6 Insights about Design Thinking, Scrum and Lean Startup

  1. What is Scrum about?
  2. What is Design Thinking about?
  3. What is Lean Startup about?
  4. What do Lean Startup, Scrum and Design Thinking have in common?
  5. How to use Design Thinking in agile development teams?
  6. What are the common obstacles to establish cross-functional teams?

Wrap-up of a discussion of professionals in the agile field during the weekly PoDoJo Skype Chat on 16.05.2013.

1. What is Scrum about?

  • Scrum is a framework to organize work.
  • Today scrum is mainly applied to software development.

 

2. What is Design Thinking about?

  • Design thinking is a method to generate and aggregate ideas. 
  • Design thinking makes ideas tangible - by iterating, failing, learning and finally succeeding. 
  • Design Thinking is a mind set, UX design is a skill. Design thinking is not UX design.
  • Ideation is only a minor part of the whole Design Thinking process. 

 

3. What is Lean Startup about?

  • Lean Startup is a methodology by Eric Ries to find out if a business fails or succeeds, by quick and short iterations of the whole business, focus on actionable metrics, and validation of actionable metrics.
  • Lean Startup shows how to apply Scrum to a business. 

 

4. What do Lean Startup, Scrum and Design Thinking have in common?

  • Lean Startup, Scrum and Design Thinking share iterations as an agile element and require a similar mindset.
  • Iterations foster fast, time-boxed learning, based on insights about early failures and quick wins, by collecting feedback, inspect and adapt.
  • Agile development and Design Thinking are compatible with each other. 
  • Design Thinking is good for ideation. Scrum is good for grooming and execution.

 

5. How to use Design Thinking in agile development teams?

  • Inclusion of the whole team into the whole Design Thinking process makes sense, but is not easy to implement. 
  • Could be used to deliver UX solutions to the Scrum team. Success depends on the problem and on the team’s ability to detach from known solutions.
  • Ideation with Design Thinking works with whole team, if Product Owner sets the right context. Validating Design Thinking results with the whole team works always.

 

6. What are the common obstacles to establish cross-functional teams?

  • Everyone can empathize with a user, but for teams working for years on the same application it’s hard to abstract and think outside the box.
  • If the Product Owner does 80% discovery and 20% execution, and the team does it the other way round, there will be 60% of discovery work for the Product Owner and for UX, where the team cannot join. That’s why a Scrum team cannot join the whole Design Thinking process.
  • Design Thinking works best in a truly cross-functional team with developers, UX designers, and testers.
  • Most organizations do not understand the value of cross-functional teams – it’s more than a team of developers with different skill levels.
  • There is an anxiety to learn something new.
  • Value of UX designers in a team is underestimated.
  • Testers are not included since it’s expected that developers could test their own dog food.
  • The Product Owner is made responsible for UX design, and it should be specified in a “briefing”.
  • Efficiency is more important than collaboration.

Kommentar schreiben

Kommentare: 5
  • #1

    Lisbeth (Montag, 10 Februar 2014 12:38)

    Scrum is undeniably the winner of the agile method wars. Thanks to the http://www.scrumstudy.com 's vast network of Certified Scrum Trainers and Agile Certification Courses.

  • #2

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  • #5

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