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The web development team I work in works with a user experience team that follow User Centered Design principles. Together we all work within Scrum.

What best practices should we be aiming for to get great products delivered?

GEOCHET
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Stewart Robinson
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    Ones with as many buzzwords and acronyms as you can possibly find. – Alex Fort Apr 03 '09 at 18:27
  • Abandon Scrum? Write specs before starting to code? Make your users smart enough that they know what they want and need? – Varkhan Apr 03 '09 at 18:29
  • @varkhan we code not teach. I am not a trainer. Also why the hell would I want to teach non programmers how it works? – Stewart Robinson Apr 03 '09 at 18:47
  • @StewartRobinson Because if your users are not smart, don't expect the result obtained from listening to them to be good. Try to write good software with a purpose, and then educate your users to use it. – Varkhan Apr 03 '09 at 18:51
  • @Stewart Varkhan is right. You don't have to teach them how to code, but they need to have clearly defined goals and methods if they're going to give you any worthwhile feedback. – Frank Crook Apr 03 '09 at 21:10
  • when I've spoken to them about this in the past they say they have clear goals. Stuff like "increase reader to reader connections by 10%" which ends up meaning in tech create a profile page for each user. – Stewart Robinson Apr 04 '09 at 07:42
  • (1) how do you measure the "greatness" of a product? define. not here, I don't care, just do it for yourself. everyone should agree. (2) each time you deliver, evaluate. who evaluates? does the customer agree with your evaluation? what is his and which criteria does he follow? (3) ask yourself why you didn't get score 100/100 in "greatness" and how you could improve next time. – Daniel Daranas May 04 '09 at 09:23

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Stewart, judging by your question and subsequent comments it sounds like you have a people problem as opposed to a project management problem. Scrum is great for prioritised, iterative delivery in a customer centric fashion but if the underlying human interaction is flawed you’re going to be fighting an uphill battle.

So in response to “what best practices you should be aiming for to get great products delivered”, start on the social side. If it’s a large group perhaps you have an HR department that can assist. It sounds like a bit of team building and mutual respect would be a good starting point then you can work on the business of actually creating software.

Troy Hunt
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