“Project handoff. That universally hated period of inefficiency and frustration, throwing your work over the fence hoping there is someone on the other side to catch it.”
Shamsi Brinn, UX design manager at Cornell University

Is this a fair assessment of when designers hand over their work to developers for implementation? Maybe. But does the fault lie with the very nature of design handoff itself, or the way most people do it?

Agile design methodology is about flexibility, collaboration, and rapid iteration by cross-functional teams. And for people like Shamsi Brinn, the very waterfall-y design handoff process stops all that lovely agility dead.

In this article, I’m going to compare Brinn’s No Handoff Method, which wants to eliminate handoffs altogether, with CollabSoft’s Clear View Method, which aims to reform the handoff process. And I’m going to look at how both methods can help you adopt an agile design process, but in different ways.

First, let’s look at what agile design methodology actually is.

What is agile design methodology?

Agile design methodology is an iterative approach to design that aims to align design processes with agile principles such as cross-functional collaboration, continuous improvement, and the ability to pivot quickly.

Designers collaborate closely and continuously with other team members, particularly developers, and deliver designs in smaller increments. Feedback from devs and other stakeholders is used to guide the next increment.

What does agile design methodology look like in practice?

An agile design process can take different forms, and there's no one-size-fits-all. Here are three potential models:

• Same sprint: designers and developers work together in the same sprint, with devs, stakeholders, and sometimes customers offering feedback while designs are still evolving.
• Staggered sprints: designers complete their designs, devs implement them, and designers iterate further while devs are implementing the previous sprint’s designs.
• Overlapping sprints: designers create an initial design and start iterating based on early feedback while devs begin implementation.

The No Handoff Method and the Clear View Method are both capable of facilitating these models. The No Handoff is a good philosophical fit with the same sprint model, while the Clear View Method fits best with staggered or overlapping sprints.

Deciding which method and model are best for you depends on the size and complexity of your organization and products, how cross-functional your teams are, and your need for speed.

The No Handoff Method: iterating together

The No Handoff Method is about closing the gap completely between designers and developers. As a result, designers and developers work together on the same deliverable in shared cycles or sprints.

Basically, if waterfall-style traditional handoff looks like this:

Then the No Handoff Method looks like this:

The No Handoff Method emphasizes the use of prototypes for incremental development, and rapid user testing and feedback between sprints. In effect, designers deliver rough and unfinished or unpolished prototypes and developers have to implement them.

Although constant communication is better than no communication, there are drawbacks. How many designers are happy to deliver unfinished or unpolished work? And is it not a waste of time for a developer to code something that’s not even close to being final?

It’s like me writing a rough draft of a blog and handing it over to be proofread before I’ve finished it or even checked it myself. One: I wouldn’t feel comfortable doing that. Two: when I’m finished, the proofreader has to read it again. What’s the point? Surely it’s better for me to have a little more time to get something to the proofreader that I consider complete.

Handing over prototypes means developers' requirements are changing constantly. If a designer hands over a design then immediately changes it while a developer is still writing the code, this amounts to scope creep for the dev. It’s difficult to see how a sprint could run smoothly or complete on time.

Enter the Clear View Method.

The Clear View Method: multiple collaborative handoffs

CollabSoft’s Clear View Method for Design Handoff sits somewhere between traditional handoffs and the endless back-and-forth of the No Handoff Method.

We acknowledge that designers and developers work differently. Trying to get them to be in each other’s pockets for the entire product development life cycle is not efficient or desirable for a lot of teams.

The Clear View Method also respects the need for designers to take their time. Creativity can’t be rushed. Bringing them into a developer sprint where there’s focus on time limits and scope and estimation might not make sense. The only way it would feasibly work is if designers broaden their skill set and start actively contributing to areas of development and/or testing. But many designers don’t want this. Nor do they want their unfinished designs to be coded too soon.

So, the Clear View Method effectively promotes a series of collaborative handoffs. Traditional handoffs are rigid and complex because of siloed tooling, a lack of communication before and after handoff, and not having a fully documented design system. The six principles of the Clear View Method aim to fix this:

1. Build and document a design system prior to handoff. This prevents duplication, design inconsistencies, and unnecessary discussions at handoff.
2. Handoff isn’t a one-and-done process. There should be regular meetings and check-ins throughout the life of the project.
3. Your work management tool is your single source of truth. Design handoff should happen in a neutral, central space that everyone already works in, not a tool like Figma that’s meant for designers.
4. Hand off a locked-in design. Final designs give developers stable requirements. Designs that keep changing jeopardize devs' sprint goals.
5. Practice flexible rigidity. Designers should finalize their designs, hand them over to devs, receive feedback, iterate, and hand over again.
6. Hand off to everyone. Cross-functional means you should include everyone, such as product owners, customer support staff, and marketing, in your handoff meetings.

In effect, the Clear View Method looks like this:

This infographic visualizes the continuous flow of an agile design and development process, with each phase feeding seamlessly into the next. Design leads to handoff leads to development leads to the next iteration of a design, and so on.

There’s still iteration and collaboration, but it happens in stages rather than all at the same time, and handoff is a stage of its own. Instead of “throwing work over the wall”, handoff is collaborative and involves meetings before, during, and after with all stakeholders.

The Clear View Method enables you to implement an agile design methodology that keeps designers and developers close but not on top of each other. You’re not creating silos by giving your experts the space to do their best work.

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