Determinants for Successful Agile Collaboration between UX Designers and Software Developers in a Complex Organisation

Agile and User-centered design processes have been reported to frequently putting contradictory demands on people working within these methodological frameworks. The current research addresses this point by focussing on the crucial relationship between software developer and designer. An online survey, a contextual inquiry, and a diary study were employed with 107 developers and designers in a large media organization to determine the factors for success in agile development cycles. The results from the survey show that while developers and designers have similar levels of satisfaction with agile processes, there are differences in the factors predicting those ratings. Developers are happier with the wider teamwork but want more access to and close collaboration with designers, while the latters’ concern was the quality of the wider teamwork. Additional contextual inquiries and a diary study with pairs of designers and developers reflected the survey findings that close cooperation (and proximity) was essential for improving communication, reducing inefficiencies, and avoiding suboptimal products being released. However, organizational processes, the setup of the work environment, and managerial traditions meant that this close collaboration and localized decision-making was found difficult to maintain. Results from the survey, the contextual inquiry, and the diary study found six factors for success from collaborations emerged

Factors for successful Agile collaboration between UX designers and software developers in a complex organisation

User Centred Design (UCD) and Agile Software Development (ASD) processes have been two extremely successful methods for software development in recent years. However, both have been repeatedly described as frequently putting contradictory demands on people working with the respective processes. The current research addresses this point by focussing on the crucial relationship between a User Experience (UX) designer and a software developer. In-depth interviews, an online survey, a contextual inquiry and a diary study are described from a sample of over 100 designers, developers and their stakeholders (managers) in a large media organisation exploring factors for success in Agile development cycles. The findings from the survey show that organisational separation is challenge for agile collaboration between the two roles and while designers and developers have similar levels of (moderately positive) satisfaction with Agile processes, there are differences between the two roles. While developers are happier with the wider teamwork but want more access to and close collaboration with designers, particularly in an environment set up for Agile practices, the designers’ concern was the quality of the wider teamwork. The respondent’s comments also identified that the two roles saw a close – and ideally co-located – cooperation as essential for improving communication, reducing inefficiencies, and avoiding bad products being released. These results reflected the findings from the in-depth interviews with stakeholders. In particular, it was perceived that co-located pairing helped understanding different role-dependent demands and skills, increased efficiency of prototyping and implementing changes, and enabling localised decision-making. However, organisational processes, the setup of work-environment, and managerial traditions meant that this close collaboration and localised decision-making was often not possible to maintain over extended periods. Despite this, the studies conducted between pairs of designers and developers, found that successful collaboration between designers and developers can be found in a complex organisational setting. From the analysis of the empirical studies, six contributing factors emerged that support this. These factors are 1) Close proximity, 2) Early and frequent communication, 3) Shared ideation and problem solving, 4) Crossover of knowledge and skills, 5) Co-creation and prototyping and 6) Making joint decisions. These factors are crucially determined and empowered by the support from the organisational setting and 3 teams where practitioners work. Specifically, by overcoming key challenges to enable integration between UCD and ASD and thus encouraging close collaboration between UX designers and software developers, these challenges are: 1) Organisational structure and team culture, 2) Location and environmental setup and 3) Decision-making. These challenges along with the six factors that enable successful Agile collaboration between designers and developers provide the main contributions of this research. These contributions can be applied within large complex organisations by adopting the suggested ‘Paired Collaboration Manifesto’ to improve the integration between UCD and ASD. Beyond this, more empirical studies can take place, further extending improvements to the collaborative practices between the design and development roles and their surrounding teams

Agile UX: Unifying design and engineering for optimal product development workflows

