Agile - buzzword, benefits and business buy-in

I have been involved in web development for around 5 years now but it is really only in the last 12 months that I have come on board agile projects. Many companies are now adopting the framework and is often seen as the savior in combining IT, business and vendors all holding hands to deliver a superior product.

But does agile make development a dream or a disaster?

Benefits of agile:

• Communication. When daily stand-ups, showcases and retrospective meetings are all utilised, the value of having the project team be aware of all issues, risks, blockers etc. is fantastic. Never before has a few simple concepts allowed business stakeholders such as myself to have such high visibility to what developers and business analysts are tackling on a daily basis.
• Flexibility. This can be either effective or a nightmare for agile development, depending how it is managed. In terms of business requirements and more so for user interface design, you don't need all the answers up front. With web and UI design evolving so rapidly, front ends can be designed iteratively to make use of trends and best practice. It also allows usability testing since working UAT versions of your project are usually available.

Disadvantages of agile:

• Business participation. This is the killer.. If you don't have your business reps on board  and being on tap to answer questions and sign off functionality, your project will struggle. Since agile works on development, test, development, test - having stories linger around simply slows down velocity and above all frustrates the developers and testers. Fair enough they might not be able to give you all of their time if your project isn't their sole focus (I have been guilty of getting slammed on other work and not following up questions that delay testing) but explaining to them the benefits of daily communication is key - which i'll get too.
• Stakeholders not in agile mode. Whilst there may be times that stakeholders such as external vendors don't have to operate in an agile form, from my experience, its best to get them on board. There have been instances where vendors have dumped deliverables into your inbox which are completely out of whack to what you need because a) due to the benefit of agile, your design/build may have shifted direction or b) since they don't get the daily update or are proactively involved in the project, they become detached. Vendors should make an effort to be available and flexible too. After all, your paying them more often or not.
• Expectations of go live. While there's flexibility in designing & building under agile, it can be a challenge to get firm go live dates. Whilst some may not mind, those pesky managers expect hard-line dates as above all - your website or application needs to sell, acquire, retain, convert and numerous other functions that lead to one thing: $$$

Working in a business environment with an IT background has allowed myself to get an interesting perspective on IT development.Whilst you love to build websites and apps that are beautifically designed, intuitive and have had extensive usability testing.. the reality is, most people in the business world don't have the same passion or honestly don't care about these things.

Your completed product is simply technology that allows your employer to make money.

What IT colleagues forget is that product/marketing managers - usually the customers of the web app being built have profit and loss driven targets in their jobs. They aren't reviewed on how many well built IT systems are made for them....they are reviewed on how much cash they bring in.

Tips on how to get better business buy-in for agile development:

• Focus on the tangible benefits of agile. You are asking for a lot of time from a business rep so explain that their involvement will give them a much higher quality web app. Look for case studies out there from well known companies on how agile worked for them. 
• Explain how they can user test easily. Whilst promoting usability and user centered design to business reps is a topic in itself, explain how you will get access to a working prototype from start to finish which you can then take around to colleagues, friends etc. to test. By identifying errors/issues early on, they can be tackled swiftly to deliver a usable product.
• If they come for the ride - they get flexibility and of course less documentation. Moving away from massive requirements documents into storycards may interest business reps and by using other agile elements like personas, it allows them to understand who and how their customers will interact with what is being built.

Social Media: It's all about baby steps

Whilst it was soooo 2009, I still seem to get asked by friends and work colleagues about social media - 'what is it?' 'Is it just setting up a corporate Twitter account?' and 'What can I do with SM to help me bowl over my sales/job targets?

There are endless definitions of social media, with the most common being the 'creation of dialogue between a business and its customers via technology.' I recently read a great quote that said social media is now a catalyst for 'word of finger' as oppose to word of mouth. 

This is now very true as in this day in age, if a customer wants to complement or whinge about a company they can ring the call centre, (press 4 to complain....) write a letter to the company (write a what?) compose an email that may end up in the inbox of 'the newbie' to reply to or...jump onto twitter and let rip.

Now of course every man and his dog now utilises social media with some great and not so great success stories but if you're under pressure to get into the SM arena, where do you begin?

• Is your company looking to just bypass legal departments and blab to the world in 140 characters? (contrary to belief, the legal ramifications of SM are far greater online rather than offline, simply put, you can't undo anything on the web...not quickly anyway)
• Are blogs just a more trendy medium for companies to casually mingle among their customers (yet a lot of the time, disable customer feedback to posts or just ramble on about brand values?) 

So what are your objectives for getting into SM? If it is just to jump on the bandwagon or that you think its the 'in' section of marketing to get into..think again. Like most things, anyone can create a run of the mill marketing campaign, but only few can create one that lingers on forever and rolls in the cash and/or brand recognition.

If you're looking to get your business into SM, follow these simple steps to ease your way into a solid SM strategy:

Step 1: Just Listen First..

