ICT501: Agile Development Process and User Experience Design

This report examines the integration of User Experience (UX) design into the agile development process, specifically within the context of the game development organization DevWorkers. It begins by highlighting the potential benefits of this integration, such as improved sprint planning, fixed pricing, a user-centric approach, enhanced project quality, and the fostering of collaborative, cross-functional teams. The report then delves into the challenges that may arise, including feasibility concerns in larger projects, reliability issues, time management complexities, and difficulties in designing for unknown users. Recommendations are provided to mitigate these challenges, including project complexity assessment, user testing, documentation, time management strategies, and team-building workshops. The report concludes by emphasizing the importance of understanding the synergy between agile development and UX design, offering insights for organizations like DevWorkers to optimize their software and game development processes.

Running head: Agile development process
User experience design in agile development process
Name of Student
Name of the University
Author note

1AGILE DEVELOPMENT PROCESS
Abstract
User Experience (UX) is one vital integral part of any kind of software product. In addition to
UX, agile development process is also one centric iterative processes. This also offers an
integration of both of the process that can add advantages towards the software development
process. A well-developed user experience in an organization can yield more profits and
enhance its reputation. However, the integration UX into the agile development process
seems to be largely kept out of the equation while developing the product for the new users.
The main focus of this report is to discuss the potential benefits and challenges that are faced
by the game developing organization DevWorkers due to the integration of both the
technologies.

2AGILE DEVELOPMENT PROCESS
Table of Contents
Introduction................................................................................................................................3
Potential benefits........................................................................................................................3
1. Sprint planning................................................................................................................4
2. Fixable pricing................................................................................................................4
3. Emphasize on the users...................................................................................................5
4. Improves project quality.................................................................................................5
5. Collaborative and cross functional team.........................................................................5
Potential challenges....................................................................................................................6
Feasibility...............................................................................................................................6
Reliability...............................................................................................................................6
Managing the time line...........................................................................................................6
Designing product for unknown users...................................................................................7
Recommendations......................................................................................................................7
Conclusion..................................................................................................................................7
References..................................................................................................................................8

3AGILE DEVELOPMENT PROCESS
Introduction
The agile software development is one of the software development process that
revolve around the concepts of iterative development where all the requirements and their
solutions evolve by the collaboration of the cross-functional and self-organizing team
(Abrahamsson et al.,2017). Dev Workers is one of the leading game developing organization
of Brazil, having more than ten years of experience in developing games for the online as
well as the virtual market. The organization vitally focuses on high level customer
satisfaction in order to achieve competitive advantages in the market. This report will focus
on the potential benefits as well as challenges that will trigger in the chosen organization Dev
workers while integrating the user experience design into the agile development process. In
additions to that, the necessary recommendations are discussed in this report, which will help
the organization to avoid potential challenges.
Potential benefits
The potential benefits that are offered with the use of this technology in the
organization is that it ensures better transparency in the business process and helps the
organization to acquire predictable and early delivery along with predictable costs. The main
reason behind implementing user experience design is that it enhances the user satisfaction
level as well as improves the desirability, accessibility as well as the usability of a product.
Integrating the user experience design into the undertaken agile development process can be
beneficial for the organizations in achieving user satisfaction. Prior to the discussion of the
potential benefits of the integration of user experience design into the agile development, it is
necessary to gather an idea about both of these methodologies. The agile development is one
of the software development process, which successfully promotes the rigorous iteration of
development as well as testing, throughout the lifecycle of a project (Dingsøyr & Moe, 2013).

4AGILE DEVELOPMENT PROCESS
Usually, this particular process focuses on four vital core values, which implies the team and
individual interaction upon the tools and process, working of software over the
comprehensive documentation as well as customer collaboration on the contract negotiation
and the response to the changeover following a particular plan. Meanwhile, the user
experience is beneficial for the design team in providing meaningful as well as relevant
experience to the end-users (Jurca, Hellmann & Maurer, 2014). This process includes the
development of the entire process of acquiring and integrating the product, adding the aspects
of designing, branding, function and usability. As discussed above, being one game
development organization, DevWorkers always focuses on providing top-level customer
satisfaction. Hence, the integration of both of this methodology can bring potential
advantages to the game developing organization Dev Workers. The benefits that the
organization can acquire from the above integration are as follows:
1. Sprint planning
Sprint planning is about framing backlog items and moving forward in the project
according to the sprints. It includes all the members involved in the team. In order to
carry out complex and greater technical projects, the agile process uses the advantages of
the timeboxing technique for managing the sprint. Integration of the user experience
design with the agile development process will become helpful for the chosen game
development organization in developing the sprint within four weeks. This is also
responsible for providing the opportunity for conducting the beta testing of the product
(Adikari, McDonald & Campbell, 2013).
2. Fixable pricing
The agile process provides fix cost for a fixed sprint; hence, it is helpful in predicting
the cost of the overall project and the exact amount of time needed in order to do the
work. As UX designs are time-consuming and laborious, it ought to be expensive.