Digital products, ranging from mobile to desktop applications, from platforms to websites, have become extremely prominent in our everyday life. Their role in tackling real-life challenges is huge, and their place in the modern industry is central. Actually, the rise of digital products is only at its outset, and will be exponential in the next coming years and decades. In the conceptualization and developement of digital products come two major disciplines, among others, into play; UX design and software engineering. In order to deliver great quality products, addressing people’s needs, fulfilling businesses’ objectives, while providing users with a delightful overall experience, optimal work and collaboration between UX designers and software engineers need to happen in the background. Nonetheless, issues and challenges between the design and engineering ways of working are many, regardless of the context. Agile UX, a modern and rising approach to product development, is seen as a potential solution to alleviate these challenges. In a nutshell, Agile UX aims at unifying Agiles software development (ASD), the dominant software engineering approach and philosophy, and UX design (UX) processes and practices, in order to optimise workflows between designers and developers. This thesis reveals exisiting gaps with the Agile UX approach and current Agile UX frameworks, preventing them to truly be actionable in the industry, and therefore to be a practical solution for reconciling design and engineering in product development. These gaps are adressed here through an empirical study looking at understanding the wide array of contexts of the industry and their specificities. This thesis research is a two phases study of the Agile UX modern approach to digital product development. The first phase assembles extensive literature and Web content reviews in order to investigate and map the challenges between design and engineering, and understanding to what extent is Agile UX a solution to alleviating those challenges. The main findings of this first phase highlight the aforementioned gaps of the Agile UX approach. Agile UX is indeed a solution to reconciling UX design and software enginnering, but it lacks of clear guidelines and attention to contextuality, preventing it to be trully actionable. Agile UX as it is defined today also has very little considerations on the evolution of the UX design and software engineering disciplines, and fails at anticipating the future of digital products. Based on these insights, the second phase of the thesis brings up qualitative insights from industry practitioners, including UX designers, software engineers, managers and leaders, in order to address the limitations of the Agile UX approach. This second phase encapsulates the main objective of this thesis; understanding how to contextually adopt an Agile UX approach to product development. The findings of this thesis highlight the diversity of the industry and the uniqueness of each product development context. The design-engineering relationship varies a lot across organisations, and many contextual facets impact on the ways processes and collaboration practices are defined. Common trends have been highlighted, as well as numerous divergence points. Clear signs show that Agile UX is spreading in the industry already, but quite inequally. At the same time, Agile UX seems to align with the future trends of product development. In addition to the extensive findings, this research concludes with the draft proposition of a methodology. This could be the first building step towards a more developed solution, aiming at supporting teams wishing to optimising their product development workflows, throught Agile UX

Aligning UX designers and UI developers work with design systems

There is a lot of evidence of a significant gap between design and development processes and applied approaches. However, applied together, they form the nowadays’ reality of the UI creation. At the same time, design systems — a relatively new concept emerged in the industry — affects the workflows of designers and developers. It is meant to ensure the implementation of designs and guide the teams through multidisciplinary collaboration. The aim of this thesis was to study the role of design systems (as an approach and as an artefact) for the UI creation. This research specifically focuses on the alignment between UX interface designers and UI software developers and the impact of design systems on that process. The results of the research illustrate the new workflow practicing by the design-and-development teams, describe in detail the impact of design systems on the sub-processes of this workflow, and show that using design systems as a part of the software creation process brings the projects and organizations to the highest levels of maturity according to CMMI-DEV representation. These results have both scientific and practical meanings. Using design systems is recommended to speed up the design-and-development process and enhance the maturity level of this process and the organization

Introducing User-Centred Design: a Longitudinal Study of a Healthcare Informatics Organisation

Information System designers report increasing difficulties applying User-Centred Design (UCD) techniques effectively due to the growing complexity of the domains in which they work and the techniques’ prescriptive nature. The rapid growth of “Big Data” and associated analytical tools thus demands closer investigation of UCD activities and processes within the complex and rapidly-changing work domains in which they are designed, developed and used. This thesis reports a longitudinal case study from inside a commercial organisation, through a six-year Action Research collaboration to introduce and embed UCD techniques in the design of health informatics tools in the UK. An assessment of the initial modus operandi is followed by the development of personas with data from interviews, user-generated screen captures and database server log files; these informed the redesign, evaluation and testing of the organisation’s flagship product. Finally, stakeholder interviews explore the wider impact of UCD techniques. In so doing, this thesis shows the value of auto-ethnographic documentation, based on being embedded in a design team and collaborative reflection, for practice-led research; it found the organisation’s culture around UCD was dynamic and design practices can change this culture through, for example, training opportunities and fostering customer relations. Individuals and extrinsic factors played strikingly key roles in reshaping the organisation’s culture; the commitment and resilience of individuals was important for sustaining UCD activities across several reorganisations and changes in business strategy. Finally, this thesis comprehensively presents and evaluates an innovative approach for grounding personas in database server and user-generated content. These findings concern both research and practice by informing the scope of the designer’s role, educational programmes and Action Research collaborations. They call for further attention on the compatibility of design and development processes and suggest that design practice can not only be tailored to organisations, but organisations can be fitted to design practice with the reassessment of the value of some UCD activities. Finally, this thesis can inform approaches to practice-led research, and more effective and efficient strategies for the introduction of UCD techniques to other organisations from the base of their hierarchy

