Last week Jeff Gothelf wrote a great article on the value of involving the UX designer in the development team's daily scrums, pointing to Karate Kid as a way to be patient through the initial run of meetings.

It's great to see someone write this up. It's an approach that we made part of our process at Roundbox Global years ago.

Benefits that we saw included:

  • Demolish the wall between Design and Development -- no more "us" and "them" with its related miscommunications
  • Increased teamwork -- everyone interested in making the whole team succeed
  • Pair designing -- make sure the designs will implement cleanly before documenting, developers point to how we can push the tech to meet design needs
  • Reciprocal invitation -- involve developers in requirements discussions with the client, especially where technical limits are tight

Through this the team enabled itself to move more quickly before changes in requirements and provide software that met the needs of client stakeholders and end users.