There are a number of great tools out there, my favourite for the moment being TweetBeep that searches the world of twitter and sends an email with tweets related to your chosen keywords. You can do this for Google etc. as well for news and blog posts. This allows you to actually get first hand, uncensored feedback from your customers. It's free insight and can often alert you of issues much faster than via a survey or market research.

This simple process can lead to continuous product improvement, enhanced customer experience, simply allow you to really know what customers think of you or be alerted of brewing public relations storms.

Step 2: Start to talk back but focus on customer service, not marketing

Whilst its very tempting to create the obligatory Facebook and Twitter pages for your company and push out the latest specials every hour...customers don't care. The most popular social media apps are used by users for social purposes, they are there to check what their friends are doing and to also tell the world they just cooked a piece of toast. Users aren't interested in reading something they can easily read in a newspaper.

Instead of flogging specials, respond to tweets that users have posted using your official Twitter/Facebook account. Just remember a few things when replying:

• Who ever is replying should know the response context blindfolded. Eg. if a customer is complaining about a product, run your response by someone in your product area and understand the procurement & sales process so you can give a concise but correct answer
• Know your boundaries - If someone is complaining about their superannuation - make sure your author is actually qualified to give advice or a solution
• Remember Privacy - Never ask for personal details etc. over SM channels. Always give generic advice and also include an appropriate call to action so the user can follow this up utilising a secure channel. (It's also good to ensure you have a good customer relations page on your website so you can easily post a shortened url link in your post)

Step 3 - Use the power of SM and user generated content to enhance your online marketing

There have been some great uses of social media driven websites to entice user input such as makeofficebetter.com (which isn't up anymore) that allowed users to make suggestions to improve Microsoft Office. 

Customers enjoy giving tips to a business that is willing to listen to them and if you can demonstrate that you have taken their feedback on board, you'll go a long way with your customers.

If you have a campaign out there for a particular product or service, think of reasons of how any why users would respond to your product and then incorporate that into your campaign call to actions. That way, apart from the usual push brochureware content, users can actually respond to you which creates better brand recall and most of all, enhances conversion for a sale.

Facebook - Under the knife...again

Another month, another user interface change to Facebook...

Logging on to my social comfort pillow, I am hit with a splash page of another redesign:

http://www.facebook.com/sitetour/homepage.php

Now I am all for optimising the designs of websites and applications for users but there were a few questions that popped into this inquisitive noggin when logging on:

• Considering the backlash by users for most Facebook redesigns, where do they get their usability testing feedback from?
• Did they ask real Facebook users to test the new design? If so who?
• Why don't they give us a heads-up that they are redesigning Facebook instead of just launching?
• For the users who aren't fans of the redesigns, why not let us know how you discovered the problems in the first place (for 90% of users, they'll get used to an average design on a loved website cause 'its easier')

and the big question...

• Since Facebook is free to users, should they just be able to change what they want when they want?

In previous experience, communicating a redesign is key and often more important than the redesign itself. If you have an avid user base of a web application or simply a high traffic website, your users are often habitual; they check in everyday to see what's new, they use widgets and applications everyday. 

What's the theme here?.. these users know where to find the content and they know where to locate the application they want to use because they usually only spend 5 minutes at these sites to 'check-in.' They don't want to spend 2 of those 5 minutes learning a new design, unless it allows them to do twice as much in those 5 minutes next time they come back.

Changing websites/applications requires communication. If you let users know that you are redesigning, let them see screen shots of the new design and if it is CSS based, why not offer a trial view?

It is especially important that if you are redesigning a website/app that either stores private information or is a habitual website that users visit everyday, you need to let users know well in advance. In a world where users need to be aware of phishing and compromised websites, users shouldn't have to go out of their way to ensure the site they are using is legitimate, just because a redesign was launched without communication.

I was involved in a redesign of a customer facing application a few years ago and we gave just over 2 months notice, which I thought was enough. We did screenshots, we did FAQs and we briefed our support staff. We thought we had done everything...

Catch is, we had a high subset of users who ignored or just simply didn't see all that hard work I had poured into a pre-launch communication and simply went..'What the **** happened to the website?' It can be very frustrating to you and other people that had practiced what they preached in terms of letting users know after spending months redesigning the site. 

When entering a website / application redesign:

• Incorporate a communications plan early into the project, figure out who needs to know
• Let customers know about the redesign as early as you can (ensuring your design is close to or fully signed off, don't tell the world about a design that gets carved up in usability testing)
• When communicating the change, say why you are redesigning, you have the feedback, you should have the usability testing to backup the feedback
• Give them a chance to view the redesign or even better, play with the design before launch
• Give them an approximate date of launch
• Give them a chance to provide feedback, even though may not have the time or resource to take it on board straight away. From experience, there are many Joes on the street that are willing to help you out in improving your website and hey, it's free...