Agile Methodology is often related with Agile framework, a set of organization and workflow behaviours that help guide teams and product owners in scaling lean and agile practices. Since the 2001 publication of the Agile Manifesto, various companies of different sizes have looked at what agile framework might work best for them such as Scrum or Rapid Application Development.
User experience (UX) in the design thinking process is the hear of Agile software product development. Design teams approach the problem solving process with empathy for the user experience, then define the problem, follow that with the product ideation phase, produce the prototype, and conclude the cycle with final testing and approval. Sometimes, user testing points to a need for changes or to meet unforeseen challenges. The team may then return to previous stages of product design in order to reframe the problem and rework the process until the goal is met.
The Agile design thinking process is at once open to change and fundamentally rigorous. Using principles of this process in brainstorming sessions, the design team can coax fresh insights from existing data. Because continual changes to business tools and practice require innovative problem solving techniques, defining the scope of a complex problem is the design team’s first step.
Those wicked problems
Wicked problems include ambiguous or unknown factors that have no easy or obvious solution outside a creative design thinking approach. Wicked, indeed.
With an eye toward iteration and outside-the-box design thinking, the Agile team uses UX design tools to address these poorly-defined or perhaps unknown problems. The team works to frame (or reframe) these wicked problems in ways most responsive to human beings with human needs. This design process follows the path of — and it bears repeating — human empathy, clear definition of the problem, ideation, prototyping, and testing.
Agile is iterative, not linear
Agile design thinking is an iterative, not a linear process. The difference is worth defining: Iterative stages of development may proceed outside of the expected sequence, work in parallel with other stages, or they may be repeated, as necessary. A linear process, on the other hand, works a problem through steps defined at the outset, with no input or changes made or suggested by stakeholders or end users before product completion.
Able to empathize with and understand the needs of stakeholders and end users, with a clear problem statement in hand, the development team is ready to look at potential solutions by using innovative problem solving techniques.
The ideation phase, one step in design process methodology, is a core design thinking principle that deserves some special attention. The work of ideation is to articulate as many ideas and potential solutions as possible. There are no judgments in the ideation process, no right or wrong — just as many solutions as possible from the design team, consultants, and all stakeholders.
Moving from the empathy and problem definition stages, crafted personas are useful development models and effective tools for the ideation stage. Personas enable the design team to keep product development human-centered as they focus on framing their most innovative solutions.
The final phase of prototype testing in the iterative process may bring to light an unforeseen problem and return the team to previous development stages. Even in the later development stages a fresh look at product design and performance can guide team members toward the best product performance and user experience.
Both organized and fluid, the iterative Agile design process is rooted in four principles of design thinking. These principles help strengthen the work of both onsite teams and digital consultancy firms from the very start of the design process:
Principles of design thinking
The Hasso-Plattner-Institute of Design at Stanford University has codified for design teams four principles to help organize and encourage the most responsive iterative process. Learn more about the 5 key stages to design thinking.
The human rule: All activity is social in nature — and good user research helps separate customer experience needs from the noise. Complex problems clearly articulated lead to responsive, creative solutions.
The ambiguity rule: Ambiguity is inevitable, so brainstorming can only increase the capacity of your team to use their skills during the entire process from original problem statement to testable prototype.
All design is redesign: Amidst changes in tech and society, basic human needs (user needs) remain constant and integral at every stage of the innovation process.
The tangibility rule: Prototypes make possible solutions tangible and easy for testers and real-world end users to understand and evaluate.
The problem solver’s point of view
Creative solutions to defined problems emerge out of the ideation sessions. All potential solutions engage smart and committed teams of UX design thinkers — the problem solvers.
As part of the UX design process real users test the final iteration of a new product — or the reframing of an existing product — to determine how well it implements or enhances business and programming needs.
In our tech-platformed world these final iterations of product design are most effectively evaluated in user testing sessions. Here, you’ll observe how target users interact with your prototype and what they have to say about it.
The success of both startup entrepreneurs and established enterprises depends upon how well their product meets end user needs, and how well their product eases and enriches the customer experience.
The tools that support creative problem solving are neither magical nor entirely intuitive, but they can all be learned and applied. Potential solutions to issues of product redesign and new product development may be most successfully organized by UX design thinkers in an Agile plan.
