Eric E. Ellis | Web Design | Project Management | ProjectEric.com | Charlotte, North Carolina

I’m always looking for research on agile practices, specifically as it relates to web design & front-end development (HTML, CSS, JavaScript).

Quite frankly, not a ton exists. SCRUM, an agile methodology, was originally geared to the software world, so I find that most research pertaining to it has a developmental flavor. Nothing wrong with that of course. Just not entirely applicable to web design and development.

Here are 12 valuable resources that specifically call out agile in the context of web design and user-centered design:

1. Just Build It: HTML Prototyping and Agile Development, by Garrett Dimon.  More of an entry on prototyping than agile itself, but it aligns to a main principle of the agile manifesto: working software [code?] is the primary measure of progress.
2. Waterfall Bad, Washing Machine Good (MP3), by Lisa Reicheit.  There is a commonly held belief that Agile methods and user-centered design do not play nicely together.  On the contrary, Agile and UCD can be combined for mutual benefit.
3. Case Study of agile and UCD working together, by James Kelway.  This case study shows how the ComputerWeekly user experience team integrated with an agile development group.  Blogger's note: I didn't find their work to truly align to an agile methodology, but pay attention to the role of the 'boundary spanner,' aka scrum master.
4. Bringing User Centered Design to the Agile Environment, by Anthony Colfelt.  Fantastic article on the pitfalls of Agile and the integration of traditional UCD.
5. Research from the Agile Alliance.  10 useful articles on usability, use case development, interaction design, and UCD process, all pertaining to the incorporation of agile principles:
   • Introduction to Agile Usability: User Experience Activities on Agile Development Projects
   • User Centered Design and Agile Development of IT Systems
   • Interaction Design Meets Agility (PDF)
   • Agile Development Methodologies: A Catalyst to Success (PDF)
   • Process Agility and Software Usability: Toward Lightweight Usage-Centered Design (PDF)
   • Scenarios, Tall Tales, and Stories: Extreme Programming the Oak Grove Way (PDF)
   • Telling Stories and User Role Modeling