Meeting organisational needs and quality assurance through balancing agile and formal usability testing results

Abstract

This paper deals with a case study of testing with a usability testing package (UTUM), which is also a tool for quality assurance, developed in cooperation between industry and research. It shows that within the studied company, there is a need to balance agility and formalism when producing and presenting results of usability testing to groups who we have called Designers and Product Owners. We have found that these groups have different needs, which can be placed on opposite sides of a scale, based on the agile manifesto. This becomes a Designer and a Product Owner Manifesto. The test package is seen as a successful hybrid method combining agility with formalism, satisfying organisational needs, and fulfilling the desire to create a closer relation between industry and research. © 2011 IFIP International Federation for Information Processing.