For a startup, should product requirement understanding be considered a part of UX process.

Question

I am a part of a small organization. Should our UX lead be the part of the requirement elicitation process? Is it a general practice in the industry?

The process we are going through is finalizing and prioritizing the product requirements and features?

Usually, it's considered product designer/product developer task to be part of this process, but for this project, we are planning to include our UX lead in the process as well.

What are the best practices around the larger corporations for this process, what are the advantages and disadvantages for this approach?

Answer 1

TL,DR;

Yes, The UX lead should sit here, since he'll be able to understand WHY a feature is being requested rather than WHAT the feature to be implemented is. The UX team should be a be able to come up with the best solution for this requirement. You see, the Stakeholders might ask for a website, but the best solution might be an app or perhaps an IoT device.

Hi,

I am the UX lead at a startup in Mumbai. Here is what we are moving towards.

Some terms first.

• Product Manager - Basically the CEO of a product, it might be your website/app/CRM/Internl apps etc
• Stakeholders/Business - These guys run the business/operations/marketing etc etc.
• UX Lead - One leading the UX team
• Developers - Self explanatory

So the process being.

1. Stakeholders give their requirements to the PM. Yes, The UX lead should sit here, since he'll be able to understand WHY a feature is being requested rather than WHAT the feature to be implemented is. The UX team should be a be able to come up with the best solution for this requirement.
2. The UX team continuously analyses the DATA from Google Analytics/ Crazy Egg/ User Testings etc and come up with the things that have to be changed or improved in the product.
3. The Product Manager (PM) combines the 2 and makes a "PRODUCT BACKLOG"
4. Product Backlog is your list of things to be changed in your product. There are no priorities decided yet. The UX team can start to work on these product backlogs right away.
5. Before a SPRINT begins, The Product Manager comes up with a list of features which have to be implemented in the upcoming sprint. This has various factors involved. Which ones need immediate attention, How much would the Dev team take etc.

Assuming the UX team had already started the work, and have the designs ready, they hand them over to the dev team and they begin the work. Else, we assign a week to the UX team to design so that the next week can be used by the dev team to develop the features with the designs.