Are you ready to apply new technologies to all areas of your business? Digital Transformation (DX) can help you create a new business model able to efficiently exploit the latest digital technologies and radically change how you operate and deliver value to your customers.
And DX is also a radical cultural change for your business, requiring executives and staff to continually interrogate the status quo, to identify aspects of the existing business strategy that need to change — and even to risk failure in the process of achieving that change. The framework for this radical change must be supported and implemented through constant collaboration of the Board and CEO, business leaders, middle management, and DX implementation teams.
Sustainability and scalability may be included in your list of first concerns. Among the many digital transformation consulting firms, four frameworks (BCG, Capgemini-2018, EY, and The Digital Capability Model) accentuate sustainability, and four frameworks (DXC, McKinsey, MIT, PWC) stress scalability.
Digital transformation strategy
You may have heard DX described as digital transformation strategy, digital business transformation, digital industrial transformation framework, digital maturity model, customer experience transformation, or digital transformation strategy roadmap. These terms and others are largely interchangeable, and all are rooted in the Digital Transformation Framework, the roadmap to a successful digital transformation of your business.
The aim of DX is to create or hone a new business model by moving your company from analog to digital data collection, organization, and transaction processing. New and continually improving technologies in data science, cloud computing, and artificial intelligence enable a business to improve insights gleaned from data and lead to more sound decisions and forecasts, as well as a better real-time customer experience with effective digital marketing.
But know, too, that DX comes with a high degree of failure. Less than 30% of companies succeed when digital change meets workplace resistance. DX may have the executive team’s support, but the rest of the organization may require attentive coaching in order to embrace digital change. As part of evaluation and coaching, any inadequate or missing skills within your teams should be assessed and repaired.
Because digital change effects every aspect of a business the Board, CEO, and leadership team set the tone and provide tools for the digital journey to all levels of the organization. Know that everything will constantly and digitally change. This may sound as though the digital aspect is the most important transformation goal, but keep in mind that any organization’s digital transformation is really about transforming the capacities and perceptions of the people who make up your organization. Your employees will use the technology to accomplish your business goals.
Both adaptable and precise, a sound digital transformation framework is an essential strategic tool. Support that strategy and pay attention to the response of your teams.
Operating models
Digital initiatives usually focus on the ways a company delivers products and services to its customers, and the COVID-19 pandemic has pushed many organizations to accelerate their digital transformation plans. Digital innovation and business disruption have increased as the office space has expanded to include managers and employees at home. Making full use of digital technology, the adaptive strength of the DX model is ready for this newest iteration of business-as-usual, integrating social media, meeting platforms, and cloud computing tools.
Effective DX models include several must-haves:
Digital-centric leadership which sets out board, investor, and stakeholder expectations
Digital strategy that includes shared vision, adequate budget and funds, and a DX roadmap
Digital design and a business model
Customer-centric management, including engagement, interaction, and customer experience
Digital capabilities for People: enhance skills, talents, and team agility with rewards, coaches, and mentors
Digital capabilities for Business: enhance agility, analytics and insights as you achieve operational excellence
Digital optimization capacity: intelligent automation, core processes, and an operating model
Transformation management: agile change strategy, methodology, prioritization, assessment and tracking tools, OKR (objective and key results), and gaps management
Digital tech capabilities: Social media, mobile apps, and IoT (Internet of Things)
More digital tech capabilities: Big Data and analytics, artificial intelligence, robotics and RPA (robotic process automation), machine learning, blockchain, and 5G.
You’ll want a digitized business model and a workplace culture with the capacity to empower the talent within your business. Collaborative leadership will foster an innovative culture able to focus upon producing customer-centric products and enhance both value and customer experience. There are many DX models and frameworks available, but most are digital maturity models that assess an organization’s digital sophistication, right now. If you’re not sure you have any — digital sophistication, that is — your stakeholders and decision-making entities should identify goals for and demonstrate the value delivered by the company’s selected transformation projects. Pick the right first digital transformation project and it will be the quick-win catalyst for the next.
