Good Agile Practices make UX and Dev Best Friends
I often hear UX and Dev teams vent about how hard it is to integrate UX into agile software development. And I get it. But honestly, I don’t think this challenge is about agile itself—it’s about how we apply it.
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Agile was created by developers, so yes, it’s pretty dev-centric. But that doesn’t mean its principles don’t apply to other kinds of collaborative work. In fact, our design teams find agile practices super helpful.
I always love sharing the Agile Manifesto with students:
(Excerpted)
Individuals and interactions over processes and tools
Working software over comprehensive documentation
Customer collaboration over contract negotiation
Responding to change over following a plan
Agile is all about iteration, frequent delivery, close collaboration with stakeholders, and adapting to change. All of which are central to UX, too. From a developer’s perspective, Agile often means working in short, time-boxed sprints (usually 1–2 weeks) and delivering functional, testable code at the end of each one. And that timeline? It doesn’t always leave a lot of room for design.
But it doesn’t have to be that way.
Too often, teams assume that once product has defined the requirements, dev should start building immediately. That’s when frustration kicks in because UX isn't "done" yet and ends up holding things up. But anyone who’s worked on a real dev project knows: the dev team has plenty to do early on, like research, backend setup, and architecture planning, even when the design isn’t fully baked.
We’ve talked a lot about how better UX leads to better product requirements. But what about how better UX leads to better development?
Photo by Freepik; Illustration by Zia Halawa
Think about the process of writing an epic. UX and product management are true partners here. I like the approach of starting with a small cross-functional team to support product as they define requirements. A lot of folks still default to a waterfall mindset: product writes requirements, UX designs, dev builds. But when this works well, it’s much more iterative and collaborative.
And this is something successful startups are great at.
While product owns the requirements, the best ones come from input across disciplines: UX brings user needs and cognitive understanding, while dev brings technical feasibility and opportunities for innovation. The same goes for UX design, it’s better when informed by product priorities and dev realities.
Depending on the culture of the engineering team, you might hear some pushback about "wasting dev cycles" on design discussions. And yes, no one wants developers in meetings that don’t benefit them. But involving the right devs early, those who can offer insight and ask smart questions, actually helps lay a solid foundation. It makes the eventual design and build smoother, more grounded, and more innovative.
My favorite collaborations with developers aren’t when they say, “Just tell me what to build,” but when they ask, “How do we build this in a way that works for users?”
Even better? When the conversation turns into: “How can we make this easier, better, smarter all around?”
When UX and dev align early, dev ends up doing less rework. Design is more realistic. Fewer surprises pop up during development (though, let’s be real: there’s always something). And when surprises do happen, the relationship is stronger. Communication is open. Problems get solved faster, with less friction and resentment.
In the end, early teaming between UX and dev isn’t just a nice-to-have—it’s a strategy for building better products and better teams.
LET’S DISCUSS YOUR NEXT PROJECT
We look forward to hearing from you.
