On Thursday 13 March 2008 09:24:12 Kevin Doyle wrote: > Hi Celeste, > > Are you familiar with Scrum or Agile project management? When > developers are working on a project within an Agile/Scrum project, > they are required to work with everyone working in the same room. Dev > teams are usually very small in Agile projects -- usually 2-4 > developers, a UI/UX designer, a project manager (or Scrum Master) and > a representative of the project owners. I've very rarely worked on a > perfect Agile or Scrum project, but I've always requested that, no > matter what, I'm always working in the same room or space as the > developers. It creates a bond with all the developers and if anyone > has any questions, there's no silly email chain (passing of the > buck) for the answers. > > Working in the same room with the developers also prevents the > typical project siloing -- where you work on the UI, then throw it to > the dev silo without looking back.
Hi Kevin, Yes, I am familiar with Agile but have only heard of Scrum. The Open Source development cycle is very similar to these with very short development periods of ongoing fix-release-fixing. The problem is that in Open Source, contributors (developers, usability specialists, project managers, etc.) are scattered all over the world, so we don't get the benefit of sitting in a room and working together. Luckily some of the projects I work with have commercial organizations who support design and development, and so a few times a year we get together and bang out some of the tougher problems. In the meantime, I have to rely on mailinst lists, blogs, IRC chat, and my deliverables to get the message across. Most of the deliverables are never printed so I have to consider that. Most of the time English is a second language, and even though most of the developers I work with speak excellent English (I sometimes suspect better than I do), I still have to be careful about context and semantics. Also, issues must be written up in a way that make it easy for bugs to be submitted because bug tracking systems are the primary way many projects manage feature specifications and tasks. It's interesting you mention creating a bond with developers, because that is one of the most important things to do when trying to design in open source. Code is a little different where anyone can compile it and see if it runs, and a number of contributions are made psuedo-anonymously. However making changes to a design requires a certain amount of trust to be built between the designer and the developers. The designer isn't going to write the UI code, and the developer isn't going to write UI code he doesn't believe in. The developer isn't going to believe in the UI design unless he believes in the designer. ~ Celeste -- Celeste 'seele' Paul www.obso1337.org ________________________________________________________________ Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ....... [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe ................ http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines ............ http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .................. http://www.ixda.org/help
