The term 'agile' has been introduced in the first week's material (orientation). However, this week’s focus is more on discussing the application of agile that has been carried out on challenge activities in the material in the previous weeks.
Figure 1, Is Agile always the best solution for software development projects? (Slawek-Polczynska, 2020)
As is well known, agile method in project management is a method that emphasizes regular communication with stakeholders and continuous improvement at each level by splitting a project into numerous phases (Wrike, 2021). The main difference between agile and waterfall approach projects is their level of flexibility. While in a waterfall project everything must be clearly planned and agreed upon by all stakeholders before execution, agile offers flexibility for changes with each development cycle. One of the most commonly used agile methods is Scrum. Scrum is "a framework within which people can address complex adaptive problems, while productively and creatively delivering products of the highest possible value." (Scrum.org, 2022). Scrum has a project life cycle called Sprint. This Sprint activity is what makes Scrum an agile approach, because every Sprint cycle, the product development team can add a backlog according to the needs that follow the developments from UX research.
To implement Scrum, we are also introduced to the 'kanban' board. This term is actually a term that I am new to, but which I have practiced in my past work. It's just that this activity is not carried out routinely like a Sprint, but only one cycle for one job that has been defined from start to finish. The combination of using the kanban board and agile approach makes more sense to me. As I learned that most of the software or digital product development, we are very prone to changes and fluctuating customer behavior. Therefore, if user research and a new feature are needed, then the whole project should be flexible enough to allow a new feature added to be inserted into the project.
In this week’s challenge activity, we were challenged to choose one of the artefacts we previously worked on in our last two rapid ideation sessions and create a single persona. Fortunately, I have created a user persona on my RI2.
The persona that I created was based on the user research that I did for the project. As for the user research, I interviewed 11 university students in Manchester and surveyed around 50 participants. Based on the research, most of the students who were interested in environmental issues are women. Therefore, I chose a woman as my persona, with the age based on the average age of research participants.
From the research, I concluded potential user stories as follows:
I want to live a healthy lifestyle
I want to be able to commute comfortably from my accommodation to the university
I want to feel like I’m living a life with a great purpose (e.g: creating a positive impact on the environment).
Based on the explanation above, here is the persona that I finally conducted.
Figure 2, User Persona for TreeCycle app
From this week’s challenge activity, I learned that user research is really effective in identifying my user group. At first, my user target was only university students, but after the research, it is narrowed down to university students who are not satisfied with the existing public transportation options and are aware of environmental issues.
Another thing that I learned is that by making a persona, we can be more focused on what features should be on the MVP of the product. We might want to create a cool app with so many cool features in our mind, but the first thing we should develop is always the user’s need/frustration first.
Scrum.org. (2022). What is Scrum? [online]. Available at: https://www.scrum.org/resources/what-is-scrum (Accessed: 20/12/2021)
Wrike. (2021). What is Agile Methodology in Project Management? FAQ [online]. Available at: https://www.wrike.com/project-management-guide/faq/what-is-agile-methodology-in-project-management/. (Accessed 20/12/2021)
Slawek-Polczynska, Alina. (2020). Is Agile always the best solution for software development projects? [image]. Available at: https://www.soldevelo.com/blog/is-agile-always-the-best-solution-for-software-development-projects/. (Accessed: 20/12/2021)
20 / 12 / 2021
Sarah Shafira Novianti
GDO710 Development Practice
MA User Experience Design, Falmouth University