By Julien Thomas, Glassworks
If prototyping isn’t your default approach to Agile software development you are looking at it the wrong way.
It’s not the step you use in your process to get more clarity about the already-planned feature set for the next release. Nor should it be a chance to compare different approaches to the UI. And don’t be put off from prototyping unrefined features in the worry that they will disappoint your user base or that they are not quite ready to pass through all of your stringent tests.
The essence of Agile is about exploring and iterating based upon feedback. Experimenting to find ways to help the business solve their problems; exploring approaches and feedback to see what works. Prototyping is a fantastic tool to help us do that.
Users need a real hands on experience to find out if a new feature is useful and easy to use, a design is not enough. The best prototypers have mastered the art of building a prototype instead of wireframes at no extra cost; take a look at the work of Todd Zaki Warfel who has been perfecting the art for a while now.
There is a time and place for refining and polishing and it’s when we have identified valid features that have already been used by our community and proven to provide value. We need to be really disciplined about when to refine, otherwise we won’t get the chance to truly prototype, we won’t get the chance to get the rich feedback we need from our users.
I am a great fan of the Agile February Revolution and one of the statements in there is “Teams decide what to do next based on immediate and direct feedback from the use of their work”, it goes on to say, “..by ensuring that the feedback loop includes actual use of the deliverables, and finding ways to make it direct and immediate, organisations can leverage iterative delivery much better.”
Prototyping isn’t about perfecting the perfect idea. The more times you build something and get feedback and build again the better your design will be. Getting it wrong often will mean you will probably get it right.
Prototyping is a key tool in the exploration process that is at the heart of Agile - it helps us find the aspects that our users want and saves us from falling into the usual trap of building unwanted and wasteful features and gives us back all the time we may have spent of refining useless features.
If prototyping isn’t your default approach to Agile software development you are looking at it the wrong way.
It’s not the step you use in your process to get more clarity about the already-planned feature set for the next release. Nor should it be a chance to compare different approaches to the UI. And don’t be put off from prototyping unrefined features in the worry that they will disappoint your user base or that they are not quite ready to pass through all of your stringent tests.
The essence of Agile is about exploring and iterating based upon feedback. Experimenting to find ways to help the business solve their problems; exploring approaches and feedback to see what works. Prototyping is a fantastic tool to help us do that.
Users need a real hands on experience to find out if a new feature is useful and easy to use, a design is not enough. The best prototypers have mastered the art of building a prototype instead of wireframes at no extra cost; take a look at the work of Todd Zaki Warfel who has been perfecting the art for a while now.
There is a time and place for refining and polishing and it’s when we have identified valid features that have already been used by our community and proven to provide value. We need to be really disciplined about when to refine, otherwise we won’t get the chance to truly prototype, we won’t get the chance to get the rich feedback we need from our users.
I am a great fan of the Agile February Revolution and one of the statements in there is “Teams decide what to do next based on immediate and direct feedback from the use of their work”, it goes on to say, “..by ensuring that the feedback loop includes actual use of the deliverables, and finding ways to make it direct and immediate, organisations can leverage iterative delivery much better.”
Prototyping isn’t about perfecting the perfect idea. The more times you build something and get feedback and build again the better your design will be. Getting it wrong often will mean you will probably get it right.
Prototyping is a key tool in the exploration process that is at the heart of Agile - it helps us find the aspects that our users want and saves us from falling into the usual trap of building unwanted and wasteful features and gives us back all the time we may have spent of refining useless features.