Building Successful Design Thinking Teams

Successfully Designing Agile Innovation For Companies and Organizations

Anna S. Link

• Publisher: Books on Demand
• Year: 2021
• Print ISBN: 9783754373590
• eBook ISBN: 9783754383049
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Management
• Index: Business

Design thinking is on everyone's lips. The method is considered to have miraculous powers with regard to the innovative strength of companies and organizations. Many companies are extraordinarily successful with it, others fail.This book is not a textbook on design thinking, and even though the method is presented, the focus is not on the phase model of design thinking - of which, by the way, there are several interpretations - but on the question of what makes design thinking successful. Which pitfalls lead to the fact that some companies are not successful with Design Thinking at all? What framework conditions must be created in order to be successful with Design Thinking initiatives? And finally: What are the requirements with regard to the composition and structure of innovative Design Thinking teams?The author has been advising companies on their use of agile methods and frameworks and on agilization for years. He has a broad wealth of experience in key success factors for the introduction of Design Thinking and the collaboration of Design Thinking with other agile methods and frameworks, such as Lean Startup or Scrum.

A Design Thinking Phase Model

For the presentation in this book, I assume a phase model as it is used in Germany, for example, by the Hasso Plattner Institute and a large number of trainers and experts trained there.

The model is based on a clearly structured concept. The six phases of the model are first divided into the problem space and the solution space. Both spaces comprise three phases each. While the problem space is about evaluating and understanding the problem or issue, the solution space is about developing solutions. In addition, both spaces are based on a diverging approach, in which more information and insights are to be gained, and on a converging part, in which the information and insights gained are in turn sifted, evaluated and concretized.

Within the different phases, a wide variety of methods can be used, depending on the problem and the team composition. There are books that offer hundreds of methods and approaches. Of course, not all of them have to be used and many of them have never been used even by experienced design thinkers. In fact, Design Thinking is not so much about methods and theories, but more about "doing it" and maintaining a healthy critical faculties towards the gained results, to question them and - if the gain of knowledge is not sufficient - to pursue other methods and approaches. The goal is always the realization of benefits for the customer, and this can look very different, just like the way to achieve it.

Basically, one must keep in mind: The method and the process are more or less the basis, the implementation in everyday life. However, this in turn is based on an attitude that harmonizes with the principles of Design Thinking and expresses itself through a certain type of collaboration with employees and customers. Without a corresponding attitude, Design Thinking, like every agile method and every agile framework, is not powerful, but at best a collection of new methods and techniques, whose usefulness, however, is considerably limited.

Behind this is a certain culture that is lived in the organization. We are not talking here about any external marketing statements aimed at winning over customers, but about the lived basis for activities, statements and cooperation within the organization itself and within the organization with its various stakeholders. We will discuss this topic in more detail in later sections.

In the following, let us run through a Design Thinking process using a concrete Design Thinking Challenge as an example. The methods used are, of course, only a selection from many equally applicable possibilities. We will use the following example (due to the current situation during the creation of the book):

Re-design of a collaboration in teams in a situation where parts of the team are often not present at the same location for a longer period of time, but for example work in a home office or have their place of work in other branches or even countries ("distributed teams").

Understand

In the "Understanding" step, a common idea of what problem / challenge needs to be solved is to be developed. The aim is to understand the various problem dimensions, to make the participants aware of and share their assumptions, and to create motivation in the team to find a good solution to the named problem.

Team members often find it difficult to really focus on the problem and not immediately go into finding a solution. Important aspects are often lost in the process. Although it can be assumed that the team members have a rough idea of the problem, are all the important points really known to everyone involved? Does the team's idea of the problem also correspond to that of the customer? Are all participants also aware of what is part of the problem for the customer and what is not? Far too often, without a clear picture, solutions are only found for partial aspects or aspects that are important for the customer are not addressed at all.

Solution approaches are then based only on one's own experiences and points of view and may not be of any use to the customer, or only to a limited extent.

Every Design Thinking project starts with a Design Challenge. As already mentioned, we will approach our further considerations based on a concrete challenge. This is as follows:

Re-design of a collaboration in teams in a situation where parts of the team are often not present at the same location for a longer period of time, but for example work in a home office or have their place of work in other branches or even countries ("distributed teams").

A useful first step is for the team to jointly determine which statements/information from the Challenge need to be looked at more closely. It is important that we work with an interdisciplinary team with a wide range of experience and knowledge in order to incorporate synergies from all possible perspectives and to consider the question as holistically as possible.

A good tool that is often used at the beginning of a challenge is called "semantic analysis". It comes from the field of linguistics. In this process, the different members gather their associations to the different components of the statement. In this phase, we want to gather as wide a range of different viewpoints as possible, so that we can also find and record viewpoints and aspects that are not obvious at first glance.

Based on our example, it could be useful, for example, to take a closer look at terms such as "team collaboration", "home office", "collaboration with other branches/locations", "cross-border collaboration". This can be done, for example, by having the team members write their associations with the various terms on individual moderation cards or sticky notes or, if necessary, sketch them; these are then grouped into the various terms and statements.

For example, regarding the term "home office," statements such as "disruption by roommates," "no traffic jams on the way to work," "loneliness," "not being up to date," "work time control," "life/work balance," etc. could be recorded.

Once we have worked out a joint overview of the various aspects and viewpoints, it can be useful, depending on the issue, to take a closer look at the people / users / stakeholders affected by the challenge and their needs. A very suitable tool for this is a design charrette (charrette, French = "cart"). Three columns are used. The first is labeled "User, Person or Stakeholder", the second is used to record the assumed needs of the entries in the first column, and the third is used to record the topics that need to be investigated further (for example, in the form of an interview).

When defining the users in the first column, it is a good idea to also get inspiration from "extreme users", i.e. possibly users who have a very special need or requirement associated with the Challenge. This could be, for example, people who are not able to drive to work every day due to health problems, or single parents who have small children and perhaps only have a very limited space to retreat. Another user group may include people who are not only not present in the office, but may be in other locations due to their professional activities, where, for example, the connection to telephone and Internet is not permanently ensured to a sufficient extent. Another possible user group could be colleagues who work in another part of the world and may have night off during the "main team's" usual working hours.

If we think we have identified a large number of relevant users (we can add to this later if necessary), then we move to the middle column. Here we look for each user's needs in the first column. To make it more personal, we can put the needs in the form of quotes. This supports an empathic perception. For exampl...

Table of contents

• Table of Contents
• Foreword
• Introduction to Design Thinking
• A Design Thinking Phase Model
• Implementing design thinking in companies
• Design Thinking and Leadership
• Success factors for design thinking teams
• Establishment and development of design thinking teams
• Copyright