@melanie, thanks for your comments! I've been on research teams where we participated in agile and teams where we worked on a project by project basis. i definitely don't think ux research fits well within an agile framework because it's too constrictive. that said, i think there's more to successful research than following a rigorous process. in UX, it's all about helping the team make better decisions. i think a good researcher should be able to make the case for taking time to do a project well by framing it in terms of what you'll be able to do with the insights. for example, i try to describe my projects to stakeholders as reducing risk or raising confidence.