Lean UX & Agile: Study Guide

This study guide covers how to work through many of the challenges UX practitioners face when working in Agile. Perhaps you’re struggling to understand how UX fits in Agile or to decide when to do research and design each sprint. Maybe you’re finding it difficult to do any user research at all or feeling pulled in too many directions to do UX work effectively.

Agile can be tricky for everyone, especially UX. We often have to adapt how we work and help others understand how we fit and contribute. The goal of this study guide is to provide tangible tools and tips to make the adaptation process clear and easy.

Waterfall vs. Agile vs. Lean

Before transitioning to Agile, many organizations worked in the old Waterfall model of product development. Lean and Agile are quite different and it’s important to understand each process’s unique focus as it impacts how to approach UX work: 

• Waterfall: Phases of work flowing in sequence toward project completion
• Agile: Collaboration and embracing change are more important than following a plan
• Lean: Maximizing user value through continuous experimentation and removing waste 

Common Agile Frameworks

Agile frameworks aim to structure and organize the process. Common Agile frameworks include:

• Scrum: A lightweight framework that helps people, teams, and organizations generate value through adaptive solutions to complex problems
• SAFe: A set of organizational and workflow patterns for implementing Agile practices at an enterprise-level scale
• Kanban: A visual system for managing work as it moves through a process at the individual, team, or organization level
• Jobs-to-be-done: A framework based on broadly understanding the user’s goal, or “job,” and the needs leading the user to “hire” a product to complete the job

This study guide is agnostic to framework and applies to the many different approaches of Agile. Review the full guide or skip to the sections most relevant to you:

• Discovery and User Research in Agile
• Lean Methods for Ideating and Defining Solutions
• UX Work in the Product Backlog
• Sprinting Through Iterative Design and Delivery
• Retrospectives for Reflection and Improvement
• Making Agile More Manageable

Discovery and User Research in Agile

One of the biggest challenges of working in Agile is finding time to conduct user research. Whether in sprint 0 or during discovery, practitioners often face tension when advocating for the time to understand users’ problems, needs, and opportunities, before ideating solutions.  The articles and videos in this section help with research advocacy and execution in Agile.

Lean Methods for Ideating and Defining Solutions

After conducting research, Agile teams can move much faster with a clearer understanding of ideas and solutions that will meet users’ needs and business goals. Rather than relying on heavy requirements to define and outline solutions, use the leaner alternatives in this section to save time and narrow your team’s focus.  

UX Work in the Product Backlog

As solutions are defined and refined, include design and additional research in the product backlog, right alongside engineering work. If UX work isn’t included, the following issues can arise:

• More-detailed design or research is skipped over.
• UX is overloaded with work.
• The team is unable to manage time.
• UX people feel siloed and less like a part of the team.
• There is no visibility for UX work, dependencies, and what’s next.

Use the resources in this section to find a suitable model for incorporating UX work in the product backlog.

Sprinting Through Iterative Design and Delivery

Lean and Agile are all about collaborative design and the team’s full involvement in the process, including in Scrum events. This process keeps communication open and avoids waste and technical or UX debt. When sprinting through iterative design and delivery, choose approaches that are best suited to the time available and the tasks at hand. Use the resources in this section to focus on the outcome, not on a perfect output.

Retrospectives for Reflection and Improvement

Teams can’t continually improve without reflecting back on what went well during the last sprint, what didn’t go well, and what to do next time to get better. Retrospectives offer a dedicated time for Agile teams to decide what to improve, abandon, or do differently. Use the resources in this section to keep retrospectives recurring and productive.

Making Agile More Manageable

Despite the challenges that come with Lean UX & Agile, there are ways to succeed and thrive on an Agile team. Use this section to navigate issues and establish yourself as a critical partner.

For more in-depth understanding on how UX fits into Lean and Agile ways of working and tangible practices for navigating challenges, take our full-day course, Lean UX & Agile at the UX Conference. Or, explore our research report, Effective Agile UX Product Development.