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Balancing UX Strategy with Leanand Agile | Roles in UX Strategy |UX Versus CX StrategyBy Janet M. Six

Published: July 22, 2013

In this edition ofAsk UXmatters, our experts discuss

balancing UX strategy with lean UX and agile

development, describe roles in UX strategy, and

compare user experience strategy with customer

experience strategy.

Every month inAsk UXmatters, our panel of UX experts

answers our readers questions about a variety of user

experience matters. To get answers to your ownquestions about UX strategy, design, user research, or

any other topic of interest to UX professionals in an upcoming edition

ofAsk UXmatters, please send your questions

to:[email protected].

The following experts have contributed answers to this edition ofAsk

UXmatters:

Leo FrishbergProduct Design Manager at Intel Corporation

Pabini Gabriel-PetitSenior Director, User Experience and Design at

Apttus; Publisher and Editor in Chief, UXmatters; Founding Director ofInteraction Design Association (IxDA);UXmatterscolumnist

Adrian HowardGeneralizing Specialist in Agile/UX

Yury VetrovHead of UX at Mail.Ru

Balancing UX Strategy with Lean andAgile

Q:How do you balance the need for a user experience strategy with leanUX and agile development?from a UXmattersreader

No matter what design or development process your

team chooses to employ, UX strategy plays an integral

role, especially when user experience is critical to a

products success, responds Pabini. Whether youre

doing lean UX or agile development, you need to

establish a vision for a product user experience. UX

strategy is inherent in lean UX.
http://www.uxmatters.com/authors/archives/2006/03/janet_m_six.phpmailto:[email protected]://www.uxmatters.com/authors/archives/2006/03/janet_m_six.phpmailto:[email protected]


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plays an integral role,

especially when user

experience is critical to

a products success.

Pabini Gabriel-Petit

Agile and lean are

valuable tools that helpyou to determine

whether your strategy is

actually workingand

pointers on how to

correct it if it isnt.

Adrian Howard

We can view user

experience not as a

specified step-by-step

process, but as a set of

The first step in a lean process is stating a

hypothesisor dec laring your assumptions.

The second step is creating a minimum viable

product (MVP), so you can test your hypothesis.

The third step is conducting an experiment to

either validate or disprove your hypothesis.

The fourth step is obtaining feedback from users

through UX research.

Then, you either iterate on these steps orpivotthat is, start all over again with a new hypothesis.

All of this occurs in service of defining and continually refining your

vision, or UX strategy.

By asking for balance, the question implies that there is a tension

between UX strategy and agile or lean UX approaches, observes Adrian.

Its an implication that I reject.

For example, lean UX approaches are effec tive in

helping to define an organizations UX strategy. The

focus on validating the results of research and design

helps to convince the business of the value of UX

practicesand by forcing value to be made explicit,

aligns everybody on the same value.

Agile and lean do notnegate the need for

strategy. Neither are they opposed to it. What they do

give you are valuable tools that help you to determine

whether your strategy is actually workingand

pointers on how to c orrect it if it isnt.

For more on agile UX, see these editions ofAsk

UXmatters: Agile User Experience Design, which

includes a discussion on the need for a clear product

vision, and Integrating UX into Agile Development.

Take a Flexible Approach to Keep Your UXStrategy RelevantOur companys key products are on the Web, and agile development is a

great fit great for our organization, answers Yury. The UX team has

adopted agile. Were doing weekly sprints and using agile methods of

planning and execution. We strongly believe that the best specification of

a product is the shipped product itself. So were trying to cut as manydeliverables and process steps as possible, while still delivering clear

requirements to our developers and great user experiences to our users.

I like the ideas in When to Apply UX Effort in

Agile, by nForms Andrew Wright. We can view user

experience not as a specified step-by-step process,

but as a set of services that we can deliver to our

product team.

If we see the role of User Experience in the

product development process not as a rigid production
http://nform.com/blog/2013/02/when-to-apply-ux-effort-in-agi-1http://nform.com/blog/2013/02/when-to-apply-ux-effort-in-agi-1http://www.uxmatters.com/mt/archives/2011/04/integrating-ux-into-agile-development.phphttp://www.uxmatters.com/mt/archives/2013/07/mt/archives/2012/04/agile-user-experience-design.php


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services that we can

deliver to our product

team.Yury Vetrov

We assign our most

experienced individualsto strategy discussions.

