How can you use design thinking and agile methodologies to innovate?

There can be some confusion on Design Thinking and its relationship to customer centricity and Human Centered Design (HCD). Customer Centricity is the belief that the customer/end user is at the epicenter of your product and the product needs to continually delight the customer or it becomes obsolete. Design Thinking is a process, but more accurately a set of practices that implement Customer Centricity. HCD is one of those practices, along with empathy mapping, journey mapping, persona development, etc. Design Thinking practices continue to evolve as customers continue to evolve.

It is amazing that if you truly are naturally a human-centered empathizer than on most occasions design thinking starts mutually between you and the individual you are creating possible solutions for based on the information and emotions they have. People always like to ask why have you been successful in sales, or managment?..... and the answer is sometimes sadly simple. Being relatable, empathetic, and vulnerable usually leads to great things between two individuals. Instead of selling the solution it is ultimately figured out as a team and mutually agreed upon. Some problems that occur within management is that the individual leading does not have the ability to be naturally empathetic and therefore creativity is hindered.

Design Thinking is a human-centred approach that operates from Desirability ( Human ). It starts by understanding the root problems of customers and end users and empathy is at the heart of design thinking. The question you want to answer with Design Thinking is whether the end user will love or want to use the product, service etc. It follows a lean philosophy logic - Empathize, Define, Ideate, Prototype, Test and, start the process again.

Design Thinking is a user-centric Methodology or Framework to problem solving and innovation. And the clear focus lies on better understanding the Problem, before pre-maturely jumping into solutions. While at its core a simple 5-step process, it's important to note, that this is only part of the equation of what makes DT. It's also neither just a method, as a Framework to user centred innovation it utilises many methods and tools along the various steps of the process. Also mind, that the underlying process is not linear and resembles much of the iterative steps of more common agile frameworks like scrum, where certain phases are repeated, in order to gain more clarity, learn, and narrow in on a solution down the line.

So Agile isn't a methodology as much as it is a mindset. Methodology assumes some sort of process and right there in the values, Agile values "individuals and interactions over process and tools." Mindset is a set of beliefs that shape how we act. Therefore, Agile is a focus on individuals and interactions, working software, customer collaboration and responding to change. There are however, multiple Agile frameworks that help implement and sustain the mindset. These include Scrum and Kanban. SAFe also does this at scale and pulls in Design Thinking into the framework as well. These frameworks are adaptable and heavily center on individuals and customers which makes Design Thinking practices fit in easily.

Agile is one of the most understood concepts in common business. Many people think it's a gas pedal. A way of going faster. When it's most useful as a steering wheel. The benefits are the course correcting as your learn. While indirectly it helps you achieve impact faster, If you only focus on doing more without learning from past results you're missing the entire trick.

Being agile is a quality of adaptating to someone's needs. It leads to efficiency of interactions and collaboration, but also a positive mindset. The reason why an agile methodology is greatly beneficial is that it helps create positivity knowing that you can always adapt and deal with uncertainty. Maybe something does not work now, but the outlook is that it will work and that changing things up a bit might just get you there.....in this case will get you to where you ultimately want to be.

Agile methodologies all follow certain basic principles and values --> see the Agile Manifesto for instance. At its a core agile approach aims to stay flexible and responsive to change, by breaking work down into short, iterative working sessions /sprints and incrementally and continuously delivering and capturing value. This way of work allows to adapt quickly to changing market conditions and demands. Mind, that agile is less a tool or method and more a mindset about how we collaborate and approach work. When going down the agile rabbit hole it's good to focus of underlying principles and applying these to your respective context over chasing a bogus 'best practice' framework.

In my experience, those that master this integration create not only a culture of innovation, but a sustained culture of collaboration, growth, and excitement. It sounds so strange, but understanding more about customers motivations and feelings significantly helps motivate teams to deliver high quality products. Even something as basic as a persona can have a profound impact in communicating what is possible in technology to business leaders. These tactics if done well, lead to engaged team members who feel not only that they are valued, but the impact they can make on another individual will be beneficial. The combination of Agile frameworks and Design thinking practices provides purpose which motivates team members to stay.

Agility is completementary to design thinking in many ways. If design thinking leads to collaborative outcomes than agility is what helps you get there even in the toughest of times. The agility methodology helps you maintain persistence and the ability to rethink things as new and additional information may come your way. You may have to pivot and a solution you thought was correct could change completely or just be altered to create an even better solution.

In addition to the shared principles and practices mentioned above, another powerful aspect of combining design thinking and agile methodology is the fostering of a culture of collaboration and interdisciplinary teamwork. It encourages individuals from diverse backgrounds, such as designers, developers, marketers, and business analysts, to collaborate in cross-functional teams. This multidisciplinary approach brings together different perspectives and skill sets, leading to more comprehensive problem-solving and innovative solutions.

One simple way they compliment each other lies in their phasing. Design Thinking is much about exploring and discovering the problem, and creating options as a result. This by itself is iterative and incremental, and thus agile. However, when we think about implementation of findings, and pursuing the new found direction, we can transition into agile delivery frameworks such as SCRUM/KANBAN to bring the new ideas to market (faster), while continue to learn and iterate. All the while creating/delivering and capturing value early on.

Innovation is about discovering things that are both new and useful. This requires venturing it's uncharted, and unknown territory. In pursuing these risks we must expect that many of the things we try won't work. I've worked with teams where the target is to have a min of 50% failure rate on experiments, to ensure we aren't playing it safe. Making small investments to explore ideas, and then adapting your path based on what you learn is the key purpose of an agile approach.

Simply put use Design Thinking in early project stages/phases to figure out and actionable direction and what problem your really want to solve. Then use various agile principles and framework to implement, deliver and scale. Remember to work incrementally and iterative, and never skips on learning and receiving/gathering Feedback. Too many teams easily deliver one increment, and then jump into the next project without proper reviews or even reflection.

This approach also provides a visual structure for change and allows space for grounding, particularly helpful with change-averse systems

When we switched to this approach it really broke down silos that organically developed. It was no longer an "us" vs. "them" mentality. We also collaborate and communicate with our customer base which leads to better products and the users get to give feedback.

The main reason for using them is to enhance collaboration, efficient outcomes, and a feeling of team not just within the individual department teams, but cross functionally within the whole organization. Production needs sales, sales needs marketing, marketing needs finance, and fulfillment needs sales and production..... I think you catch my drift. All departments are part of a satisfactory solution and how you get there can be evolved and perfected when all department feel that they are a key part of the solution.

The primary tension is around planning vs discovering. It would be wasteful in a high change environment to plan everything, but it's also naive to have no plan. Unless you know everything in advance, which is impossible at the cutting edge of innovation, you have to adapt as you learn. Agile is often misrepresenting as "no planning". While traditional project managements is misrepresented as "everything planned up front". These two fight ad nauseam, instead of asking "How much planning would be helpful in this situation?"

Some big challenges are lack of understanding and lack of leadership. While many Agilists may note change starts from a bottom up mentality, in practice, successful change starts with leadership and a guiding coalition for the change. In some cases an Agile coach might be brought in to help drive change for the innovation. However, many organizations fail to adapt with innovation riptides and can get left behind. This is typically because to innovate requires a new way of thinking. If leaders support this new way and provide a clearly understood vision, innovation can take off. When they don't, organizations succumb to endless innovation "pilots" that unfortunately do not result in real change.

I think the main challenge is the human element. If all of us were humble, collaborative, and believes no one is bigger than a team than it would be easy to use them. The key is to have the correct leadership involved that instills the values needed for design thinking and agile methodology.