Agile Lean UX: Achilles’ Heel or Trojan Horse for Competitive Advantage?

At TheLadders, we have been a pioneering, lean UX Agile shop for a few years. As we continue to optimize the job seeker’s online experience by ramping up our mobile efforts, my team and I recently completed a comprehensive review of our product performance. I seized this opportunity to re-read the insights from thought leaders of the Agile Lean UX community…and then it hit me: there is an Achilles’ heel to the Lean Agile UX methodology.

Before I go on, please don’t misunderstand my epiphany. I am not dropping the axe on the entire methodology nor start a holy war on the UX community. Rather, my goal is to share my experience and learnings with other CEOs, entrepreneurs, heads of engineering, design and product development, so that they can extract the best value from Agile.

Here is an abbreviated list of my recommended reading:

• slideshare.net/pathf/lean-ux-agile-putting-it-all-together
• andersramsay.com/2012/04/24/agile-ux-vs-lean-ux
• jeffgothelf.com/blog/
• theleanstartup.com/
• slideshare.net/venturehacks/the-lean-startup-2

What becomes apparent is the absence of the following principles:

• Goal-setting
• Commitment
• Leadership

Even in this presentation, unfortunately, there is only slight attention devoted to these principles.

You may argue that these presentations simply attempt to educate the community about the process and you may say, “Of course you need goal-setting, commitment and strong leadership. That is obvious, so there is no need to mention it.” However, I would counter-argue that if one really understands goal-setting, commitment and leadership, that it is imperative to include these principles in any presentation.

For example, I recently read a great conversation on Quora about what makes a good engineering culture. Lau hits the nail on the head when he discusses optimizing interaction speed:

“Team-wise, fast iteration speed means having a set of strong leaders to help coordinate and drive team efforts. Key stakeholders in a decision need to decide effectively and commit to their choices. To borrow a phrase from Bill Walsh, a leader who coached the 49ers to three Super Bowls, strong leaders need to ‘commit, explode, recover,’ which means committing to a plan of attack, executing it, and then reacting to the results. A team crippled with indecisiveness will just cause individual efforts to flounder.”

In one paragraph, he covered all three principles.

As Colin Powell said, “Leadership is the art of accomplishing more than the science of management says is possible.”

Without strong leadership, how did a team of 11 at Instagram take on the mighty Facebook and its 5,000 employees in the mobile photo war?

In my recent post on TheLadders Blog, Chief Executive or Ironman?, I explain how to build a successful start-up and convert it into a lasting enterprise.

My friend Dave Carvajal, CEO & founder of Dave Partners, a premier executive search and advisory firm, has hired the best in New York City, and is a three-time successful entrepreneur and a two-time Ironman. He also talks about these principles in a recent blog post:

Goal Setting, Discipline, Performance Metrics, and Achievement:

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