I have to start by saying I'm not a professional runner. While I do enjoy the outdoors, I am not an expert in most anything athletic. This year, however, I accepted the challenge of running a 5k and a 10k with decent success! After the 10k my friends and I decided that it would be a great challenge to attempt the half marathon. So the training began.

While I do my best at getting into a stride and getting my breathing right while running, I find myself with lots of time to think. In this thinking time I've found many similarities between running and agile development. I will share with you now a few of my thoughts.

Start off slow.
In running training you start off in your first weeks by running maybe 2-3 miles per day for a week or two. This seems like the best way to ease yourself into a new training process.

Designing user experience for agile you also start off slower. This means starting off with smaller amounts of complexity your first few development sprints. Your feature velocity will be slower but you are learning how the process works with your teammates.

Fail soon and learn what works.
In running I started off by running as fast as I could at the start, but this caused me to tire out before two miles were up. I call this an initial failure, which I learned from. I now start out slow and have a gentle pace which allows me to run further distances.

Designing UX for agile there are many things to learn in the first few sprints. How detailed do your wireframes need to be? Does everyone have a good understanding of the problem the design is trying to solve? Is the designed feature too large for the allotted time in the sprint? These are all great questions to learn from and revise the design process around so it fits well with your team.

Get into a rhythm.
In running I can get into a good rhythm. I find a time that works well for me everyday and stick to it. I find a pace and a route I am comfortable with and stick to that as well. This has allowed me to increase my distance and speed over time.

While you are designing for agile you will also get to a point where things start to become more natural. The flow of each sprint is more comfortable. As a designer this is a good time to expand your concepts, increase communication with your developers, and start introducing user testing into your sprints.

The race does not have to end.
In running a marathon you work up to a goal of crossing the finish line, and sometimes the training stops there. Working with agile teams you are now just getting started. Don't stop now. Use everything learned about designing in an agile development process and continue to improve. Ask your teammates for design feedback and integrate that feedback into your design process.

Agile is a fun process to design in. A development sprint really can be like a marathon.