have. This is where the final touch is given and the final end-product is released only after the designers go through a collaborative process with the designers. This process is often time critical and interrupts the workflow of the developers frequently.
- Design Validation- Once the designs are ready, the final step of this process is to validate them. Design validation can be undertaken through various ways. It can be put through several test runs or released in different work environments to test its effectiveness. Developers, designers, and the product team can work together to figure out the niche of its functionality and accordingly make changes to it. The most effective way of going about this is to release these designs in the wild and later collect feedback on it. Feedback can be collected through surveys, analytics, optimization test features.
These are some of the ways in which designers perform via agile technology.