They can speak the

language of business as

well as design.Leo

Frishberg

Defining a productvision and defining a UX

strategy are closely

related activities. Both

should be a

collaborative, team

effort.Pabini Gabriel-

Petit

line, but as a set of tools that we can apply during a

products development lifecycle, we can be really

flexibleand truly agile. You can add value to the

product at any time, whether youre adding a big

feature, making routine changes to polish a user

interface, or building something new from scratch.

What helps you to conduct a successful UX strategy?

Always staying relevant to current business problems and goals.

Roles in UX Strategy

Q:What roles are involved in user experience strategy in your

organization?from a UXmattersreader

We assign our most experienced individuals to

strategy discussions, replies Leo. They are

experienced not only in design and user engagement,

but in business and technology as well. Meaning thatour strategists are broken-comb peoplenot just T-

shaped or pi-shaped people. They are folks who have

experience in a variety of contexts, who can speak the

language of business as well as design.

The Power of Collaborative TeamsDefining a product vision and defining a UX strategy

are closely related activities. Both should be a

collaborative, team effort, advises Pabini. Ideally,

collaborative envisioning should involve key

stakeholders, all members of a product team, and in

some cases, customers whose needs are driving the

vision. While a Product Owner or Product Manager

owns the final decisions regarding product strategy,

through the creative foment of collaboration, a team is

more likely to innovative and can coalesce around a

viable vision more quickly. In the same way, while a UX

Strategist or UX Lead owns decision-making regarding

UX strategy, taking a collaborative approach to

ideation ensures both that there is a wealth of ideas

on which to draw and that the UX strategy is feasible.

For more about the power of collaborative teams, I

invite you to read my UXmatters article Sharing

Ownership of UX, as well as the edition ofAsk UXmatters on Teamwork

and Collaboration Across Departments, both of which provide helpful

advice on working collaboratively with multidisciplinary teams.

In our company, strategic decisions about specific products and the

whole product portfolio come from top management and product

managers, says Yury. Theyre carefully monitoring the marketplace and

seeking new business possibilities, new ways to grow our user base, and

new growth areas for our current businesses. They find the right audience
http://www.uxmatters.com/mt/archives/2011/05/teamwork-and-collaboration-across-departments.phphttp://www.uxmatters.com/mt/archives/2007/05/sharing-ownership-of-ux.php


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A key part of UX

strategy is the ability to

drive product changes

from the bottom up. Your knowledge about

users, their needs, and

their behavior patterns,

expectations, and habits

gives you valuable

insights on how to make

the product more

successful for your

business.Yury Vetrov

UX strategy should

influence product

development priorities.

Your UX strategy should

show not only thedirection in which the

product should evolve,

but also persuade

management that this

should happen faster.

for our products and learn what their problems are, so we can solve those

problems and profit from doing so.

Once the business has determined its product

vision, its time for our UX team to step inincluding

UX designers, visual designers, and researchers. We

work closely with executives and product management

on a products feature set and user interface. We

research the products target audience, their needs,

habits, and expectations. We show how the productwill work and look and fight to deliver a great user

experience. We follow a typical UX design process like

those youve heard about hundreds of times. But

wheres the strategy part?

I believe that a key part of UX strategy is the

ability to drive product changes from the bottom up,

continues Yury. This happens when your knowledge

about users, their needs, and their behavior patterns,

expectations, and habits gives you valuable insights on

how to make the product more successful for your

business. UX designers and researchers own this deep

knowledge, giving us the chance to provide value to

the business, to be recognized for the value that we

provide, and to get involved in product decisions.

So, in our company, every role is more or less

involved in UX strategyincluding executives, product managers, UX

designers, visual designers, researchers, analysts, and technical leads. Ill

borrow a slogan from a previous UXmatterscolumn on this topic

work withstakeholders, not for stakeholders.

One problem is that knowledge of UX strategy is often implicit and

personaland owned by specific UX people as a part of their professional

competence, admits Yury. But to make UX strategy work, you should

make it visible to everyone on the team.

Were building a UX knowledge base right now to

enable us to share the knowledge that is key to

devising a successful UX strategy. I was totally

amazed by the talk Aarron Walter gave on Big Data

UX, at the UXLx conference. His team at MailChimp is

gathering every possible bit of data relating to UX

including user feedback and surveys, market and user

research, Web analytics, industry trends, and muchmoreinto a single publicly available database. And

they can search the database for patterns and insights

at any time, without having to spend several hours

using different tools to dig through documents and put

together a report. Thats the perfect way to make this

knowledge explicit.

Another important requirement of UX strategy is

that it should influence product development priorities.

