Agile methods caught in popularity trap?
I gave a talk on combining UCD tools with iterative development methodologies like XP at a HCI conference yesterday. My main focus was that UCD tools needs to be incorporated into software methodologies in order for UCD tools to be more widely used.
Most can agree that we need to bring the user to the center of design, but at present, developers are reluctant to start using UCD tools – primarily because:
- Developers are afraid that using UCD (or HCI) tools means going back to written requirement documentation
- Developers are afraid that the UCD tools will make all design decisions up front and not face the fact that requirements change and so does the scope of the project.
- There are few ready-to-use software development methodologies that has an equal focus on using UCD tools than on developing a product. This means that you need to use time and resources yourself to figure out a practice that works well.
My suggestion was to start make ready-to-use software development methodologies that bundled specific UCD tools in them and showed an example of how to combine Personas (UCD) and eXtreme Programming.
So far so good. Everybody could more or less agree this far.
In an auditorium full of HCI / UCD folks who loved the phase structure of the waterfall model, as it would let them enjoy long secure design jobs, bringing in an agile methodology didn’t land well.
My talk focused on the needs for bundled UCD / software development methodologies and not so much for agile methods. But because I had used an agile method and especially because I had used XP, there was a “that’s just hype” attitude. It didn’t matter how much I tried to explain that XP wasn’t necessarily the holy grail – that the choice of software development methodology depended on the kind of project that was to be developed. The answer was just: “Well XP is always the holy grail”. Argh.
I guess XP and other agile methods have been caught in the hype trap? I wonder how many of the HCI / UCD designers who have actually worked with a methodology for implementing their design suggestions.