User Experience: Whose Responsibility?

Recently I met an industry leader to discuss an enterprise level initiative for UX. I was overwhelmed with his kind gesture of patient listening and articulation of some of his thoughts whenever required. Though we couldn't zero down to a common point during this short discussion, but I am still hopeful about the next meeting.

Let me start with a very pertinent question which was also the center point of my meeting.

Whose responsibility is it to bring out seamless user experience on digital platforms of an organization? The Business Unit or The IT unit.

At the first instance, most of us will end up answering “The Business Unit”. But here is a catch, the answer to this question totally depends on how a person perceives UX basis below ones:

• If he or she is NOT a UX professional in an organisation
• If he or she is a UX professional,then how he or she is engaged with UX activities.

Let’s keep this in mind, we will touch upon this again going forward.

With the rapid growth of internet users and increasing number of digital savvy population across the globe, digital apps are now extremely popular among masses. And these days, each internet user has many options for using digital apps. With these one and other options for users, these users are now very awake and conscious about their choices. Majority of users these days understands what seamless user experience is, and what bad user experience is, through digital interactions. And same is quite evident from user comments across different channels like app/play store reviews, social media etc.

So, we are living in an internet era where users themselves are the primary source of inspiration for the app owners to bring out the best. Do you agree with me on this? If not, then maybe you are still living in past to jeopardize the future of your digital offerings. Wish you best of luck!

These days when the digital team has no option except to think from user perspective, let’s analyze the two different models of SDLC to find out where the actual responsibility lies from UX perspective. This is going to be an interesting one! Wear your seat belt now!!

Waterfall Model

In traditional waterfall model, UX primarily lies with the Business Unit where business analysts and designers closely work to finalize the requirements to be passed onto development team. Development team strictly follows the requirement and develop the digital product. Testing team prepares test cases strictly based on requirement document and pass UAT. Business unit clears CUG testing and finally, product is rolled out to the end users. Now seamless digital experience of the product is primarily dependent on the different stakeholders through SLDC. Let’s talk about these fantastic fours:

• Business Analyst – All use cases have been covered, or something missed out.
• Designers – All UCD principles have been followed, or some skipped.
• Developers – All requirements are clearly understood, or some assumption made.
• Testers – All test scenarios covered, or something missed out.

Did you notice? I have mentioned above phrase like “something missed out”, “some skipped” and “assumption made”. The relevance of these phrases is minimal when high quality resources are engaged.

But what about a mediocre system? You like it or not, a mediocre system always infuses UX issues throughout SDLC and same keep popping out once product is rolled out.

And if a system wants to fix UX responsibility to business unit then system must be ensuring these two ideal scenarios:

• All requirements are clearly understood by developers and no assumptions are made at the time of development.
• All test scenarios are prepared from the business requirements, and nothing is missed out.

Did I make sense with these two ideal scenarios? Think about it! Let's move to the next model.

Agile Model:

In an agile framework say Scrum, all the stakeholders are part of a team. There is nothing like Business Unit or IT Unit, there is only one team, scrum team. Scrum team has a Scrum Master, Product Owner, and Developers. Product Owner is the voice of business unit and everyone else like Architect, Developer, Designer, Testers are called Developer. And when we say developers, it sounds so obvious as a part of IT unit. But let me reiterate, it is a Scrum team, and the big question is, Scrum team is part of which unit? Business Unit or IT Unit? And the answer is, both. If someone wants to visualize then it can be visualized as an intersection as shown below. Now it should be easily acceptable to everyone that UX responsibility in agile frameworks is attached to both the Business unit and the IT unit, a kind of shared responsibility.

Now coming back to the pertinent question: Whose responsibility is it to bring out seamless user experience on digital platforms of an organization? The Business Unit or The IT unit.

In a system where waterfall model is used, UX is mostly perceived as Business Unit responsibility by both UX professionals and others.

In a system where agile framework is used, UX can be perceived as Business Unit or IT unit or shared responsibility by others, but scrum team members always embrace UX as a shared responsibility.

Hope my attempt would clear the confusion among the readers between these two:

• Fixing the UX responsibility to any particular unit in organisation
• Embracing it as a shared responsibility

In case if you have some alternate view then please feel free to share it in comments or through direct messages.

Keep creating Awesome User Experiences!

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