5AGILE DEVELOPMENT PROCESS
However, by using the traditional development methods, the agencies begin with a
particular fixed quote for the structured deliverables. While the integration of the user
experience design may backfire the agile approach as it helps to deliver the exact cost in a
quicker time (Salah, Paige & Cairns, 2014).
3. Emphasize on the users
Integration of the suggested process mainly utilizes the user stories with the business-
oriented acceptance criteria in order to explain the features of the product. Furthermore,
by focusing on the demands of the real customers, every single feature successfully and
incrementally delivers the value as requested by the user. The integration process is way
beneficial as it also increases the opportunity of beta testing of the software, which is in
another way very helpful in gaining valuable feedback in the early stage of the project
and gives the capability of making necessary changes (Schrepp, Hinderks &
Thomaschewski, 2017).
4. Improves project quality
This integration process can efficiently break down the entire project into small units,
which will help the project team to focus on the top-level development, collaboration and
testing. The small units are improved individually, that can increase efficiency. In
addition to that, by giving frequent builds along with it, conducting testing and gathering
reviews after every iteration, the quality of the undertaken project can improve (Law, Van
Schaik & Roto, 2014).
5. Collaborative and cross functional team
As with every project utilizing the agile approach, it is a bit critical to employ
collaborative and cross-functional. However, while integrating the user experience design

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into the agile approach can maximize the collaborative potential. The efficiency of user
experience design adds benefit to the whole process.
Potential challenges
Despite having a list of benefits, the particular integration also has some limitations
that might create potential challenges for the game developing organization Dev Workers.
The associated potential challenges are as follows;
Feasibility
In the case of carrying out larger projects, adopting this integration might create a
problem for the chosen organization. In designing complex mobile application and games, the
developing team may need different workflows that serve to customers’ purpose who have
different roles in the system where sprints become a massive problem as it needs to look
individually. Hence, the larger chunks might create problem in the UX design (Turk, France
& Rumpe, 2014).
Reliability
Implementing new features within an organization can be unreliable and this may
impact the overall performance of the organization. Thus before implementing any new
system it becomes essential to check the reliability of the implemented system.
Managing the time line
Adopting this integration without proper planning might create hindrance for the
progress of the project. As several sprints are present, so more time is taken to manage those
increased sprints. Agile requires more time as the developer and user interact regarding the
project. Testing of the product by interviewing with the real people, performing market
analysis and early user research might take more time than expected, creating another
challenge to the project (Rover et al., 2014).

7AGILE DEVELOPMENT PROCESS
Designing product for unknown users
Developing fresh digital products or games for the unknown user by using this
integration might impede the business activities. As the user experience design relies on the
users’ information, hence for the DevWorkers, designing new products for the unknown users
using this integration will create a problem.
Recommendations
The game developing organization DevWorkers can consider the following as
recommendations in order to avoid the existing potential challenges; the organisation can
identify the complexity of the project and consider higher fidelity wireframe for their
products. The products can be tested much time with the real people before launching the
products (Pucillo & Cascini, 2014). The requirement of a particular project can be
documented at the beginning of the project. The time management can be done by scheduling
and Synthesizing the research. On the basis of the findings, provisional users can be refined.
The other recommendations are regarding the meetings and the team work like setting up of
various workshops to train the individuals working in a team so that they can play their
respective roles in efficient manner. Certain workshops should also be set with the various
stakeholders of the organization to counter the potential challenges that are faced by the
company. The existing teams should not be broken as the members working in the team are
able to collaborate with each other and know the abilities of each other. This could help in
understanding the complexities of a particular project in a better way. There should be no
negotiation in building a team as the team should contain smart and skilled members who are
always ready to adopt new practices which helps in fostering the collaboration. The
communication among the team members should be enhanced for the sake of a successful
project and working on the potential challenges. For this certain communication guidelines
should set whenever the remote teams are involved. The planning of the new sprint should be

8AGILE DEVELOPMENT PROCESS
made as well as executed when there are enough items present in the backlog along with
setting the goals for each of the sprint.
Conclusion
Agile development has turned out to be a new trend regarding software and game
development processes. In addition, a proper understanding of the necessity of a good UX
came along, and the need to integrate both of these processes have emerged nowadays. This
report has discussed the potential benefits and challenges of this integration in the game
developing organization DevWorkers. Moreover, some recommendations are also provided
in this report, which will help to avoid the underlying challenges.

9AGILE DEVELOPMENT PROCESS
References
Abrahamsson, P., Salo, O., Ronkainen, J., & Warsta, J. (2017). Agile software development
methods: Review and analysis. arXiv preprint arXiv:1709.08439.
Adikari, S., McDonald, C., & Campbell, J. (2013, July). Reframed contexts: design thinking
for agile user experience design. In International Conference of Design, User
Experience, and Usability (pp. 3-12). Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg.
Dingsøyr, T., & Moe, N. B. (2013). Research challenges in large-scale agile software
development. ACM SIGSOFT Software Engineering Notes, 38(5), 38-39.
Jurca, G., Hellmann, T. D., & Maurer, F. (2014, July). Integrating Agile and user-centered
design: a systematic mapping and review of evaluation and validation studies of
Agile-UX. In 2014 Agile Conference (pp. 24-32). IEEE.
Law, E. L. C., Van Schaik, P., & Roto, V. (2014). Attitudes towards user experience (UX)
measurement. International Journal of Human-Computer Studies, 72(6), 526-541.
Pucillo, F., & Cascini, G. (2014). A framework for user experience, needs and affordances.
Design Studies, 35(2), 160-179.
Rover, D., Ullerich, C., Scheel, R., Wegter, J., & Whipple, C. (2014, October). Advantages of
agile methodologies for software and product development in a capstone design
project. In 2014 IEEE Frontiers in Education Conference (FIE) Proceedings (pp. 1-
9). IEEE.
Salah, D., Paige, R. F., & Cairns, P. (2014, May). A systematic literature review for agile
development processes and user centred design integration. In Proceedings of the
18th international conference on evaluation and assessment in software engineering
(p. 5). ACM.

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Schrepp, M., Hinderks, A., & Thomaschewski, J. (2017). Design and Evaluation of a Short
Version of the User Experience Questionnaire (UEQ-S). IJIMAI, 4(6), 103-108.
Turk, D., France, R., & Rumpe, B. (2014). Limitations of agile software processes. arXiv
preprint arXiv:1409.6600.