Spaces of working in modern software organisations

The growing use of digital media in the workplace is shifting work to digital platforms, whilst digital working is often seen to be replacing office-based work practices. This study captures the opposite. It explores the appropriation of features of both physical and digital environments by collocated software development teams in a multinational IT company. These environments are designed in isolation, yet they become integrated in practice by employees. This study is positioned within the information systems literature as a step to address the gap on digital work and understand the essential role played by the physical environment in the usage and appropriation of digital tools in modern organisations. It posits a view of space as constantly in the making through sociospatial practices. It empirically demonstrates that the physical environment is not only integral to work practices and deeply entangled with digital interactions and activities, but space emerges as a result of a mutual shaping, where physical and digital coexist in tightly woven symbiotic form. In this manner, this study extends existing knowledge through four novel concepts including a combined theorisation to understand how work is performed in modern digital organisations: (a) spatial work practices extend the concept of spatial practices (de Certeau 1984) as they are intrinsically attached to work activities. They are responsible for the creation and the dismantling of (b) physical-digital assemblages, which conceptualise and explain how actors combine and configure elements from the physical environment and digital technologies to create (c) spatialities, as planned spatial effects to influence the way in which work activities are performed. These concepts are integrated through the emergent framework of (d) crafted workspaces, which enables the theorisation of new types of organisational space that transcend traditional dichotomous notions of physical or digital. This research thus responds to recent calls for a ‘spatial turn’ in organisational studies and information systems literature, enabling modern working practices to be understood and effectively integrated into modern organisations, whilst in turn calling for greater attention to space as a performative and constitutive element of digital work in information systems research

INTERACT 2015 Adjunct Proceedings. 15th IFIP TC.13 International Conference on Human-Computer Interaction 14-18 September 2015, Bamberg, Germany

INTERACT is among the world’s top conferences in Human-Computer Interaction. Starting with the first INTERACT conference in 1990, this conference series has been organised under the aegis of the Technical Committee 13 on Human-Computer Interaction of the UNESCO International Federation for Information Processing (IFIP). This committee aims at developing the science and technology of the interaction between humans and computing devices. The 15th IFIP TC.13 International Conference on Human-Computer Interaction - INTERACT 2015 took place from 14 to 18 September 2015 in Bamberg, Germany. The theme of INTERACT 2015 was "Connection.Tradition.Innovation". This volume presents the Adjunct Proceedings - it contains the position papers for the students of the Doctoral Consortium as well as the position papers of the participants of the various workshops

