Design has often been cut off from the development side of the house, creating static images that are then handed off to developers to build. Invariably, this waterfall approach leads to unhappy designers and frustrated programmers, and often a product that misses the mark. Agile Development has solved many of the issues, but in many cases, designers still sit on the outside.

We’ll look at integrating your design team (even if it’s a team of one) into an agile development organization while still pushing user-centric design. We’ll study successes and failures from both consultancies (InfoEther, Hyphenated People, Meticulous) and product companies both large and small (LivingSocial, CargoSense). We’ll talk about strategies for getting your design and development teams aligned and working like a well-oiled machine.

This session will discuss:

* Integrating design into an agile development team

* What processes work well

* What processes lead to problems

* Things to take back and try on their teams