“Managing Non-Co-located Teams in an Agile Framework” - Agile / Lean Practitioners Meetup: NYC, 01/28/14

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“Managing Non-Co-located Teams in an Agile Framework” - Agile / Lean Practitioners Meetup: NYC, 01/28/14

Here are a few thoughts on last night’s NYC Agile / Lean Practitioners Meetup.  The topic was certainly relevant to some of the work I do and was helpful to re-iterate some best practices I need to employ and keep in mind for my project work.

I work with teams to build prototype applications (typically for iPad) aimed to inspire clients and showcase how we take industry/niche insights and apply those to a client need/problem by building a functional prototype.

In order to do this, we work to understand what the client problem is, identify what type of tool may work best (dashboard, calculator,  workflow, diagnostic…), rapidly iterate on a design and develop the application - All in the timespan of 1-4 weeks, depending on the level of  app robustness the client may require.  To accomplish all of this, our teams work in an agile environment.

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Design Thinking Workshop, brandh@ckers Meetup: June 3, 2013

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Design Thinking Workshop, brandh@ckers Meetup: June 3, 2013

Last night, brandh@ckers put together a panel to discuss, albeit at a very high level, the design thinking methodology.  It’s a rich topic with a lot of opportunity to delve into its many aspects much further- I suggest a Meetup dedicated solely to the methodology (in NYC) – But definitely a good top level discussion.  The panel included representatives from the likes of Parsons and Stanford’s d.school (where all of this came about).

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“Designing MVP Experiments” – Agile Experience Design Meetup @ Pivotal Labs NYC, 04/15/13

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“Designing MVP Experiments” – Agile Experience Design Meetup @ Pivotal Labs NYC, 04/15/13

Right off the heels of the Lean Startup Machine NYC weekend, I participated in last night’s Agile Experience Design Meetup where the topic/workshop involved running through how to test an ACTAUL user problem through forming a super low functioning, but TESTABLE MVP.  LSM began its focus at point 0 in the process where we needed to validate who the customer is, if the customer actually has a problem and what the actual problem is.  Last night we came into it assuming that there is a user that does have a problem.  Unique to a lot of Meetups I’ve been to, we spent some time running through the high level process in workshop form to get us thinking along the build, measure, learn feedback loop.  Some of the thinking is counterintuitive to how people may want to think (jumping into solutions without thoroughly measuring and learning…) so the exercise was helpful.

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Working with a Product Related Disagreement: The Product Group @ the Viacom Building, NYC 04/04/13

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Last night I attended my first Product Group Meetup where people in the field of product development get together to discuss best practices and knowledge share.  The discussion is split into two parts: Part one focuses on a discussion topic and the second part of the evening is dedicated to a product showcase where a representative (usually a founder) talks about roadblocks, best practices and successes in creating the product.

The discussion last night focused on product related disagreements – What are common root causes and how do people manage disagreement?  Although billed under the “product” umbrella, many of the points discussed are applicable to most work situations, but let’s keep the focus on the product development process.

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User Research for Agile Teams: Agile Experience Design Meetup, Pivotal Labs – 03/18/13

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Last night, the NYC Agile Experience Design Meetup hosted a panel with 3 companies speaking on how they incorporate UX in an agile environment.  I found AppNexus’ talk particularly interesting in that they brought up the point that there seems to not be a good standard to this point for incorporating research in an agile (scrum) setting.  They believe that it is the designer’s role to incorporate the research into scrum (makes sense) and they typically follow a process broken up into four distinct phases:

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Bridging the Gap: “Hard Knowledge”

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“Hard Knowledge” is information pertaining to and specific to an industry or line of work.  The pharmaceutical industry is complex and I needed to learn and know very detailed information specific to my job.  The same is true for the industry I’m pursuing.  I have transferable professional knowledge that I will use from my experience in my last career, but there are PLENTY of knowledge areas that I need to understand so I can feel comfortable with the business, its processes and the work various teams are responsible for.

I have a big time interest in learning as much as I can about the design/digital design industry, including its technical areas.  I want to know what constitutes great design, how innovative products are taken from conception to launch/production, what is involved in running a successful project, etc., etc., etc.  I spend my time familiarizing myself with concepts and this is an ongoing endeavor.

How?

  1. I take classes at General Assembly.
  2. I attend as many Meetups as possible (this is a great, free resource to learn and meet other like-minded people)
  3. I bother people - I network and set up as many informational interviews with as many people as possible for the sake of learning and getting as many unique perspectives as I can.
  4. Read, Read, Read: I read industry and agency/firm news and blogs and I take time to work my way through books each day.

I’m hungry for information and I find ways to get the knowledge I need to begin to bridge the gap.  I will dig deeper into these topics in upcoming posts.