With a strategy for the digital transformation journey and a clearly understood transformation process your business can make changes efficiently, maintain or improve profitability, and deliver increased value. With a targeted plan for your digital transformation efforts the short-term initiatives will help fund subsequent long-term initiatives. From the start, digital technology will be able to monitor key performance indicators on customer insights into new products and business process effectiveness. These improved analytic tools will provide better insight into your business and improve decision-making and direct workflows. To increase customer interaction and collaboration, you’ll have at hand information and analytics to reshape customer value propositions and, using digital technologies, transform operating models, the user experience, and customer expectations.
Good product design emerges out of an applied iterative methodology aimed at meeting customers’ needs. For example, a good start would be to ask How and why does the customer use a product or access a system? and under what conditions? To begin the design thinking process, the most dynamic approach is rooted in team-based collaboration and UX design. This is what the Leadership Tribe are experts in and can help your business team explore.
Design team thinking and consultancy at their best focus upon metric-driven and highly empathetic immersion in the end user experience. Deeply innovative product development successfully empowers stakeholders to anticipate, meet, and improve customer experience and new users’ expectations.
Benefits of design thinking
What do your customers want? To know that, find out how they feel about what they want. A good design thinking approach provides this deeper understanding of your customers and even of your own product. Whether you’re a startup or seeking a product or service redesign, design team collaborations produce the most innovative solutions to a variety of marketing challenges. Different perspectives on the design process, problem solving, and possible solutions to customer hesitancy or dissatisfaction all strengthen marketing strategies, improve current users’ engagement, and help draw new customers.
Importance of design
The importance of design is well appreciated by both entrepreneurs and established stakeholders, but product design must also speak to the human-centered user experience of your product or service. You may feel able to intuit the response of existing and potential customers to your new product, but you need not base that intuition entirely upon a hunch. Human needs and satisfaction are identifiable and measurable, and in design thinking the individual end user is more important to your marketing success than either the mechanics or the usage requirements of any process or product.
Brainstorming Ideation
You’ve tapped your inspiration to develop the product, you have a good idea of customers’ and users’ needs, and yet you suspect that many potential customers cannot be counted upon to respond to the product the way you hope. It’s time to begin ideation brainstorming sessions. In the phases of design that shape the best product development process, ideation sessions are a dynamic and necessary step.
Collaboration on Design
Ideation sessions tap the different perspectives of your design team members on how a stakeholder may best proceed toward successful product development. The goal of ideation is a deeper understanding of customers’ needs and user experience; the process of ideation encourages each team member, each design thinker, to contribute their own fresh and contrasting perspective. To think outside the box in this way requires empathy and openness to the varieties of human response and needs that emerge and energize these ideation sessions.
The best creative problem solving requires that problems first be identified and understood. Creative solutions to identifiable marketing hurdles are often based upon how a product is first perceived, and how that product is actually used. To guage how a product fits with a customer’s habits and needs may include questions about color, texture, even the feel of an object in the hand, placement in a store (and in which store), ease of use (Is the packaging, software or website intuitive?), and even whether the retail look should be business or casual. Each team member brings their own expertise and experience to these brainstorming sessions so that the resulting prototype is focused on human needs and personal experience, as well as perceived market demands and actual constraints.
Prototype Design
Ideation sessions complete, it’s time to implement the final stage of the design process and test the prototype product or service. Now, the innovation and creative work of the design thinker will meet the real life needs and ever flexible perceptions of the end-user. Because you already understand your target user, a small-scale introduction of your product should provide a good foundation for an evaluation of user needs and user satisfaction. Informed by insights gained in the ideate phase, prototype testing will yield useful and empathetic evaluations based upon these end user responses. You may experiment with concepts, techniques, and aesthetic cues discussed in the ideation sessions. With your ideal end user in mind, the prototype will help highlight any obstacles to full usage, hindrances to process understanding, or barriers to satisfaction with what the product is intended to deliver. Learn more about the 5 key stages to design thinking.
Takeaways from the prototype phase are tools the entrepreneur or stakeholder uses to build trust in a product and better respond to their customers’ human needs. For example, everyone has visited a website to shop or to seek information about a product or service. Our needs are straightforward at that point and we give little thought to how the site is constructed . . . until it becomes difficult or confusing to navigate. Then, we move to a more user-friendly site and never go back. Our human need for a seamless and intuitive shopping or research experience makes us loyal customers of businesses that provide that experience. In this case, the product or service for sale may have met the end user’s human need, but the access to it did not. Good design thinking through the prototype phase provides the insights into human needs and response that are key to building a satisfying end user experience.
