As I have written before (see here), there is a blazing discussion in the blogosphere (and at every well-respected conference on agile development right now) about how best to combine agile development practices and user centric design processes.
Jeremy Johnson (blog here), recently posted an interesting summary of the findings of the "Agile UX Retreat 2010 Group" here. In particular, I liked his take on the role of UX as a "glue" between product management ("product owners" in the agile scrum jargon) and software development (the "scrum team" to stick to the parlance). A nice slide summary can be found here.
This certainly matches with what I see in practice - really successful online development projects put UX as the centre of both the product development and software development processes - in fact this should practically be a "given" nowadays (even if it is hardly ever done successfully).
Nevertheless, for me, the really challenging issue is not doing this, but doing it efficiently - that is, bringing together traditional business analysis and design methods and roles with user experience practices efficiently (without undue overlap).
More to follow on this topic...
Tuesday, 25 May 2010
Monday, 24 May 2010
Blue ocean strategy in 8 slides
Another short posting today.
When I first read "Blue Ocean Strategy" a few years back, I was not so impressed - it was a good synthesis of thinking that had preceded it, but I failed to see what is new...
Several years on, I haven't really changed my mind about the content - it isn't new - but I guess I have gained an appreciation for what a professor during my undergraduate days used to call "masterful synthesis" ("there are no new ideas, just new configurations of old ideas", paraphrasing Audre Lorde) and I suspect I am a good deal more open to the fact that even small changes and innovations in business can be truly difficult to achieve.
BlueOceanStrategy.com is a really nice website that covers the core tools and techniques from the book; the strategy canvas,the "four actions" framework and others. If you haven't read the book, go here first!
And even "better", there is an 8-page summary deck. Now all that I have to do is work out where the blue ocean is in the IT consulting space.. which turns out to actually be quite difficult even with the nice tools.
Darn!
When I first read "Blue Ocean Strategy" a few years back, I was not so impressed - it was a good synthesis of thinking that had preceded it, but I failed to see what is new...
Several years on, I haven't really changed my mind about the content - it isn't new - but I guess I have gained an appreciation for what a professor during my undergraduate days used to call "masterful synthesis" ("there are no new ideas, just new configurations of old ideas", paraphrasing Audre Lorde) and I suspect I am a good deal more open to the fact that even small changes and innovations in business can be truly difficult to achieve.
BlueOceanStrategy.com is a really nice website that covers the core tools and techniques from the book; the strategy canvas,the "four actions" framework and others. If you haven't read the book, go here first!
And even "better", there is an 8-page summary deck. Now all that I have to do is work out where the blue ocean is in the IT consulting space.. which turns out to actually be quite difficult even with the nice tools.
Darn!
Thursday, 6 May 2010
Why checklists aren't all bad!
Just a short entry today...
Let me start with a bold statement; I hate checklists - people begin to rely on them and then stop thinking outside the lists....
However, at latest since Atul Gawande's "Checklist Manifesto" the checklist is back in.
I have been reminded over the last weeks of how useful a few simple checks are when you are in a hurry. More than this, checklists can be used to enforce standard behaviours - perhaps not the most up-to-date and empowered management thinking, but effective.
The key is to keep them lightweight, keep them simple and keep questioning them - they are the armbands for swimming and do not replace kicking your feet!
A useful link to finish: a checklist for checklists.
Let me start with a bold statement; I hate checklists - people begin to rely on them and then stop thinking outside the lists....
However, at latest since Atul Gawande's "Checklist Manifesto" the checklist is back in.
I have been reminded over the last weeks of how useful a few simple checks are when you are in a hurry. More than this, checklists can be used to enforce standard behaviours - perhaps not the most up-to-date and empowered management thinking, but effective.
The key is to keep them lightweight, keep them simple and keep questioning them - they are the armbands for swimming and do not replace kicking your feet!
A useful link to finish: a checklist for checklists.
Tuesday, 4 May 2010
Star trek & social media marketing
At the risk of destroying my "online image", I have a confession; I am a Star Trek geek (not that this is going to come as a surprise to anyone who knows me!). This is probably why I liked the following info-graphic that explains the roles and activities required to use social media as a marketing tool effectively. Check it out here.
Tuesday, 13 April 2010
Visualising the customer experience
OK, I admit that it is becoming a bit of a theme in my blog, but the value of visualisation tools to enable change in organisations, to clarify target-state goals and to motivate projects can hardly be over-emphasised.
I stumbled across a great blog, "Designing Change" that I would recommend - there are some great examples of customer experience visualisation (and I do not mean wireframes and visual design, but rather conceptual visualisation).
The challenge with such imagery (as I have found painfully, not being the most visual of people myself), is to find the right metaphor for the particular concern that you have. Of course tools and methods can help there a lot (and I have already posted several entries on this - see for example here, here and here). But the best way to get going is through "inspiration" (or copying, as I prefer to call it). Here is a great collection of conceptual visualisations to get you going (from a guy called Dave Armano who has impressed me a few times on his blog:
Created with Admarket's flickrSLiDR.
Have fun.
I stumbled across a great blog, "Designing Change" that I would recommend - there are some great examples of customer experience visualisation (and I do not mean wireframes and visual design, but rather conceptual visualisation).
The challenge with such imagery (as I have found painfully, not being the most visual of people myself), is to find the right metaphor for the particular concern that you have. Of course tools and methods can help there a lot (and I have already posted several entries on this - see for example here, here and here). But the best way to get going is through "inspiration" (or copying, as I prefer to call it). Here is a great collection of conceptual visualisations to get you going (from a guy called Dave Armano who has impressed me a few times on his blog:
Created with Admarket's flickrSLiDR.
