Easing Team Politics in Agile Usability: A Concept Mapping Approach

Team politics complicate software projects. They cause internal conflicts that can not only cost a software team time and money, but may also detract from the needs of the product’s end users. In this paper, we explore the use of concept maps as a means of mitigating such team conflicts. Approaching agile usability through the lens of distributed cognition, concept mapping could improve team communications. We conducted interviews with eleven practitioners from three local software development companies to gain preliminary evidence of the practicality of the approach. Participants were questioned about their challenges in agile development and about their overall impressions of a concept mapping approach. We asked about the practicality and acceptability of implementing such a methodology, along with general concerns and recommendations. Results indicate that there is a need for improvement in agile usability, and a concept mapping approach is promising for addressing existing concerns. With refinement of the method and the development of the proper tools, this approach has great potential to improve team interaction in agile usability environments.