When considering how to get from understanding a problem to designing and delivering a solution, the process is a predictable set of conversations that inform every step along the way from ideation to delivery.

​Getting "from-concept-to-market" faster and more effectively yields competitive advantage as well as a solution more likely to resonate with the people who will ultimately buy or use it.

The concepts described herein apply whether your field of endeavor is operational excellence or product development.

As an organizational leader facilitating efforts to improve a process or product manager engaging your design team, you face predictable challenges when moving from some vague notion of a concept to actually designing the solution.

Here are some aspects that affect your future state design process:

• Clarity
  Why are we doing this?
  ​Why does it matter?
  What problems are we trying to solve for and who will buy/use our solution?
  How do the problems materialize in the quality of life of those affected?
  How else does the problem materialize?
  What are the qualities of the ideal solution?

​

• Velocity
  How do we get the design flywheel started?
  What does progress look like in the early stages of the process?
  How do we create a "fast path" to produce high-quality design deliverables that will inform the designers and architects of the envisioned solution?
  
  
• Engagement
  How do we develop trust and confidence within the design team?
  How do we acquire the whole-hearted participation of the people tasked with designing the solution?
  How do we vet the impact of the envisioned solution with potential buyers/users?

​Early conversations focus on Why and What: 

• Understanding what the problem is and why it matters, and designing by describing what the ideal qualities of the solution entail, in just enough essential detail.
• These conversations are enabled via agile design methods that produce specific deliverables intended for decision-makers, stakeholders as well as solutions designers and architects.

Latter conversations focus on How:

• Designing and delivering the solution.
• These conversations are enabled by agile development methods that produce specific deliverables intended for decision-makers as well as solutions developers and delivery channel stakeholders.

This approach lends itself to introducing the right conversation at the right time.

Conversation #1: Learning and Discovery

The scope of this conversation pertains to the understanding of the problem. ​This conversation is in scope of agile design methods.​

Allow the voice of the people who are experiencing the problem(s) to inform this conversation. Listen and learn and document that learning to describe what each problem looks like and summarize them in problem statements in addition to statements of what is working well.

Document this learning and discovery conversation to inform the future state design conversation. Decide whether or not to proceed to a future state design conversation.

Conversation #2: Future State Design

The scope of this conversation pertains to the describing the ideal solution. This conversation is in scope of agile design methods.

Allow a dedicated and accountable group of contributors to inform a conversation around describing "what" the ideal solution looks without describing "how" the solution will be implemented. The descriptive language is free from any implementation jargon and focuses on delivering a clear description of the envisioned solution that may include process definitions, key solution deliverables, user experience criteria, risks, issues and opportunities.

Document this future state design conversation to inform the solution development conversation. Decide whether or not to continue to a solution development conversation.

Conversation #3: Solution Development

The scope of this conversation pertains to designing and developing the solution. This conversation is out of scope of agile design methods. 

Allow a dedicated and accountable group of designers and architects to inform a conversation that describes "how" the ideal solution will be implemented. The descriptive language is rich in implementation detail. It may provide design alternatives that provide varying degrees of cost, risk, time, return on investment, etc. Decisions are made regarding design alternatives and leading to the actual development of a solution.

Document this solutions development to inform the solution delivery conversation. This conversation is out of scope of agile design methods.

Conversation #4: Solution Delivery

The scope of this conversation pertains to the delivery and support of the solution. This conversation is out of scope of agile design methods.

Allow a dedicated and accountable group to inform a conversation that oversees the delivery of the solution. This includes launching and promoting the solution as well as supporting it and providing user experience feedback to inform solution improvement efforts.

Agile design methods are those techniques and leadership skills that enable a future state design process characterized by high velocity, collaborative engagement and clarity of ideation. The resulting design is typically produced at a lower cost than traditional methods with a high degree of precision and improved stakeholder engagement and satisfaction.

The outputs of these conversations intentionally stop short of designing the implementation, They describe what the problems are and what the ideal solution qualities look like. This informs solutions architects and designers who are responsible for determining how to design the solution and the production/development teams that will deliver it.

Agile Design Methods: The What Perspective
Agile design methods, as quickly as practically possible, describe what is envisioned to be an ideal process or solution. They produce ideation deliverables that describe what the problems are and what the ideal solution qualities look like.

