Scaling agile to enterprise-level products *and* creating a great user experience is almost never achieved, as evidenced by the many examples of enterprise software with mediocre to bad user experiences. Creating a cohesive user interface while building any software gradually in agile can be tricky, but doing this with multiple agile teams creating separate products that all must work together to form a cohesive enterprise software user experience is a continuing, vexing problem. This presentation will explore how my organization aligns product roadmaps by visualizing the future user experience. We then leverage this cohesive view of the customer to guide the sprint goals and backlogs of agile teams.
The key to this approach is recognition that the separation between what is tactical (our day-to-day work) versus strategic (our long-term plan) is breaking down. Tactical issues such as interaction design can have strategic consequences, such as the decision to use a multi-touch user interface on the iPhone. Conversely, strategic issues such as business models can impact the user experience, such as the decision to open up the iPhone to third-party apps. Product design work involves juggling a myriad of small product decisions with higher level plans and business strategy; this is an approach to keep it all aligned.