Agile facilitation is the art of managing groups and providing the fundamentals so they can work collaboratively and identify a path forward that most stakeholders can buy into. It also builds the foundation for team self organization.
How do you facilitate in agile?
As a facilitator in agile, you need to use techniques and team coaching to ensure the goals of a meeting are realised. Ideally, all stakeholders will feel they have been listened to and that they can buy into the conclusions of the meeting.
What is the role of a team facilitator?
The role of an agile team facilitator is to promote a facilitation mindset as well as guide and manage the agile team to be successful by using agile principles. This includes identifying and helping remove blockers to make sure a team can meet their objective. This is different from a scrum master role as the agile facilitator is framework agnostic.
What are the benefits of agile facilitation?
The benefits of agile facilitation are that meetings are properly managed and make all stakeholders feel heard, reduce confrontation and enable a team to come up with objectives everyone can agree on. This applies if the meeting is in-person or online.
5 Agile Facilitation Techniques: You Need to Make Your Meetings Go with a Bang
In the sphere of agile transformation and development, agile facilitation is a discipline in its category and the role of an agile team facilitator is making sure the conditions exist for a meeting’s objectives to be realised. This goes far beyond standard agile practices and it can be a tricky task to play little part in the meeting, but still guide it in the right direction.
If you’ve either been designated as the agile team facilitator or chosen the role, you might have had trouble fulfilling it, so with this in mind, here we look at some effective agile coaching and agile meeting techniques so that your meetings achieve everything they set out to do and reach the desired outcome for all.
TECHNIQUE #1 – DOT VOTING
Whether the team members are business analysts, marketing executives or software development experts, the first technique for designing meetings with your team is one that offers a voice to everyone in the room. A consensus is formed by going to each person individually and getting their opinion. After you’ve gone around the room, the ideas are ranked by popularity and either acted upon or discarded. This allows people to go further than their core competencies and explore other potential ideas.
TECHNIQUE #2 – BRAINSTORMING
Whilst brainstorming is not a new concept, by any means, it’s still an effective way to kick-start your meeting. Also known as ‘affinity mapping’, it’s a great way to get ideas out there that otherwise might not see the light of day. From agile coaches to agile project managers, there are ways to map out ideas that balance the team overall.
TECHNIQUE #3 – SPIDER WEBBING
Another fun way to innovate is a game-based technique known as spider-webbing, which is essentially a type of context diagramming with your own set of rules woven into proceedings. It’s a fun way to gain insight into the flows between departments, systems and having team leaders mentoring people within a team and it’s something that only involves using pictures i.e. no words. It’s also something that will break the ice and get the creative juices flowing. It makes for an interesting learning experience.
TECHNIQUE #4 – PRE-MORTEM
A fantastic way to address risk management is pre-mortem, which relates to death-planning and it involves considering things like your bucket list, as well as things you can do to remain safe and healthy. It might sound morbid, but it helps get the discussions started and it can yield really meaningful results as well as set up learning objectives overall for the team, getting them thinking about retrospectives rather than just pre-requisites for instance.
TECHNIQUE #5 – BUY A FEATURE
If you’ve ever felt frustrated by the inability of stakeholders to make decisions relating to prioritisation, Buy a Feature is a great technique for getting people talking about it. It will likely not result in agreement all around the table, but during the process, you will typically gain useful insight into what’s important, review core facilitation tools and needs, while looking at several potential iterations and the areas in which negotiation might be possible.
IN SUMMARY: What is good facilitation for an agile mindset?
The role of an agile team facilitator is diverse and these are just some of the innumerable techniques that you can use to be an effective agile facilitator and you can believe us when we say that there are many more. You can develop your style, of course, but if you get stuck and you don’t feel like the meetings that you’re facilitating aren’t meeting their objectives, injecting a little structured fun into proceedings can help all teams focus, whether project managers or product owners or any representatives across the entire organization.
People think better and are better at decision making when they’re stimulated and that’s exactly what these kinds of techniques are designed to achieve. Get creative in your meetings and you might be surprised about what you can achieve with your team members.
Learn more on how to develop your facilitation skills and how to adopt a facilitation mindset. Contact Leadership Tribe today.
