Lean UX principles: done or not?

For those who are not confidential with Lean UX principles I’ll let you know that they are an important part of the book. Basically the book is very technical, with lots of exercises to learn, but it even presents this part, that I really believe is the core system of Lean UX.

I think that any team could say “Yes, we are Lean UX based” if every component is aligned and acts according to these principles.

So let’s see what has been our alignment.

Principles to Guide Team Organization:

1) Cross-functional teams

What is it?

Every component of the team operates with his role but participates to each other role.

Did you do it?

✔️ 3% Yes

❌ 97% No

Why?

3% because we just did it once, in a very small team (two people). In our web agency each component of the team has an hourly cost, so if a job is done by two people it costs double the price compared to the job done by one person.

The times we did it with a medium/big team, costs increased so much that it has been difficult to explain to our client.

2) Small, dedicated, collocated

What is it?

Your team should be less than 10 people, dedicated all to one project, and collocated all in the same location.

Did you do it?

Small: ✔️ Yes

Dedicated ❌ No

Collocated ✔️ Yes

Why?

The dedicated point is very difficult in a web agency when one developer has to deal with different projects.

3) Self-sufficient and empowered

What is it?

It’s about giving your team all the power to interact with their customers and provide solutions without being blocked by external dependencies.

Did you do it?

✔️ Yes

4) Problem-focused team

What is it?

We give our team a problem to solve instead of some features to implement.

Did you do it?

❌ No

Why?

We had two problems here:

Our clients want to pay for outputs and not outcomes, as I said before. Even if we find the perfect client who pays for outcomes, then it’s not the whole team solving problems but just the UXD. Why? Because of the missing of principle 1 and 2.

Principles to Guide Culture:

5) Moving from doubt to certainty

What is it?

We start a project with assumptions, assuming that we solve problems. Assumptions begin in a state of doubt and evolve to certainty.

Did you do it?

✔️ 20% Yes

❌ 80% No

Why?

❌ No in projects like brochure websites. We found very difficult to continue the process of user discovery and lean iterations for this very simple products.

✔️ Yes in projects like tools or mobile apps, because they focus more on the User Experience.

6) Outcomes, not output

Same answer of principle 4.

7) Removing waste

What is it?

If it doesn’t lead us to the goal, and if it is not concerning the study of the mental models of our personas, remove it.

Did you do it?

✔️Yes

Why?

Because explaining that every feature is born with a precise procedure which crosses our goals with users’ behaviours is very effective. So clients tend to be prudent in proposing new features.

8) Shared Understanding

What is it?

The more we understand solutions together, the more we move on faster and spend less time on meetings.

Did you do it?

✔️No

Why?

Same reason: the time we spend less on meetings is not as long as the time of all the components of the team being together in each session. Furthermore, components of the team are not always available because they work in different projects (and this is unavoidable).

9) No rockstars, gurus, or ninjas

What is it?

No experienced people telling us what to do. Testing is our guru.

Did you do it?

✔️Yes! And we love this.

10) Permission to fail

What is it?

Failing is the best way to learn.

Did you do it?

✔️90% Yes

❌ 10% No

Why?

✔️ Yes when the stakeholder is the boss of the business (or very near to him). Because we fail together with the stakeholder. He is with us crafting the product and conducting tests, and feel responsible for the errors too.

❌ No when the stakeholder has to explain everything to a superior boss or group of people.

Principles to Guide Process:

11) Work in small batches to mitigate risk

What is it?

We move step by step in little pieces and we avoid big inventory of untested design ideas.

Did you do it?

✔️ Yes

12) Continuous discovery

What is it?

We schedule regularly the monitoring of what your users are doing and why.

Did you do it?

✔️30% Yes

❌ 70% No

Why?

✔️ Yes for people who understood the importance of Personas and therefore allocate a budget to investigate on them.

❌ No for people who are happy with Proto-Personas and don’t know that validation allows a lot of change to our initial analysis.

13) GOOB “Getting Out Of the Building”

What is it?

It is literally going in your client’s location, going out of your office. In this amazing experiment a digital agency moved their office inside the client’s shop, and the gap between the Lean UX phases “Build” and “Test” drastically reduced.

Did you do it?

✔️30% Yes

❌ 70% No

Why?

✔️ Yes for small teams.

❌ No for big teams.

14) Externalizing your work

What is it?

Trying to publish your current work continuously to other.

Did you do it?

✔️Yes

Why?

Because we do standups everyday and sprint plan weekly.

15) Making over analysis

What is it?

The time you spend debating on an idea is the same time you spend creating it. So let’s focus on creating then debating basing the debate on results and not ideas rather than personal experience.

Did you do it?

✔️Yes

How?

With the help of quick prototyping tool like Atomic or Framer.

16) Getting out of the deliverables business

Same answer of principle 6 and 4.

Conclusions

If one of the initial question was:

Can we do Lean UX with external clients?

To date, our one year experience led us to this:

Lean UX is difficult for web agencies but not impossible You have to sell yourself as a strategy agency Brochure websites are not very suitable for Lean UX You have to find clients who are willing to invest on outcomes and not outputs Lean UX is difficult for very structured clients (like state bodies with a lot of different departments, offices, etc.). Decision making is to uncentered and many times the ultimate boss doesn’t care anything about learning a new methodology.

I am very curious to know what other folks think about this topic.

Feel free to write a comment and thanks for the attention!