How do you collaborate with cross-functional teams to integrate UX into lean or agile development processes?

Get out of the building and talk to users. You have to start by understanding the user problems and to do that you have to talk to them. This comes before setting any goals or objectives. You may think you understand the user, but you are not a user.

In my experience, it’s important to keep your core stakeholders involved from the beginning i.e. product lead/UX lead/eng lead/data scientist. Once we know the core user problem we’re trying to solve we need to develop a deep understanding of user persona, attitudes and preferences. The whole team should know this as the back of their hand. The research part is incredibly important to ensure we’re building the right solutions which will solve the user needs.

One of the framework that has worked for me in the past is Jobs to be done (JTBD) framework. They not only help to dig deeper and understand the market needs and wants, but also allows to understand what compelling customer experience is required. It is one of the good frameworks to help define higher purpose for which a customer would buy a product and solution. The JTBD frameworks works wonder with other UX elements and principles of user persona's, design aesthetics and results into the vocabulary of what and why of your customers wants. Please make sure you are aware of the pitfalls of using JTBD in isolation in order to deliver an intutive and purposeful overall user experience

Part of working in a lean/agile environment means learning quickly and iterating to ensure you’re building what users will love. I recently read the book “Sprint: how to solve big problems and test new ideas in just five days” by Jake Knapp in which Jake has a step by step playbook on how to compress the design thinking process into 5-day cycle.

Designers and UX experts I have worked with looks for collaboration at every step of delivering great user experience. One of key collaboration event which has worked wonders for us is dedicated "pre-mortem" session for UX. It helps to look into overall UX experience in a snapshot, dive into details as need be, see what could fail, and align the UX again to the purpose or need of the customer to use the product/solution. This ceremony has helped to cross collaborate and provide a vocabulary to raise issues which could have been missed either by an oversight or due to lack of platform to voice issues. It has also helped to simplify the UX experience by thinking out of the box.

Collaboration is one of the most important roles of a product designer. Working with a team is necessary to make progress, even if it means sacrificing some of your ideals. You need to understand your level of influence in an organization and only insert as many suggestions for change as your influence allows, otherwise you become the breeder of disfunction. Continually push for good process as much as possible, and make the most of the current processes that currently exist.