Agile in a Kitchen or Design?

My two favorite topics just next to the technology are food and design. I love both and I think about both of them most of the time. Therefore, a question appeared in my head: "Does Agile works just for a software development or is it a way of workflow management also in any other areas we will choose?"

Agile in kitchen

Once sitting in a Viennas' restaurant on a meeting brought me to a topic. Can you apply agile framework somewhere between deliciously looking food on a plate and rushing chefs preparing the food? I think it sounds pretty funny, but I do believe you can. In a discussion we had, we grabbed this idea and started going for it.

I have to agree, it was fun to think out of a box in this agile implementation. Still, the conclusion we got to is following. Backlog would be the papers you stick on the wooden beam for the chef to work them off. Of course, the chef relies on given priority of the order. It means person creating chef's backlog knows perfectly the orders and has the ability to organized them accordingly. He might be a Scrum master of your kitchen. As the process is optimized all the food delivery to your customer is once again faster, chefs/waiters/customers less stressed and restaurant is making for sure a bigger profit.

Agile in design

As agile processes can be implemented within any workflow, obviously with a bit of effort. It comes in one's mind to implement it in Design as well as it can be very effective for websites and apps. For instance, you may begin from a user persona that you’ve created, outlining the needs of your target user and using that to branch out and identify the features required. In many organizations, designers span multiple teams (or even products). However, an iterative workflow will see you sitting next to the developer and working in tandem to achieve each iteration as you go.

Understanding the collaborative working style and learning how to estimate will allow you to operate more effectively within a design team. And then, after all, there is Lean UX vs. Agile UX. Many argue that Lean UX is a meaningless term, that doesn’t differ from much older Agile UX and well, it is that way. Exactly, as it is said Lean UX describes methods and their practical application in dynamic environment of a Lean Startup. Agile UX describes update of Agile Software Methodology with UX Design methods. The ultimate goal of Agile UX is to unify developers and designers in the Agile process of product development. Interestingly enough most of the Lean UX teams will actually use Agile UX to coordinate their software development.

So, stay open-minded. Agile is not just for software development? It can be implemented almost anywhere, even in marketing. But let's talk about this topic later.

Author: Veronika Dominiková