Implementing accessibility in digital services

Digital accessibility has recently gotten more awareness thanks to the EU accessibility directive (Directive (EU) 2016/2102) and Finnish accessibility law (Laki digitaalisten palvelujen tarjoamisesta 306/2019) which require public and certain private organizations to make sure their digital services follow WCAG guidelines for digital accessibility. This has created a need for accessibility awareness and skills. Many organizations are still finding ways to work with the requirements, and the focus has largely been on making the current services accessible. For this thesis, 13 semi-structured interviews were conducted with working professionals who have worked on projects that include accessibility implementation. In addition, a literature review was conducted to find the consensus in existing research. The grounded theory –method was used to discover main motivators and key factors that influence accessibility implementation in organizations. This research provides practical suggestions on how accessibility implementation in digital services can be improved and supported by organizations. Based on the findings, a recommendation is made to adopt a more strategic approach with accessibility. Accessibility should be included in the company’s product and service development processes from the beginning. This can produce many benefits from cheaper implementation to better usability. Accessibility evaluation should be a continuous process to catch issues early. A good division of responsibilities also helps make sure that accessibility is not pushed to the bottom of the priority list. In addition, it is important to not overlook the role of members of the organization. Accessibility should not be the sole responsibility of anyone department, and different departments should understand how their responsibilities intersect with the organization’s accessibility strategy. This can be achieved through offering training sessions and organization-supported self-learning on the subject. A key factor that improves accessibility implementation is the personal motivation of individual workers. Despite the legislation, the effectiveness and prioritization of the accessibility work often depend on individual workers’ motivation. Accessibility is often prioritized under other work, categorized as an optional extra, or ignored outright. There are several ways to boost motivation, the most effective of which is showing the impact of the work on real users through user testing. Seeing someone with disabilities use the service or testing the product with, for example, a screen gives context to the sometimes-abstract accessibility needs and guidelines. It is important for managers to build teams’ empathy towards those who need accommodations to use digital services. Organizations should also strongly consider working with accessibility experts, conduct regular audits and test with real users. In the future, especially in the public sector, accessibility will continue to be an important factor when creating any digital services. This should be taken into account when starting new projects, as well as when hiring new employees and outsourcing.Digitaalinen saavutettavuus on viime aikoina saanut näkyvyyttä EU:n saavutettavuusdirektiivin (Directive (EU) 2016/2102) ja Suomen saavutettavuuslain (Laki digitaalisten palvelujen tarjoamisesta 306/2019) ansiosta. Lain mukaan julkisten ja tiettyjen yksityisten organisaatioiden digitaalisten palveluiden tulee seurata WCAG saavutettavuusvaatimuksia. Useimmat organisaatiot etsivät yhä parhaita tapoja tuoda saavutettavuus osaksi prosessejaan, ja tähän asti suurin osa työstä on mennyt nykyisten palvelujen muuttamiseen saavutettaviksi. Tätä tutkielmaa varten tehtiin 13 haastattelua digitaalisella alalla työskentelevien ammattilaisten kanssa, joilla on kokemusta projekteista, joissa saavutettavuus on ollut läsnä. Lisäksi tehtiin kirjallisuuskatsaus, joka antaa syvemmän käsityksen saavutettavuudesta ja olemassa olevasta tutkimuksesta. Haastatteluista ja kirjallisuuskatsauksesta saatujen löydösten perusteella annetaan ehdotuksia siitä, miten organisaatiot voivat käytännössä tukea saavutettavuuden implementointia. Löydösten mukaan, saavutettavuutta tulisi lähestyä strategisesti prosessin alusta alkaen. Tämä voi tuoda huomattavia rahallisia säästöjä ja johtaa parempaan yleiseen käytettävyyteen. Saavutettavuusarviointeja ja testauksia olisi hyvä suorittaa jatkuvasti prosessin aikana, jotta ongelmat voidaan löytää ajoissa. Vastuu on myös hyvä jakaa selkeästi, jotta saavutettavuus voidaan priorisoida oikein. Lisäksi tärkeää on huomioida yksittäisten organisaation jäsenten rooli. Saavutettavuus ei koske vain tiettyä organisaation tiimiä kuten suunnittelijoita, vaan jokaisella organisaation jäsenellä tulisi olla käsitys siitä mitä saavutettavuus on, miksi se on tärkeää ja mitä heiltä vaaditaan sitä varten. Organisaation on mahdollista edistää tätä tarjoamalla koulutuksia aiheesta. Yksi avaintekijöistä, joka vaikuttaa saavutettavuuden implementointiin, on yksilöiden henkilökohtainen motivaatio aihetta kohtaan. Laista huolimatta, onnistunut saavutettavuuden implementaatio usein riippuu henkilöiden omasta motivaatiosta, koska saavutettavuus on vaikea oppia ja se on helppo priorisoida muiden töiden alle. Haastatteluiden mukaan keino kehittää motivaatiota on luoda konkreettisuutta oikean saavutettavuutta tarvitsevan henkilön elämään. Keinoja, joilla konkreettisuutta voidaan luoda, ovat esimerkiksi käyttäjätestausten tekeminen oikeiden käyttäjien kanssa, tai avustavien teknologioiden, kuten ruudunlukijan, kokeileminen. Organisaatioiden olisi hyvä myös harkita saavutettavuusasiantuntijoiden kanssa työskentelyä, säännöllisiä saavutettavuusauditointeja ja testausta oikeiden käyttäjien kanssa. Nämä voivat säästää kehittäjien ja suunnittelijoiden aikaa, sillä he voivat oppia tehokkaammin projektin aikana ja mahdolliset ongelmat löydetään nopeammin. Saavutettavuus tulee olemaan kasvavasti tärkeä aihe erityisesti julkisten, mutta myös enenevissä määrin yksityisten organisaatioiden digitaalisten palveluiden kehittämisessä. Tämä tulisi ottaa huomioon esimerkiksi uusien projektien aloituksessa, rekrytoinnissa ja ulkoistamispäätöksissä

