“Design thinking is an approach to problem-solving in which inspiration, ideation, and implementation occur not in sequence but as a system of overlapping spaces.”
As in agile everything starts from the mindset, design thinking is also a mindset, not any tool kit or series of steps to be carried out. From our various agile articles, we have already learned the importance of having a correct mindset, the same importance is in agile for design thinking. As agile is for high-quality services and products which are delivered at lightning speed, design thinking is the must ingredient to meet the customer's needs and requirements at such a high pace. The designers, developers, and owners all together with team members use a design thinking approach to meet the high ends meet of customers and give the necessary first impact to products and services they require for success.
As agile, design thinking also has principles, framework, and methodology which combined with agile methods and principles will align teams together to deliver a quality solution providing the highest value to customers. Design thinking with customer-centric organizations develops a process that creates sustainable and profitable products throughout the lifecycle. Instead of going with a traditional way of defining requirements, design thinking represents divergent and convergent techniques for product and solution development.
With a design thinking mindset, team members are bound to raise some questions which help in inspiring new ways to measure the success of our added efforts. Some questions raised differently are:
Does the solution we are trying to reach are desirable to customers?
By use of build, buy, partner, and acquire activities is it possible to deliver the right solution?
Does our way of building and offering the solution provide more value than cost?
Can we manage the solution to the expected product-market lifecycle?
While going through these questions design thinking helps to understand our customers better and have well-designed products and services. The design thinking mindset in agile involves some basic stages for team members to have a proper understanding of the design thinking mindset, stages are mentioned below
Researching the need of a user
As we have already studied customer-centric design mindset is a crucial process for any agile business. Design thinking mindset involves the first stage of understanding the user's needs. Team members must try to understand the problems and issues users faces. This will help businesses to have a realistic vision of users' requirements and needs instead of having any assumptions.
Stating the user's issues and requirements
Overall information regarding user needs and requirements is gathered it’s time to organize and analyze that information. Team members must remember to keep the explanation to the core issue identified in the information gathered. While doing so they must keep the customer as a center.
Challenging assumptions and creation of ideas
Till this stage team members have a solid idea about the customer's issue and requirements. Now is the time to generate the idea from the analysis they have done. Agile team members must always keep brainstorming to have out-of-the-box thinking while generating any design ideas and focusing on providing the best solution to customers. While brainstorming for ideas requires watching the issues and needs of customers from different perspectives and also generating alternative ideas for each solution as not every solution can be considered best for a particular problem and develop feasibly and innovative solutions as required.
Beginning of solution creation
This stage is about selecting the feasible and affordable solution from the various obtained ideas for a particular issue. This is the experimental phase for any team. Prototyping is the most useful part to have the best-required solution used in this stage. Prototyping helps in investigating the best possible idea for the problem.
Trying out the solution
In this last phase of design thinking, the product is created with the best possible solution and checked by the team members before. Here evaluators will test the created model for every tiny detail and will provide their feedback on the developed solution. As design thinking in agile is an iterative process we cannot say that the work of design is completed here. The redefining of design can still be carried out after the approval of a product.
To add an agile mindset in design thinking we must do the following and have the more refined and best product and services.
Bring at a small level and focus on high-value low-risk opportunities.
Invest more and dedicatedly in user research as it’s the core.
Develop a productive team culture.
Implement design thinking from the very start of the process.
Create design patterns to reduce design and development time.
Have periodic testing.
The above work is required in agile design thinking, if it feels like a lot to do then remember, “If you think good design is expensive, you should look at the cost of bad design.”
About Advance Agility
We, at Advance Agility, are the new-age Agile Coaching, Consulting and IT services company. We enable end-to-end Digital Transformation. Agile execution is integral to our being. We are doing SAFe implementation with small, medium and large organization across the globe. Our vision is to be the leading Agile execution player globally. To keep adding value at every process stage. We are on a mission to empower our clients, move from concept to cash in the shortest sustainable lead time by adopting human centric approach to business agility. Embracing the change is in our DNA. Things that keep us apart are Quicker and Seamless execution with End-to-end gamut of services. Our Global presence and Stellar Track Record give us an edge over our competitor.
Connect with us at advanceagility.com to learn about SAFe and SAFe Implementation. Write to us at contact@advanceagilty.com for any agile training or consulting needs. We are always looking for competent agile trainers as well. So if you are a good trainer or want to become one, do get in touch with us to that we can learn, grow and achieve together.
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