Design Thinking Use in Agile Software Projects: Software Developers' Perception

Only recently the application of the Design Thinking (DT) in agile development has begun to be researched. Thus, this research aims to analyze information collected from agile software developers concerning their perceptions about applying DT methods and tools in agile development. An online survey was submitted to agile teams from Brazilian software organizations and a total of 59 answers were obtained. Results reveal that the most commonly used techniques during the development process are brainstorming and prototyping. In requirement elicitation, the techniques most used by the practitioners are interviews with users and prototyping. The study concludes that practitioners are already using many DT techniques, tools and methods in software development activities. Furthermore, they acknowledge that DT practice in requirement elicitation could contribute to delivering product quality to the end-user since design thinking techniques could prevent failure to understand requirements prior to implementation.