Agile design process

“Agile is iterative. Design is iterative. Why couldn’t they work together?” — Jeff Gothelf

What is Agile?

Agile provides an iterative framework that is used to develop software products.

It does not mean that Agile is limited to software products, but since this article is related to software development, we will talk about that only.

Being iterative means to refine your software through repetition and move continuously towards your goal. You run development cycle once, identify areas where improvement is needed, and then repeat the cycle to improve your work.

Agile is iterative as well as incremental approach that supports output delivery in small increments. You divide the required functionality into multiple iterations, and by end of each iteration you deliver the output to your customer.

There are many benefits of agile approach.

• Quick Feedback: By delivering a small feature, you have the chance to get feedback after each iteration and hence improve your product in next iteration. Customer has the transparency of functionality that is being implemented. He can easily review things and suggest changes.
• Customer Involvement: Customer does not have to wait for long time to see the output. He remains engaged with the product during each iteration and has the visibility of the product.
• Change Management: Change management is easier as updating things after a small iteration is cheap as compared to updating the product after providing complete functionality.
• Team Motivation: Teams feel more productive as they are delivering something quite often and get response on their delivery.

What is Iterative Design Process?

Design process involves multiple stages: Understand, Research, Sketch, Design, Prototype, Test, Refine.

An iterative design process starts from first stage and moves towards last stage. Then the output is analyzed, and multiple iterations are run to further improve it.

In this process, your goal is not to create a deliverable, but to improve the design in each…