Exercising this type of "Design the What" discipline respects a separation of concerns between the market problem definition and the solution design definition. It informs the solution designers and architects who are responsible to "Design the How" of the solution under discussion.

​At the time of this writing, the phrase "agile design methods" is not widely used or understood.

Agile Development Methods: The How Perspective
In contrast, agile development methods, as quickly as practically possible, define how to architect the solution and then proceed in building and delivering that solution. They ​produce deliverables that describe how the solution is to be implemented and they produce the actual solution. ​

At the time of this writing, the phrase "agile software development" is commonplace and is routinely associated with the word "agile".

The purpose of this primer has been to establish a foundation of a conversational framework that provides context as to where agile design methods fit in an overall solution development life cycle.

It sets the stage for further elaboration on topics related to agile design methods, collaborative creativity, product development and user experience.

- Chuck

Subscribe to my free blog updates to receive content that vividly describes the techniques and leadership skills that embody the practice of agile design methods. The blog contains not only my ideas on the topic, but the insight of others who actively work and thrive wholeheartedly in the realms of collaborative creativity.

​I look forward to you joining us. It's going to be quite a journey.

However, in my experience, having a glossary available to collaborators is worth the effort because it serves as an accelerator an work effort accelerator whereas the absence of a glossary causes delays and other negative side-effects.

Here is an approach I use and recommend while facilitating collaborative meetings;  

1. Prepare: Make sure that someone (you or a designated person in the meeting) serves as a scribe to record words and their meanings. When meeting in a room, I suggest having 8" x 6" Post-it Super Sticky Notes and a Sharpie permanent marker available at all times. When meeting virtually online or over the phone, I suggest having the Evernote application open at all times.
   
   
2. Listen: While facilitating the collaborative conversation, listen for concepts or notions that might not be easily understood by others not as invested in the conversation. When the you hear a word or phrase, stop the conversation briefly, "Let's capture that idea as a glossary term."
   
   
3. Record:  Typically there is one person in the conversation who can authoritatively verbalize the glossary term. Have that person state it while the scribe records it.
   
   
4. Confirm: Have the scribe read it back to the group to get confirmation. Record any refinements and then move on with the meeting.
   
   For example, in a recent cross-functional human resources effort, our team came up with these terms. One of them had a single meaning. Another had multiple meanings stated in separate sentenced.
   
   exit interview – A final meeting to collect specific assets from the employee. A survey conducted with an individual who is separating from employment.
   
   involuntary – The condition upon which separation occurs that is not initiated by the employee.
   
   line management – A set of managers in the lower layers of the management hierarchy (e.g., team leader, supervisor) that manage employees who have no supervisory responsibilities.
   
   
5. Publish: Long after the meeting, because you were intentional you now have the corporate memory to reconstruct what was said by publishing the recorded glossary terms in whatever form is appropriate (e.g., appendix in a published document, page on a collaborative website or wiki).

Making your glossary accessible to all stakeholders provides a clarifying reference resource that accelerates understanding and positively affect the progress of your collaborative work effort. I hope this has been a helpful perspective for you.

​- Chuck

Subscribe to my free blog updates to receive content that vividly describes the techniques and leadership skills that embody the practice of agile design methods. The blog contains not only my ideas on the topic, but the insight of others who actively work and thrive wholeheartedly in the realms of collaborative creativity.

​I look forward to you joining us.
​

When asked authentically, this three-syllable question creates connectedness, trust and understanding with anyone, even a person you have just met.

This matters because empathy, the ability to understand and share the feelings of others, is an essential ingredient in the process of designing solutions for people.

How can we understand how others are feeling unless we ask? Asking the question unlocks the potential to observe problems that would otherwise go unobserved. This is a gold mine of understanding for solutions designers.

Understanding how people in the world are feeling is easy. Just ask them. They'll tell you. Listen to them and learn what problems they are experiencing. It will inform your design decisions.

When the woman you are talking with senses that you care enough about her to ask how her day is going, it breathes fresh life into the conversation, even if she is having a bad day. Somehow when you care enough to ask, it reaffirms her humanity and causes her to reflect on how she's feeling.

If we, as solutions designers, practice this kind of authentic caring, listening and learning on an ongoing basis, we tap into a limitless supply of priceless insight for free by simply exercising a common courtesy towards another person.

Your empathy for people and willingness to be vulnerable enough to go there immensely affect your solution design.