An automated framework to support agile adoption coaching

This dissertation aims to assist Agile champions in their organisations with their Agile adoption journey. Such a journey typically starts with identifying the Agile challenges and then determining how to address these challenges in their unique context (Hajjdiab & Taleb, 2011a:9). This study provides a manual together with an automated framework to showcase a list of prioritised Agile challenges and their corresponding possible solutions. Before reaching this automated framework, the research presented a comprehensive list of Agile adoption challenges, possible solutions and a mapping between them. The automated framework, also named Agile Adoption Coach (AAC), is in the form of an online tool: www.agilesense.coza/aac. The critical quantitative contribution to this study was the evaluation of the AAC by Scrum Masters and Agile coaches to determine the acceptability of the tool. The research has shown that there is, on average, an 86% acceptability rating for this tool in South Africa.School of ComputingM. Sc. (Computing

Fallstudier i Lean- och Agile- samt öppen programvaruutveckling

Human factors have been identified as having the largest impact on performance and quality in software development. While production methods and tools, such as development processes, methodologies, integrated development environments, and version control systems, play an important role in modern software development, the largest sources of variance and opportunities for improvement can be found in individual and group factors. The success of software development projects is highly dependent on cognitive, conative, affective, and social factors among individuals and groups. When success is considered to include not only fulfilment of schedules and profitability, but also employee well-being and public impact, particular attention must be paid to software developers and their experience of the software development activity. This thesis uses a mixed-methods research design, with case studies conducted in contemporary software development environments, to develop a theory of software developer experience. The theory explains what software developers experience as part of the development activity, how an experience arises, how the experience leads to changes in software artefacts and the development environment through behaviour, and how the social nature of software development mediates both the experience and outcomes. The theory can be used both to improve software development work environments and to design further scientific studies on developer experience. In addition, the case studies provide novel insights into how software developers experience software development in contemporary environments. In Lean-Agile software development, developers are found to be engaged in a continual cycle of Performance Alignment Work, where they become aware of, interpret, and adapt to performance concerns on all levels of an organisation. High-performing teams can successfully carry out this cycle and also influence performance expectations in other parts of the organisation and beyond. The case studies show that values arise as a particular concern for developers. The combination of Lean and Agile software development allows for a great deal of flexibility and self-organisation among developers. As a result, developers themselves must interpret the value system inherent in these methodologies in order to inform everyday decision-making. Discrepancies in the understanding of the value system may lead to different interpretations of what actions are desirable in a particular situation. Improved understanding of values may improve decision-making and understanding of Lean-Agile software development methodologies among software developers. Organisations may wish to clarify the value system for their particular organisational culture and promote values-based leadership for their software development projects. The distributed nature and use of virtual teams in Open Source environments present particular challenges when new members are to join a project. This thesis examines mentoring as a particular form of onboarding support for new developers. Mentoring is found to be a promising approach which helps developers adopt the practices and tacit conventions of an Open Source project community, and to become contributing members more rapidly. Mentoring