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2016 | OriginalPaper | Chapter

2. User Integration in Agile Software Development Processes: Practices and Challenges in Small and Medium Sized Enterprises

Authors : Oliver Stickel, Corinna Ogonowski, Timo Jakobi, Gunnar Stevens, Volkmar Pipek, Volker Wulf

Published in: Integrating User-Centred Design in Agile Development

Publisher: Springer International Publishing

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Abstract

HCI and CSCW research as well as practice has strongly indicated the value of integrating (end) users in software development processes. Such integration can help address actual needs and wants, to avoid undesirable developments and to strengthen the User Experience of a product. A user-focused approach to software development has some conceptual overlap with agile software development practices, such as quick and iterative (user) testing. However, out in the wild, organisations seem to have difficulties actually mapping user-centered development with agile processes for a variety of reasons ranging from organisational or hierarchical aspects up to financial issues. This problem seems specially prevalent in Small and Medium sized Enterprises (SMEs) where such constraints can be even tighter than in larger organisations. To help understand those problems and to identify possible solutions, we turned to three quite different German software SMEs, varying in size, market focus and organisational structure. By way of qualitative field studies, we were able to identify key roles and tools as well as methodological, organisational and analytical practices and challenges in integrating (end) users into agile software development.

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previous chapter Integrating User-Centred Design in Agile Development

next chapter Templates: A Key to Success When Training Developers to Perform UX Tasks

From here on, we will abbreviate “Usability and User Experience” as UUX. For the purpose of this chapter, we do not need the distinction between more task-focused and more ludic aspects.

All organisation names as well as all personal names in this contribution are anonymised for privacy reasons.

To be clear: Foo’s support team is the user support department, i.e. the staff responsible for helping customers with issues. The name ‘support team’ is actually an in-vivo code from the fieldwork at Foo.

At this point in the analytical process, it had already become clear that the intersection of those two topics would be central to our study.

This is actually an in-vivo code. A PO at Foo used those exact words.

Terminology taken from the interviews – a ‘call’ should be understood as any kind of communication with users, not just telephone calls.

An example might be Living Labs as a service, see e.g. [20].

As in outside of sprints and their – by definition – extreme focus.

An attempt at an explicitly simple and lean user feedback system similar to what Qux wished for is currently being developed open source led by our research group. It is called ‘Shake’ and interested parties are welcome to try it out and/or contribute on http://github.com/UniSiegenCSCW/Shake.

However, please keep in mind that those suggestions are grounded in literature and three essentially qualitative case studies. They can make no claim to completeness or applicability in all but we believe they are helpful in many.

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Title: User Integration in Agile Software Development Processes: Practices and Challenges in Small and Medium Sized Enterprises
Authors: Oliver Stickel
Corinna Ogonowski
Timo Jakobi
Gunnar Stevens
Volkmar Pipek
Volker Wulf
Publisher: Springer International Publishing
Book: Integrating User-Centred Design in Agile Development
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-32163-9

Electronic ISBN: 978-3-319-32165-3

Copyright Year: 2016
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-32165-3_2

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