- Chuck

Subscribe to my free blog updateseepurl.com/bHSiMX to receive content that vividly describes the techniques and leadership skills that embody the practice of agile design methods. The blog contains not only my ideas on the topic, but the insight of others who actively work and thrive wholeheartedly in the realms of collaborative creativity.

I hope you'll get a lot of benefit from it.

Designing a solution without knowing what problem you're solving leads to this.

This is classic. I'll let the statement made stand on its own.

​I've been there, done that! How about you?

- Chuck

Subscribe to my free blog updates to receive content that vividly describes the techniques and leadership skills that embody the practice of agile design methods. The blog contains not only my ideas on the topic, but the insight of others who actively work and thrive wholeheartedly in the realms of collaborative creativity.

You just might benefit from joining us.

As operational excellence professionals and solutions designers, we face the inevitable challenges of leading a series cross-functional working meetings. These meetings exist for a distinctive purpose and must be run in a distinctive way. They can either be great or they can be like Kryptonite. 

Typically these meetings are comprised of people who represent their respective function in the organization and we are the designated leader. The corporate champion of the cross-functional effort deems this group a "team" at a kick-off meeting and routinely vanishes, as she should, for the duration because of more pressing executive priorities.

Team? Hardly. The reality is that at the onset the newly formed ensemble of free-agents is anything but a functioning team. This particular group has never worked together before.

The aspirations of the effort rest on the shoulders of the leader at the onset. As the person leading this effort, it is imperative to address the immediate challenges to build and maintain engagement while actually getting things done.

In contrast, the other kind of meeting is sheer drudgery and you can recognize it when you see people:

• disengaged
• passively observing without participating
• interacting with their email or smartphone
• tired
• bored
• sleeping
• drained
• grandstanding
• complying
• checked-out
• only speaking when spoken to
• relying on the leader doing most of the talking
• ​praying for the meeting to end early or for a fire drill

These meetings are agonizing. I would rather rush out on the campus lawn and empale myself prostrate on a sprinkler head than to have to lead or be part of these kinds of meetings. Really.

As a leaders of these work efforts, we must do everything that we can to shift the atmosphere of these meetings. I offer the following key ingredients that a leader must intentionally manage in the meeting experience in order to get the design flywheel spinning:

• ​Trust
  As a participant, I feel safe, understood and respected
• Velocity
  As a group, we collectively understand how progress is to be made and we are actively contributing to that work effort
  
• Learning
  As individuals we are learning new things that contribute to our personal growth and organizational effectiveness
• Fun
  As a group, we have a special alchemy that doesn't occur unless we are together

These sound like platitudes. But, the responsibility is on us as leaders of these cross-functional work efforts to conduct them in a way such that people contribute their best and so that the organization benefits, learns and adapts from the work done by the group.

There is no one silver bullet, however, over the years, I have developed a variety of techniques that have proven to contribute to a trusting, fun and higher-velocity meeting environment. Some of these might work for you.

Things To Say (At the Onset and Often)

• "I am committed to leading the team as effectively and efficiently as possible and will rely upon your contributions to produce the deliverables expected of us."
• "We make progress when we write things down and capture ideas."
• "I acknowledge that we all have responsibilities beyond this team. We have our day jobs. Yet, we need your participation. I look forward to having a lot of fun, hard work, organizational learning and personal growth in our time together."
• "We come into this meeting wearing the hat of our particular organizational function. I'm going to ask you to take your hats off in this meeting and, to the degree possible, speak to what is best for delivering to the needs of the organization as a whole."
• Ask open-ended questions and be comfortable with the dead air that follows. If the participants have deer-in-headlights stares or hesitate, say, "This isn't a guess-what-the-leader-is-thinking question. I truly don't have an answer in mind. We want to know what you think about this." Never, ever, ever answer your own question. Letting participants answer questions helps to foster their sense of ownership rather than relying on you to do the thinking for them.

