1. UX Neat, Agile Chaser
Your step-by-step guide for blending UX and Agile in a busy development organization
Carol Bergantino
Jennifer Bullard
UXPA Boston 2017
© 2017 VERACODE, All Rights Reserved.

2. About Veracode A newly acquired business unit of CA Technologies
~540-person organization, ~10 years old
Software development organization experiencing multiple transformations
Monolith  Microservices
Agile  DevOps
Cloud services that identify security vulnerabilities in the application layer
Customers include retail, banking, software, and healthcare companies
Jen
© 2017 VERACODE, All Rights Reserved.

3. Organizational Structure
Ideal Organization
Three-Legged Stool
User Experience
Product Management
Engineering
User Experience
The Product
Engineering
Product Management
Don Norman
The Invisible Computer
Carol
© 2017 VERACODE, All Rights Reserved.

4. Organizational Structure
Three-Legged Stool
User Experience
Product Management
Engineering
Our Organization
User Experience
The Product
Engineering
Product Management
Carol
© 2017 VERACODE, All Rights Reserved.

5. Centralized UX Team Team composition:
6 UX Designers (and we’re hiring!); 2 UA Writers; 1 Course Designer; 1 UX Director
UX team is centralized and serves multiple development scrum teams
Agile Teams
18 Dev scrum teams
Maintain a separate backlog (this will be important later)
Designer will embed in other scrum teams when relevant
Jen
© 2017 VERACODE, All Rights Reserved.

6. UX Guild Mission: Increased UX Capacity
UX Guild members are from Development or QA that serve as a UX resource for their team
Each product team has a UX Guild member
Smaller stories, such as small UI additions or text changes, can be assigned to a UX Guild member
We use the buddy system, pattern library, and UX reviews
Carol
© 2017 VERACODE, All Rights Reserved.

7. Our Recipe Ingredients: Steps to Follow: Product Roadmap
Centralized UX Team
UX Guild
Pattern Library
UX Bat Signal
Documented Process
Story Patterns
Steps to Follow:
Step 1: High Level UX Estimates for Roadmap
Step 2: Resource Upcoming Roadmap Items
Step 3: Decompose Epics Into Stories (Grooming)
Step 4: Size and Subtask Stories (Grooming)
Step 5: Prioritization and Planning
Step 6: Design, Review, and Deliver (On-time!)
Jen
© 2017 VERACODE, All Rights Reserved.

8. Step 1: High Level UX Estimates for Roadmap Key Ingredient/s: Product Roadmap
12 Month forecast/roadmap from Product Management (revised quarterly)
Product Management writes epics from roadmap
Work is estimated (t-shirt sized) by Dev + UX in Parallel
2 separate estimates; 1 unified process
T-shirt sizes: XS = 6 weeks/1 UX designer; S = 12 weeks; M = 24 weeks; etc.
Sets expectations and delivery dates for UX work
Ensures UX is properly staffed for the amount of Dev work on roadmap
Carol
© 2017 VERACODE, All Rights Reserved.

9. Step 2: Resource upcoming Roadmap Items Key Ingredient/s: Product Roadmap
Ensures UX is properly staffed for the amount of Dev work on roadmap
Jen
© 2017 VERACODE, All Rights Reserved.

10. Step 3: Decompose Epics Into Stories (Grooming) Key Ingredient/s: Bat Signal; Documented Process
Dev clones roadmap epics and decomposes into stories
Bat signal
Stories requiring UX are labeled “ux_needed”
Anyone can label a story with the bat-signal
Stories with the label are visible on our bat-signal board
Needs Analysis in Grooming:
UX Guild or UX Designer?
UX clones dev stories requiring a designer
Carol
© 2017 VERACODE, All Rights Reserved.

11. Step 4: Size and Subtask Stories (Grooming) Key Ingredient: Story Patterns
Each pattern contains an established set of sub-tasks with varying degrees of fidelity
Patterns include:
Discovery
Design Thinking
UX Wireframing
Validation
Jen
Give Story Patterns as Handouts
© 2017 VERACODE, All Rights Reserved.

12. Step 5: Prioritization and Planning Key Ingredient/s: Centralized UX Team
Prioritize in UX backlog based on target release
UX Designers can swarm
4th Quarter
1st Quarter
3rd Quarter
2nd Quarter
Project B
UX Project A
Dev Project A
UX Project B
Dev Project B
UX Project C
Dev Project C
UX Project D
Carol
© 2017 VERACODE, All Rights Reserved.

13. Step 5: Prioritization and Planning Key Ingredient/s: Centralized UX Team
Prioritize in UX backlog based on target release
UX Designers can swarm
Design
Code
Test
Deploy
Waterfall
Agile
DevOps
Carol
© 2017 VERACODE, All Rights Reserved.

14. Step 6: Design, Review, and Deliver (On-time
Step 6: Design, Review, and Deliver (On-time!) Key Ingredient/s: Centralized UX Team; Pattern Library
Designer drives design work
Acceptance criteria for all designs:
Doc Review
Design Review
Exceeding our goal of "90% delivered within one release of target"
Jen
© 2017 VERACODE, All Rights Reserved.

15. Documented Process
Carol/Jen?

16. +/- What works well What could be better
Estimating UX work for roadmap epics
Seeing across all work/teams in UX scrum
Scaling UX designers across multiple projects
Scaling via the UX Guild
UX pattern library
What could be better
Still need to ask to be invited to PM + Dev meetings, like PM/PO
Educating dev teams + PMs on UX process is ongoing
Governance of ng components that align with the UX pattern library
Carol
© 2017 VERACODE, All Rights Reserved.

17. Questions? Carol Bergantino: cbergantino@veracode.com
Jennifer Bullard:
© 2017 VERACODE, All Rights Reserved.