❧ Describe, in your own words

No easy answers in this article describing how TheLadders.com integrated UX into a new Agile development process. I admire how candid they are about sharing their failures and I’m glad they ultimately found something that works for them, but… wow. The whole experience sounds absolutely miserable. I wonder who they lost along the way.

Despite all of this upfront research, preparation, conversation, and insight, our first attempt at integrating UX into Agile yielded the diagram below. This was created by the UX team after a UX-only retrospective where we detailed all the challenges we were facing in this new world. All paths in the flow lead to the center of the diagram reading “[agile] creates a NEGATIVE ENVIRONMENT that FOSTERS FAILURE and generates LOW MORALE.” It is safe to say our first attempt was a failure.