Given the rise of Agile methodology and projects that adopt an agile way of working, there has been an emerging discussion on the concept of ‘Agile PMO’. Some people working in the agile domain are inclined to think that PMO is a rigid control function and has no role to play in agile organisations. Being a PMO professional myself, I beg to differ.
Agile Project Management vs Traditional Project Management
First of all, let’s take a look at the PMO in the ‘traditional’ sense and its major functions in the business context.
Traditional PMO
A ‘traditional’ PMO (Project Management Office) is often expected to act as a control function defining the governance framework, guidelines, templates and processes for project execution. With the restricted view, it is mistakenly perceived to be a management overhead that is inflexible and simply not compatible with agile.
Whilst a PMO warrants the appropriate governance and control are in place to safeguard project delivery. Its functions stretch far beyond that and offer a variety of other services, such as:
It is important to point out that, what a traditional PMO is or does can vary significantly according to different organizations and their requirements. For instance, it can serve different purposes and act as a governance body, advisory partner, training provider, support function, and some or all of them in the decision making process.
A successful PMO meet the specific requirement and deliver value to your organization. Similar to the other functions, it should always develop and evolve with the organization. As the organization become increasingly agile and better at self-organizing, there are some changes which need to be adopted by PMO as well. This leads us to the so-called ‘Agile’ PMO.
Agile PMO
The general functions of a PMO in an Agile project environment or an ‘Agile’ PMO probably won’t change much from the traditional sense. At least, I don’t believe so. Though how these functions are performed may vary considerably depends on the organization’s strategy of its Agile transformation.
Organizations may have strategic plans to implement an extensive Agile transformation and Agile training strategy throughout the organization or simply want to deploy an Agile process at the development level. The ‘Agile’ PMO needs to be shaped accordingly by the corporate strategy in terms of the design and solution for effective continuous improvement.
That being said, the functions of a PMO need to adapt to the Agile environment and some functions will inevitably vary one way or another from its traditional sense:
Role of an Advisor with Agile Methods
As the project teams and team members become more self-organizing, the ‘Agile’ PMO should play more of an advisory, consultative and advocating role. Instead of the mandate the changes, it is expected to advise project teams on the effective and efficient Agile processes and tools, help them to implement the appropriate Agile practices, roll out improvement on performance to the wider business context, and promote closer and more collaborative work relationship.
Agile Approach
Planning is an important part of the roles the PMOs play. In the agile team environment, an adaptive approach needs to be taken instead of the conventional plan-driven approach. Agile planning activities are more relevant at the strategic and portfolio level, as the project teams manage their releases, iterations, and daily planning cycles.
Value Delivery and Benefits Realisation
Any project we carry out should deliver some sort of value and realise some benefits for business. In Agile, this is of particular importance. The Agile PMO needs to appreciate and contextualise value stream mapping, change management and value assurance, assist the active and continual organisation and prioritisation of work, measure business value and report to the leadership team.
Consciousness of Leadership among Agile Practitioners
Where applicable, the Agile PMO helps the Product Owners and Senior Leaders to manage and prioritise the product and enterprise backlog based on their value delivery. It assists the leadership to ensure projects are aligned to the organization’s strategic initiatives. And it supports leaders to embrace servant leadership to remove organizational impediments and empower teams to explore and identify innovative solutions.
Agile Coach Training
An Agile PMO as a Centre of Excellence is best situated to ensure the effectiveness of Agile adoption and promote an Agile way of working. It enables the team and organisation to transform from ‘doing agile’ to ‘being agile’ – not only by providing knowledge on the Agile techniques, processes and practices but also by promoting the Agile mindset and nurturing culture shift. From scrum teams to lean-agile project delivery, we specialize in agile management approaches.
Less of a PMO in…
Whilst a successful Agile PMO needs to offer ‘more’ from certain aspects, I reckon it will not be involved as much in the ordinary PMO functions such as resource allocation, financial management or reporting, to best accommodate the Agile features in the new business context.
In summary, there is no ‘one size fits all’ PMO function for any agile organization and its project managers or stakeholders. Being ‘traditional’ or ‘agile’, it needs to serve the corporate strategy, adapt and evolves with the organisation’s changing requirements and project management landscape. Agile transformation of organisations doesn’t make the concept of a PMO obsolete or irrelevant, though it does necessitate some reconsideration on the role of a PMO.
