• Web Design

How To Agile Project Management For Web Development Projects?

Design is neither an invention nor a discovery that could happen by accident! It has to be backed by a process, should be thought of thoroughly, planned and properly managed. Conventionally, a design team or designer is responsible for the design management, which is included in the design phase. Designs in agile projects are tightly integrated with delivery; hence it is actively involved with design management. Design could be a bottleneck if it is considered separately to the rest of the team with different priorities and schedules.

Tips for PM (Project Managers) to manage designs and designers

It’s a PM’s responsibility to manage every individual from a designing team as well as make the design team understand collocation, collaborative design approach and communication methods. A key to successful approach to this adoption is having a flexible framework for a good and self organised team.

The biggest challenge for the designer would be working out to create a vision to let the design emerge throughout the development process.

Tips for designers for managing the design

The following interaction with your PM would help you to manage the projects using agile:

• If you are a newbie and your PM has an experience in managing agile design projects, his previous projects would serve an easy understanding as to where the design activity fits in, and how to work collaboratively with developers and analysts.
• And if he is inexperienced with design, you could utilize your design and his agile experience, to come up with a plan that could work out for both. This flexibility and creative thinking would help him understand the design and help you to understand the agile development.
• If you are experienced, take an initiative to make your PM understand the past work and the problems that you faced in your last project. His experience would help you to resolve the potential issues, which would take off some pressure.
• If you both are well experienced, it’s still worthwhile having a conversation because there are no one-size-fits for all agile processes. Analysing last projects would help you in making the checklist with what works the best.

What are the web design activities that have to be included in the plan?

End to end customer feedback:

It is all about engaging with customers to know the potential problems in the website design or projects before the development starts. The interaction or feedback should be taken frequently, i.e. in between the two cycles or multiple times in iteration if it is too longer.

Feedback from stakeholders:

This meeting should happen once or twice in iteration. They are not directly involved in the project team, but their stakes give them an opportunity to give input and feedback about the design.

Interaction with developers:

A formal meeting with them would ensure feasible design ideas and input regarding the technology to enhance the designs.

Interaction with Business Analysts:

They ensure that the design cover all the user stories, describing the full extent of the design.

Interaction with QA’s:

They ensure that the test reflects proper visual design, important interaction and usability criteria too.

Cross functional conversations:

All the above entities should have a conversation to find the most efficient cross functional input on common grounds.

Finally, the above mentioned tips in the organization would deliver an efficient and interactive result.