Your UX strategy should show not only the direction in

which the product should evolve, but also persuade


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The scope of CX

strategy is broader than

that of UX strategy,

encompassing all

interactions that acustomer has with an

organization across all

touchpoints.Pabini

Gabriel-Petit

We use customer

journey maps to modelperfect experiences, then

try to get closer and

closer to this vision with

every product

iteration.Yury Vetrov

management that this should happen faster. To do this, you need to show

the value of making changes to the product. A good way to do this is with

metrics. Yury recommends his UXmattersarticle How to Calculate the

ROI of UX Using Metrics.

UX Strategy Versus CX Strategy

Q:How does user experience strategy compare with customer experiencestrategy and design thinking?from a UXmattersreader

Customer experience (CX) strategy and UX strategy

share many goals and approaches, answers Pabini.

Both must align with an organizations business

strategy, or vision. But the scope of CX strategy is

broader than that of UX strategy, encompassing all

interactions that a customer has with an organization

across all touchpoints. CX strategy considers such

matters as cross-channel experiences that involveboth digital experiences across multiple

devices andreal-world customer experiences. UX

strategy focuses on digital product experiences.

Regrettably, within large corporations,

responsibility for CX strategy often rests with an

organization that is completely separate from that

responsible for UX strategy. For an organization to

provide a coherent and consistent customer

experience, CX strategy and UX strategy should be closely coupled and

look at customer experience holistically.

At Mail.Ru, we make only Web and mobile products, so in our case, the

customer = the user, and we have fewer channels to work with, replies

Yury. But ideas and methods from service design are still useful to us. We

use customer journey maps to model perfect experiences, then try to get

closer and closer to this vision with every product iteration. We are

constantly rethinking these journeys to determine whether we can do

more for our users.

We have about 40 products in our portfolio, and

most of them include features on mobile or tablet Web

sites and apps. Because people often use several of

these services, there is another dimension to thecustomer experienceseamless transitions between

various products. Thats a more complicated design

problem, and even the worlds largest technology

companies are struggling with it. For example, see

Manus famous Microsoft org-chart infographic in Seth

Godins Getting Serious about Your Org Chart. And

check out the discussion of Googles instant messaging

unification troubles in Exclusive: Inside Hangouts,

Googles Big Fix for Its Messaging Mess. Because of

the technology, vision, and political issues that are
http://www.theverge.com/2013/5/15/4318830/inside-hangouts-googles-big-fix-for-its-messaging-messhttp://www.theverge.com/2013/5/15/4318830/inside-hangouts-googles-big-fix-for-its-messaging-messhttp://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2011/09/getting-serious-about-your-org-chart.htmlhttp://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2011/09/getting-serious-about-your-org-chart.htmlhttp://www.uxmatters.com/mt/archives/2012/07/how-to-calculate-the-roi-of-ux-using-metrics.php


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Design thinking

benefits people in allroles that engage in

creative problem

solving.Pabini

Gabriel-Petit

Often, you have only

assumptions about a

product until it ships. So

you should be ready to

test them early and

often and change the

product if your

hypothesis turns out to

be wrong.YuryVetrov

involved, dealing with product portfolios is one of the most challenging

tasks for UX strategists, so well definitely see more articles and talks on

this topic.

Design ThinkingDesign thinking benefits people in all roles that engage

in creative problem solving, including UX Strategists

and CX Strategists, says Pabini. We covered the

topic of design thinking in depth in another edition

ofAsk UXmatters, titled Design Thinking.

Design thinking is one of our favorite topics at

Mail.Ru, enthuses Yury. Two years ago, we had a

wonderful workshop by Jeremy Utley and Perry Klebahn

from Stanfords d.School. The best part of it was that

not just designers, but also executives and product

managers participated. It helped us to show them

what designers do and how we work, so we became a

better product team after that. Here are several

concepts and methods that I especially love from thatworkshop:

The problem that youre trying to solve may be

wrong. Often, you have only assumptions about a

product until it ships. So you should be ready to

test them early and often and change the product

if your hypothesis turns out to be wrong. Just

launching a product or feature is not enough. It

needs to fill a real need to make it a success. This

is one of the core concepts of lean UX.

Explore a solution space fully. Dont fixate on the

first solution that you like. Almost any problem hasmore than one possible design solution. You need

to be aware of all possible solutions and compare

their pros and cons to find the best solution.
http://www.uxmatters.com/mt/archives/2013/07/balancing-ux-strategy-with-lean-and-agile-roles-in-ux-strategy-ux-versus-cx-strategy.php#

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