Robinson Crusoe Syndrome: Embedding designers on SCRUM teams, effective or counterproductive?

Real alignment of business interests, long-term value creation, and the creative process require fully engaged people who can take risks and think independently.

Let’s Be Real

First, operating in two modes , simultaneously, is not sustainable.

Embedded UX designers need to juggle between delivering designs to the scrum team while also shaping the big picture.

1. So why do we do it?
   Being embedded within the team means that you’re always in the know, which is great for focus, concentration, and always feeling like you have your pulse on the current state. If you’re working with the team every day, you’re seeing work progress and change, and that means never needing to spend time refreshing your knowledge about the current state. You’ll also develop a tighter relationship with your fellow team members rather than being seen as an external resource that may or may not be easy to reach.
2. This is all good but…why would a designer feel isolated?
   Not all feedback is equal, unless the team members have some kind of design background, you’re not going to get the kind of feedback you need that only another designer can give you — does the CTA have the right visual weight? Is the layout consistent to the broader visual language/patterns? Can the UI scale to other implementations?

Second, efficiency focused teams are prone to a few common biases

1. Availability Bias
   This happens when teams rely too much on easily available information (cough…Google Analytics). “Bounce rate. Bounce rate is the most-cited statistic by people who are trying to validate their content decisions…You pick which side of that argument you’re on, and then you can interpret bounce rate to support any argument you want…We can collect all the observations we want, but the inferences are left open, because Google Analytics will not tell you why.” — Jared Spool
2. Confirmation bias
   This happens when people are only interested in hearing evidence that supports their beliefs or expectations and will make decisions that are affected by confirmation bias.
3. Rush to solve bias
   The strong desire to make a quick decision can lead to a rush-to-solve bias, but when in a hurry we often fail to consider all of the opportunities before making a decision.

Third, analytical and creative thinking are fundamentally different

https://www.slideshare.net/Mariellesimone/critical-and-creative-thinking-henderson

In developing over eons, brains have gotten this tension well balanced — an exploration / exploitation tradeoff that strikes the balance between flexibility and rigor. Too much predictability and we tune out; too much surprise and we become disoriented. We live in a constant tug-of-war between routine and novelty. Creativity lies within that tension.
— David Eagleman, Author of The Runaway Species

“Yes but…” vs. “Yes and…”

The difference between the “Yes but…” and the “Yes, and…” mindsets is the key reason why I believe that designers are more creative and happy when NOT embedded in SCRUM teams…

Traditionally trained designers have a tremendous amount of experience working in an environment where design occurs in a safe space, a patient place where the outcome is reinvention. When designers are separated from that environment and Scrum teams that are geared for efficiency we miss a key point. Creativity is not about getting from point A to point B as efficiently as possible; it’s about inventing point B.

There’s an uneasy relationship between creativity and business. It’s uneasy because the market is based on efficiency, productivity, and being able to know the value of things ahead of time. But with creative work, you often don’t know what the value is at the moment you have to pay a price to invest in it. In the short term, business makes it hard to explore creatively, because the process is not efficient, because you might fail. Yet, in the long run, success in business depends on reinvention, on Schumpeterian creative destruction.
— Amy Whitaker, Yale School of Management

I’m not advocating that designers should be free from the businesses need to know the value of things before hand. Amy Whitaker goes on to say “Real alignment of business interests, long-term value creation, and the creative process require fully engaged people who can take risks and think independently. If you’re asking people (designers)to do that you need to give them a space — a work environment — where they can authentically be themselves.” For designers, this means being among other designers where we can practice, encourage each other and yes…celebrate our craft.

So what’s the solution?

Centralized Teams

Designers are able to feed off each other for design feedback and share solutions, thus it is easier to avoid reinventing the wheel when it comes to UI patterns. In the embedded model they have less access to the “hive mind” of already solved solutions. Having designers solve an already solved problem is terribly inefficient.

Secondly, from a capacity planning perspective we can take advantage of the natural ebb and flow of projects and tasks on separate teams. When one team’s UI needs are light, a UI/UX designer can assist another project that requires more help and then switch back.

An additional gain from this process is that designers in an externally centralized design team, by virtue of being able to assist on all of the projects in the product portfolio, have an opportunity to enforce a standardized user experience which makes scaling design in the organization possible.