Things To Have

• Co-leader, if at all possible, for the duration of the meetings. A diving buddy is a tremendous asset in leading these efforts and doing effective discovery and future state design meetings.
• Bring food and coffee to the first few meetings, and every meeting if possible. It expresses a graciousness and welcomeness that is distinctive and genuine.
• Bring toys and thingies for people to manipulate. My personal list includes a travel-size Etch-a-Sketch, pipe cleaners, Silly Putty, Slinky, squishables, squeezables, rival fish, Nerf balls, spinning tops, splat balls, Tangles and hand sanitizer. Just keep them in a "bag of tricks" that you bring your meeting. Lay them on the table at the onset of the meeting. People will figure out what to do with them.
• Bring snacks for afternoon breaks.
• Yellow stickies and Sharpies.
• Whiteboard and at least four colored erasable markers
• Projector for reviewing work products as a team
• Smartphone for taking photos of whiteboard work and emailing them back to yourself to have a crisp memory of what was discussed/discovered corporately
• A sense of humor, humility and vulnerability. Having an aura of over-confidence and wanting to be right all the time is a trust killer and stifles the kind of vulnerability that leads to creativity and positive change.

Things To Do

• At the onset, be intentional in helping the team to get to know one another in a way that helps in self-awareness and other-awareness, while providing the opportunity for personal growth. The time you spend here up front in developing awareness and having some disclosure will contribute to success down the line. I am a huge fan of the True Colors assessment and recommend using their card sorting exercise in the meeting room. Teams refer to this True Color reference point again and again throughout the meetings. It's an effective harmonizer and contributes to authenticity and vulnerability in order to develop trust within the team.
• Observe the energy level in the meeting. When participation wanes, take a break
• Sit in someone else's seat, literally. Break up the routine from meeting to meeting by intentionally taking the seat where somebody else sat the last time. This helps guard against people settling into a routine from meeting-to-meeting.
• Consider half-day meetings, to maintain high energy levels and to respect people's other priorities.
• Create a high-level agenda of the meeting, just bullet points, with the desired outcomes of the particular meeting. Share that verbally at the onset of the meeting and then manage to it.
• Tag team with your co-leader. One of you facilitates while the other scribes. You lead some meetings or portions of the meetings. They lead other meetings or portions.
• Have a de-brief time with your co-leader (or time of personal reflection, if you are leading by yourself) immediately following your meeting to reflect upon what worked well, where tension and opportunity exists in the room, and where to go next.
• Send out a "thank you email" shortly after the meeting to thank people for their contributions and participation, to reinforce good progress and to affirm their good work. Keep it simple and informal and end with "I look forward to our next time together". Genuine attention and appreciation go a long way in reinforcing good teamwork.

If you have found this to be helpful, have a comment, or if you have other ideas for that make for exceptional cross-functional meetings, I would love to hear from you.

​- Chuck

Subscribe to my free blog updates to receive content that vividly describes the techniques and leadership skills that embody the practice of agile design methods. The blog contains not only my ideas on the topic, but the insight of others who actively work and thrive wholeheartedly in the realms of collaborative creativity.

​I look forward to you joining us. It's going to be quite a journey.

Users want solutions that cater to them. If you bring them a solution that does not respect who they are, it will not resonate with them and will ultimately not be a viable solution to their problem.

Solution designers want a clear description regarding the problem, who it affects and what the envisioned benefits of the ideal solution entail. Thy need this so that they can define a solution with respect for who it is for and how it affects them. If you bring them a solution statement, you have disrespected their opinion.

Don't disrespect users and solution designers by leading them by the nose to your envisioned solutions.

- Chuck

Subscribe to my free blog updates to receive content that vividly describes the techniques and leadership skills that embody the practice of agile design methods. The blog contains not only my ideas on the topic, but the insight of others who actively work and thrive wholeheartedly in the realms of collaborative creativity.

I hope you'll join us.

The demand for accelerated change is pervasive. Responding to it requires an effective, efficient means of defining the problem space so that solution designers can create a future state solution that delivers value by actually solving the problems people are experiencing. 

​This is the context in which the spirit of agile design thrives.

As a business analyst or solutions designer operating in this space, it requires an approach where defining the problem and designing the solution need to be done with a minimalist's acumen.

Developing an agile design perspective and related set of techniques, rituals and practices really helps in this future-state design wheelhouse.

So, I'm reaching out to my fellow practitioners. What's it like in your world? ​What's in your agile designer toolbox? How's it working for you? 

​I look forward to hearing from you.

- Chuck

Subscribe to my free blog updates to receive content that vividly describes the techniques and leadership skills that embody this practice of agile design methods. The blog contains not only my ideas on the topic, but the insight of others who actively work and thrive wholeheartedly in the realms of collaborative creativity.

Join us for the journey.