Communication through boundary objects in distributed agile teams : An integration of user-centered design and agile development

• Main Author: Persson, Johan
• Format: Others
• Language: English
• Published: Linköpings universitet, Institutionen för datavetenskap 2014
• Subjects: User-Centered Design; UCD; integration; agile; agile methods; agile development; scrum; boundary objects; design rationale; communication; Human Computer Interaction; Människa-datorinteraktion (interaktionsdesign)
• Online Access: http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:liu:diva-109324

The use of agile methods continues to increase within software development but the agile processes do not contain the necessary steps to account for the user and realize the usability of the system. It seems it is therefore necessary to integrate the UCD methodology and agile methodology. What this integration should look like is not always apparent as the integration needs to be adapted to the specific context in each organization. Accompanied by a pre-study which identified difficulties with the integration, the current study examines how UCD specialists experience the communication through boundary objects in distributed agile teams. Furthermore the study examines how the understanding of the user is communicated to the developers in the agile teams and the potential of doing so with a design rationale. A case study was therefore performed with interviews of six UCD specialists to try to answers these questions. A content analysis was performed in relation to each research question and identified a number of themes relating to the experiences concerning; (1) communication through boundary objects, (2) how an understanding of the user is communicated, and (3) opinions of using design rationale for this purpose. Some of the conclusions drawn are that boundary objects only aim at communicating the interaction with the system, that they should be viewed as communication aids as they are not stand-alone and making them comprehensive would be even more time consuming. Furthermore, personas are not deemed fitting for communicating the understanding of the user to developers. This should instead be done by allowing developers to participate in user research.