could also have utility in similar settings that use virtual teams.Ohjelmistokehitysprojektien suorituskyky ja menestys ovat vahvasti riippuvaisia yksilön ajattelu-, motivaatio- ja tunneseikoista sekä ryhmäprosesseista. Ohjelmistokehittäjien kokemus kehitystoiminnasta on tärkeä menestystekijä, jota toistaiseksi ei ole kuitenkaan kattavasti ymmärretty. Väitöskirjassa kehitetään teoria kehittäjäkokemuksesta tapaustutkimusten avulla. Teoriaa voi käyttää parantamaan ohjelmistokehityksen työympäristöjä ja se voi toimia uusien tieteellisten tutkimusten viitekehyksenä. Lisäksi väitöskirja esittelee uutta tietoa kehittäjäkokemuksesta nykyaikaisessa ohjelmistokehityksessä. Virtaviivaisessa (Lean) ja ketterässä (Agile) ohjelmistokehityksessä kehittäjät kokevat korkean suorituskyvyn tavoittelun jatkuvana tiedostamisen, tulkinnan ja sopeutumisen syklinä. Huipputiimit kykenevät onnistuneesti toteuttamaan tätä sykliä ja samalla vaikuttamaan suorituskykyodotuksiin organisaatiossa ja sen ulkopuolella. Väitöstutkimuksen mukaan arvot nousevat esiin erityisenä kysymyksenä kehittäjille. Virtaviivainen ja ketterä ohjelmistotuotanto korostaa arvoina muun muassa yksilöiden välistä vapaamuotoista vuorovaikutusta, asiakasyhteistyötä ja myönteistä suhtautumista muutoksiin. Tutkimus osoittaa kuitenkin, että ymmärrys arvoista vaihtelee ja että kehittäjillä voi olla erilaiset tulkinnat siitä, mitä ne merkitsevät käytännössä. Organisaatioissa voi olla tarpeen selkeyttää virtaviivaisten ja ketterien menetelmien korostaman arvojärjestelmän suhde organisaatiokulttuuriin ja edistää arvojohtamista ohjelmistokehitysprojekteissa. Väitöskirjassa käsitellään myös uusien jäsenten liittymistä avoimen lähdekoodin kehitysprojekteihin. Nämä kehitysprojektit toimivat pitkälti tietoverkon välityksellä, mikä tuo liittymiselle erityisiä haasteita. Tutkimuksessa mentorointia tarkastellaan erityisenä perehdytyksen tukimuotona, joka vaikuttaa kehittäjäkokemukseen. Mentoroinnin todetaan olevan lupaava lähestymistapa, joka auttaa kehittäjiä omaksumaan avoimen lähdekoodin projektiyhteisön käytäntöjä ja lausumattomia tapoja sekä nopeuttamaan heidän edistymistään aktiivisiksi jäseniksi. Mentorointi voi olla hyödyllistä myös muissa samankaltaisissa ympäristöissä, joissa käytetään virtuaalitiimejä.Prestation och framgång i programvaruutvecklingsprojekt beror till stor del på kognitiva, motivationella och emotionella faktorer samt grupprocesser. Programvaruutvecklares upplevelse av utvecklingsaktiviteten är en viktig framgångsfaktor som hittills inte har utforskats heltäckande. I denna doktorsavhandling används fallstudier för att utveckla en teori om utvecklarupplevelse. Teorin kan användas för att förbättra arbetsmiljöer för programvaruutveckling och den fungerar somreferensram för nya vetenskapliga studier. Avhandlingen presenterar dessutom nya resultat om utvecklarupplevelse i modern programvaruutveckling. Utvecklare inom Lean- och Agile-programvaruutveckling upplever strävan till hög prestanda som en kontinuerlig cykel av varseblivning, tolkning och anpassning. Toppresterande team har förmågan att utföra denna cykel framgångsrikt och samtidigt påverka prestationsförväntningar i och utanför den egna organisationen. Enligt avhandlingen lyfts värderingar fram som en särskild fråga för utvecklare. Lean- och Agile-programvaruutveckling betonar värderingar som bland annat fri interaktion mellan individer, kundsamarbete och ett positivt förhållningssätt till förändring. Undersökningen visar dock att förståelsen av värderingarna varierar och att utvecklare kan tolka värderingarnas praktiska betydelse på olika sätt. Det kan vara nödvändigt för organisationer att klargöra hur det värderingssystem som betonas i Lean- och Agile-metoder förhåller sig till organisationskulturen och att främja värdeledarskap i programvaruprojekt. Avhandlingen behandlar också integration av nya medlemmar i programvaruprojekt med öppen källkod. Dessa projekt fungerar främst via datanät, vilket leder till speciella utmaningar för nya medlemmar. I undersökningen granskas mentorskap som en speciell form av onboarding-stöd som påverkar utvecklarupplevelsen. Mentorskap visar sig vara ett lovande tillvägagångssätt som hjälper utvecklare att anta rådande praxis och tysta konventioner i utvecklingsprojekt med öppen källkod, och påskynda deras utveckling till aktiva medlemmar. Mentorskap kan också vara användbart i andra liknande sammanhang som använder virtuella team