Part of the 5 Minutes a Day blog series
Intern Kofi passed along this link to me saying that it would be a great topic for a post for the site. Normally, I’d love to write a long piece on something like this in order to really dig into my thoughts BUT, time will not allow it. Instead we’re going to review this piece in five minutes (or less).
The main takeaway is that Uber, a traditionally agile shop, stopped its process for the sake of its marketing and future product. They realized that Agile is great for software development, not so great for marketing (something I’ve touched on before), and therefore stopped their engines (pun intended) and did something unheard of. They actually went back to waterfall to rethink their site.
Wow! Finally someone is publicizing this. I’ve been saying for a long time that process for process sake (i.e. using Agile just because it’s a new trend, saves time, etc) is no good, but that is just what many of our companies are doing. Unfortunately for us UXers and designers, we are the ones that usually feel the most pain for this effort.
But, imagine a place where someone says, “hey maybe this process just won’t work. Maybe we should try something else?”.
I don’t hate Agile. I just hate the misuse of it. I hate that we don’t think about the places and times to use it, and instead try to force the square peg into the freakin round hole. I hate that we don’t think before we do, but most of all I hate that we can’t talk about it freely, without getting kick back from the Agile champions (well at least most of them). What do you think?
Pssst I’m looking for Guest Bloggers. Could this be you?
http://www.quantumwebapps.com/tracking/go.php?c=neamul
The concept of prioritizing and focusing on one project for a short duration and pushing out a product (even a campaign or marketing page) and then learning and tweaking can still be done. Do agree it gets tougher as once you launch you need key features or messaging to make it work or tie it in with other campaigns, but the overall idea behind Agile I can see working many times – obviously as you said, not always, and not for the sake of it.
Great points, and 100% agree!