Balancing upfront design versus iterative design

We want early feedback to inform foundational or load-bearing decision making before committing to hard/expensive to change design decisions. But we don’t want to start building based on flawed design decisions, the consequences of which are hard/expensive to change when we discover it is faulty. The problem is, how do we balance these two polarities from an either-or to both-and thinking.

In this session, we will explore contexts and tradeoffs in upfront design versus iterative design. Joining us to share their perspectives and experiences in a never-ending discussion are: *Dawn Ahukanna (Design Principal and Front-End Architect) *Rebecca Wirfs-Brock (Architecture, Design Heuristics, and Agile Practices) *Diana Montalion (Architecting content systems strategies for enterprise) *Vladik Khononov (Software Engineer and Cloud Architect) and *Trond Hjorteland (IT Architect and aspiring sociotechnical systems designer).

We will facilitate using a polarity map from Barry Johnson to guide the conversation and find out the patterns and signs to observe to start managing these polarities for yourselves.