Have fun.
Sunday, 28 March 2010
"The" 3-Ps of entrepreneurship
I finally caught up with a few of my podcast subscriptions this weekend. One that got me thinking was from the University of Stanford - the "Entrepreneurship thought leadership" lecture series. I have been following it for several weeks; each lecture is with another entrepreneur and, it being Stanford, they have had an impressive collection of names, but the last week's with Steve Case (ex-CEO of AOL) was particularly interesting.
He spent most of his time talking about his "glory years" (though of course he did not formulate it quite like this) and came across as an authentic and reflective guy, but I particularly liked the structure of his overall talk - his 3-Ps for entrepreneurship: People, Passion and Perseverance.
Working for a fairly large organisation, I was pleased that he tipped his hat to the entrepreneurial spirit that can be achieved in the best big companies and reducing it to passion and persevance with the right people is a nice simple formula.
Listen in if you get a chance.
The title of this entry is "The" 3-Ps (with the "The" in inverted commas) because a short search of the web reveals that there appear to be dozens of 3-Ps (of success, sales, business etc. - most often they seem to be People, Process, Product...)
Case's flavour seems more immediate and actionable than most, and it also mirrors my own thinking on hard work, coaching and enthusiasm in the workplace. Perhaps this makes me biased but I am going to stick with Case on this ;-).
He spent most of his time talking about his "glory years" (though of course he did not formulate it quite like this) and came across as an authentic and reflective guy, but I particularly liked the structure of his overall talk - his 3-Ps for entrepreneurship: People, Passion and Perseverance.
Working for a fairly large organisation, I was pleased that he tipped his hat to the entrepreneurial spirit that can be achieved in the best big companies and reducing it to passion and persevance with the right people is a nice simple formula.
Listen in if you get a chance.
The title of this entry is "The" 3-Ps (with the "The" in inverted commas) because a short search of the web reveals that there appear to be dozens of 3-Ps (of success, sales, business etc. - most often they seem to be People, Process, Product...)
Case's flavour seems more immediate and actionable than most, and it also mirrors my own thinking on hard work, coaching and enthusiasm in the workplace. Perhaps this makes me biased but I am going to stick with Case on this ;-).
Saturday, 20 March 2010
Design thinking & strategy - a book review
As threatened in an earlier post, this entry is another book review.
"Design thinking; integrating innovation, customer experience and brand value", edited by Thomas Lockwood (of course, available via amazon), brings together a bunch of big names in design management and provides a nicely balanced overview of current ideas about the role of design in innovation, service delivery, but in particular in developing brands.
I especially liked the contributions by Kevin Clark & Ron Smith from IBM Corporate Markting (on the value of leveraging design professionals and skills to provide insights in all aspects of the business), Erik Abbing & Christa van Gessel (who provide a 4-step method for brand-driven innovation) and Mark Jones & Fran Samalionis from IDEO (who have put together a nice framework to design new service innvoations).
Despite the many interesting essays, I was underwhelmed by the book as a whole. I guess it is my nature (or background, or both), but I was looking for a more complete answer, showing how design thinking can be applied / integrated into the business - beyond the straightforward application of ideation and visualisation techniques to the product and brand development process.
Using design thinking (and at the very least design techniques) combined with more analytical/structured methods in the business strategy space to bring the "outside-in approach" into an organisation and to give those ideas traction feels like an idea on the brink of maturity - in a couple of years this is going to be entirely mainstream.
Nevertheless, if this book was anything to go on, there is a lot of work to be done before then. The tools need to mature to be applied in the broader business strategy arena (ie. outside of the product development space where they are most at home). It feels like progress is being made quickly (with new blogs and companies popping up daily) - it is a fun time to dig into this space!
Given my own more analytical background, I personally find it rather frustrating trying to create rather than deduce, but also all the more rewarding when it pays off - I hope to be posting later this year on the topic of design thinking in the context of business architecture as my ideas mature.
As such any help that can be found in books like this on methods and approaches are thoroughly welcome!
"Design thinking; integrating innovation, customer experience and brand value", edited by Thomas Lockwood (of course, available via amazon), brings together a bunch of big names in design management and provides a nicely balanced overview of current ideas about the role of design in innovation, service delivery, but in particular in developing brands.
I especially liked the contributions by Kevin Clark & Ron Smith from IBM Corporate Markting (on the value of leveraging design professionals and skills to provide insights in all aspects of the business), Erik Abbing & Christa van Gessel (who provide a 4-step method for brand-driven innovation) and Mark Jones & Fran Samalionis from IDEO (who have put together a nice framework to design new service innvoations).
Despite the many interesting essays, I was underwhelmed by the book as a whole. I guess it is my nature (or background, or both), but I was looking for a more complete answer, showing how design thinking can be applied / integrated into the business - beyond the straightforward application of ideation and visualisation techniques to the product and brand development process.
Using design thinking (and at the very least design techniques) combined with more analytical/structured methods in the business strategy space to bring the "outside-in approach" into an organisation and to give those ideas traction feels like an idea on the brink of maturity - in a couple of years this is going to be entirely mainstream.
Nevertheless, if this book was anything to go on, there is a lot of work to be done before then. The tools need to mature to be applied in the broader business strategy arena (ie. outside of the product development space where they are most at home). It feels like progress is being made quickly (with new blogs and companies popping up daily) - it is a fun time to dig into this space!
Given my own more analytical background, I personally find it rather frustrating trying to create rather than deduce, but also all the more rewarding when it pays off - I hope to be posting later this year on the topic of design thinking in the context of business architecture as my ideas mature.
As such any help that can be found in books like this on methods and approaches are thoroughly welcome!
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