UX Design Summit, Pune 2016

UNICOM, Pune, India

14^th May 2016

Vikas Swarankar, User Experience Design Expert, Represented SAP Labs India Pvt. Ltd. as a Speaker.

Speakers Topic: “Tying the Knot between UX & Agile Software Development”

About the Event

Pune, a vibrant metro, a hub of education, industry, information technology and entertainment and it was the perfect location to host the UX Design Summit by UNICOM. The event was held on 14th May 2016 and saw participants and speakers coming in from startups to Big players from IT industry with the theme “One day of inspiration, education and skills development for user experience designers”.

It was aimed at meeting the needs of all those involved in UX and UI, providing a range of stimulating keynote lectures, seminars and workshops and the opportunity to network with colleagues from other companies in the region.

The event schedule was a mix of UX gyan, data, hands on activity and practical examples, which not only provided an opportunity to share views but encouraged participants to come up and ask questions, which was quite engaging.

The participants moved in and settled down with eagerness on their faces, as what different is stored in today which would add value to their knowledge.

“Tying the Knot between UX & Agile Software Development”

I, Vikas Swarankar, User Experience Design Expert from SAP CD UX APJ, Gurgaon, India represented SAP Labs as a speaker at UNICOM UX Design Summit. The topic was “Tying the Knot between UX & Agile Software Development”, a topic being close to my heart and as per past work experience fits naturally to speak upon.

The emphasis was on the challenges and dynamics of development teams and UXD. The session was an insight into the experience and challenges for a UX designer while working in Agility (Agile/Scrum mode).

An analogy of “Marriage”, being together was taken as a metaphor, which helped in relating to the aspects of working in an agile mindset.

The topics briefly touched upon “What is Agile and how we all should look at it from software development point of view”. The Compatibility challenges for the team to understand Needs, Habits, Like/Dislike, Skills and Expectations both from user/customer and team dynamics perspective were shared with examples. How UXD can take advantage of being in agile, as on one hand we say UX is agile but when it comes to working with the development team in the same mode, challenges and roadblocks come up, how to overcome them with a common vision, plan, agreements and most importantly continuous talks – No more silos.

Point of view was taken from SAP colleagues (CD Competency Head, Gurgaon, APJ UX Lead, Architect and Project Managers) in form of videos/bites, where three basic questions around UX and Agile were targeted to them and a compiled bite on their views was embedded within the talk. This not only gave good perspective from different roles but also provided a sneak peak on how Agile and UX are working hand in had at SAP Labs.

An activity was inducted as part of the talk to help participants understand that time and improvisation go and in hand, in which they were asked to make a paper plane but with the constraint of time and within a scope. It was explained that this is how each sprint moves and as team members we have to be in sync with each other and improvise and take decisions, which enables the team to achieve the sprint goals.

It was suggested to Synchronize, Embed and Adapt the UX activities along with additional responsibility of Sharing Design Literacy cobbled with Lightweight Documentation. Emphasis on team dynamics was given to build trust and layout the UX done criteria. To sum it up a brief insight on how SAP is conducting agile using the D3 agile methodology was shared with the team to help them understand how UX fits into the agile working model.

The directed questions; UX is already agile, then why do we need Agile methodology? How do we estimate for agile? What if there is no scrum master, how to run such UX projects in Agile?

The summit ended with a satisfaction of getting to know and learn from examples and a promise to spread the word back that the next IT wave would be very demanding and it would be driven by users and their needs, where solutions would be layered, with the out layer being as EXPERIENCE.

UX Design Summit, Pune – Google Photos

Vikas Swarankar (I319893)

User Experience Design Expert

SAP Labs, Gurgaon, India