Lean UX: Applying Lean Principles to Improve User Experience

I've always thought agile development loses much of its potential when implementation strictly covers what has already been designed. Where does learning from feedback happen in such a context? Is it still agile? Or barely iterative? In such situations it's also easy to have UX practitioners creating expensive designs (from a technical point of view), because they do not have a grasp of underlying technical complexity. Less costly design decisions could bring to equally satisfying products, but the lack of communication between the two teams brings to the development of the least efficient solution.

It's for these reasons that it always appeared weird to me that UX and Dev Teams were allowed to be different beasts. Agile should be about individuals, interactions, feedback... where does all of this happen, if we keep such teams separate?

I loved this book for being the first (I am aware of) to point out the shortcomings and pitfalls of such common practice, and also to offer practical hints to achieve Lean UX - IE having a single team of professionals with different skills and backgrounds (designers, developers, marketers) working together, as a unique team, to achieve a unique goal: digital product success.

Book can be read in a really short amount of time, and still offers lots of piratical, tactical and strategic hints. Despite we adopt most of the techniques suggested herein already, not only I've been happy to find some confirmation on our practices, but I've also been able to get some precious tips and practical suggestions, that we'll be able to immediately apply on the Field. Book's really what I had been looking for, for a long time and I'm now glad to have it on my bookshelf!

Even though I am not directly involved in the UX world, most of our projects have at least one or more UX resources involved. Being a Scrum person in terms of execution, I've always struggled with how to best incorporate those UXers into the mix. This book not only lays out a much "leaner" approach than the typical User Centered Design (UCD) process, but gives real world examples on what this looks like in terms of a project setting.

Although I did find the chapter of integrating LeanUX + Scrum lacking (hence the 4 instead of 5 stars), the book itself was a wealth of knowledge for all readers (not just those involved in UX). It opened my eyes to cross functional teams where the UX resource will become more of a facilitator and the developers could easily assist with being research assistants, scribes, and partnering with the UXers.

It has spawned my interest in how I can better assist in reducing documentation and fixating on the end product.