Dual-track agile is good, tri-track agile is even better
Dual-track agile, also known as Dual-track development has become a popular and widely advocated agile approach. Rather than trying to shoehorn discovery and design into delivery sprints, teams will have distinct ‘Discovery’ and ‘Delivery / Development’ tracks (hence the name dual-track). Opportunities in the form of ideas and problems to solve will be explored, tested and validated by a team within the discovery track. The most promising ideas will then be taken forward by the team into the delivery track, safe in the knowledge that they have been defined and validated.
Dual-track agile is a great way for teams to explore, test and validate ideas and potential solutions ahead of delivery sprints. However, whilst dual-track agile can be a very effective approach, many teams find that it can have its limitations.
The limitations of dual-track agile
Dual-track agile gives time and space for discovery, but this discovery tends to be within the scope of a pre-defined product roadmap. The discovery is invariably only one-way. Opportunities will enter the discovery track from a product roadmap, but the discovery track will rarely if ever inform the roadmap. In other words, the discovery track will help teams to figure out if they are building the right thing, but not what they should be building in the first place.
If you consider the well-known double diamond design process (shown below) the discovery track will help teams to define the area to focus on, to develop potential solutions and deliver solutions that work. What it rarely if ever does is help teams to discover insights into the problem. How then can teams figure out what they should be building in the first place? Enter the tri-track agile process.
Tri-track agile
As the name suggests tri-track agile introduces another track. This exploration track is for ongoing research to explore a domain and to identify unmet user needs, problems and opportunities. By adding a third track teams can not only determine if what they are building is the right thing, but also find out what they should be building in the first place.
An exploration track can help teams to build a much better picture of their users and what is important to them. Exploratory research such as field studies (a.k.a. user observation), user interviews, diary studies, service safaris and surveys can help to identify opportunities in the form of user problems to tackle, or key unmet user needs to address.
The exploration track can inform what to explore further within the discovery track, and ultimately to then design, develop and deliver the most promising opportunities via the delivery track.
Moving to tri-track Agile
There are a number of things for teams to consider when moving to a tri-track agile approach. Firstly, as is the case with dual-track agile, it’s important that it’s the same team involved across all of the tracks. There shouldn’t be a different team for each track because then valuable knowledge, understanding and buy-in gets lost as things move from one track to another.
Secondly, the tracks should be running in parallel. They should not be linear stages as you might find in an old-school waterfall approach. One way for teams to do this is to incorporate exploration research into their regular user research activities. For example, if a team is regularly carrying out user interviews, they might include exploratory questions within sessions alongside getting feedback on ideas and potential solutions (i.e. the discovery track). Another approach is to have regular exploration sprints. For example, once a quarter teams might carry out some exploratory research to help gather valuable user insights and to inform their long-term product roadmap.
Conclusion
Tri-track agile can address some of the challenges and limitations of dual-track agile. By having a dedicated exploration track teams can identify unmet user needs, problems and opportunities. Whilst Dual-track agile will help teams to understand whether they are building the right thing, tri-track agile will help them to also figure out what they should be building in the first place.
See also
- Agile anti-patterns that can harm UX (UX for the Masses)
- Stop using Agile as a design process (UX for the Masses)
- Triple Track Agile approach, the evolution of agile methods (ilegra)
- DesOps & Tri-Track Agile (we are cube)
- Tri-track agile and generative research (Video)
Image credits
Running track by Peter H from Pixabay
User interview photo by by Lucas van Oort on Unsplash
Originally published at https://www.uxforthemasses.com on September 2, 2024.
