Abderrazak HAMZAOUI
- Introduction
“This holistic approach has six characteristics: built-in instability, self-organizing project teams, overlapping development phases, “multilearning,” subtle control, and organizational transfer of learning. The New New Product Development Game by Hirotaka Takeuchi and Ikujiro Nonaka, when the word SCRUM was firstly announced in management. “
https://hbr.org/1986/01/the-new-new-product-development-game.
If the agile methods now are used mostly in IT project, they have first been generated in industrial world with the development of R&D projects. R&D project were and are always specific and unique. R and R&D projects Management is always about not best practice but learning best practice. So Agile methods allow a genuine opportunity to manage R and R&D projects. But first how to choose the best R or R&D project? To answer to this question, Design thinking tools are of enormous help.
- All is about the idea and idea needs a nurturing context.
“Unfortunately, there seems to be far more opportunity out there than ability…. We should remember that good fortune often happens when opportunity meets with preparation.” That is what said by Thomas Edisson last century. It is always true. Insight needs a prior work of preparation, knowledge collecting, combining and integration
To have a chance is not always affordable, to have a vision or to work with a visionary leader as Steve Jobs or Elun Musk is verry rare, but to have a process to follow is affordable for everyone. A process to innovate ( Fig 1) is all what Design thinking is about.
Fig.1 Design thinking process (IDEOU)
The first three steps of Design thinking are about the process of generating good ideas: the foundation of choosing and initiating the right project.
- Choosing the right project: All is about a good idea
A good idea is about insight, and insight is about knowing verry well your customer, sometimes more that he knows himself. or specifying what you are looking: is it an opportunity to profit from or a problem to find a solution. To have on the one hand a crystal-clear vision of the future state and on the other the same kind of vision about the present state. You need to do a lot of research, This is when the Thomas Edison statement comes very true.
Knowing the customer is using as many perspectives as possible. Consider a customer as a system and and exploit any signal coming from him ( Fig 2).
Fig.2 Knowing the user as a system (IDEOU)
Interviewing a customer is the beginning but not the end. Asking the right and open question and using its listening abilities is one step. Using several whys will help to go further and beyond what the customer says. The key is to discover the underlying meaning for the customer. All is about meaning. You need also to observe the customer.
Observing is listening with our eyes. We need to approach our observations with an open and curious mind. It is also about trying to discover what are the satisfied needs ant what are not. Is there any specific or unusual behavior that the customer or potential customer is doing with current product. Digging deeper will help to discover an unsatisfied need. To learn more about the customer, you need to empathize with him.
Going beyond our assumption that could be limiting is one of the pillars of collecting relevant information. To do so, you need to express your empathy with the customer, to build intense report with him until you feel what he feels. I could explain to you a lot of what a blind Personne feel when he crosses the road but when you cross it yourself with blind eyes you will learn about richer lessons. You will feel what he feels. Feeling is one way of connecting with his subconscious that helps to express the deep need your own way. The customer may have not find the word to express it.
- Insight and research synthesis: telling the whole story
Doing research about the customer is a great part of what Thomas Edison called “preparation”. Now you need to synthetize all the collected information in an inspiring and memorable statement. This statement will shed the light on what the customer need. Il will make you and your team feel inspired to find a solution, create a new product/service/solution to him. If you could express it in a memorable way, it will stick with you and it will be easy to share with others. This means you make a foundation of the product/ service/ solution vision That will guide you along the process of creating it. Try to express it as a story because we as human being love stories. We easily memorize them and love to listen to them and to tell them to others.
How to transform this vision into a product, this when Agile methods are of precious help. Using Story mapping
- User Story map: managing the scope and the time combined
The waterfall project management is based on work breakdown structure and Gant plan to manage the scope and schedule. The idea behind these tools is work separation. It was true when we knew all about the work to carry out and we are ensured that the work to be done especially the activities will lead to the intended deliverables and the created outputs will lead to the intended outcomes and benefits. With uncertainty about deliverables and cause to effect relation to outcome, the uncertainty about effect-cause of activities to output, the idea of “separation” comes to its limits. So, we need a tool to tighten outcomes to deliverables and deliverables to activities during the process of the whole project. It will allow also that the project scope will be tightened to product scope so all the work will be optimized. That where the story and story mapping come in.
Stories are one of the best tools to memorize things and to make Sens of their relation. Moreover, with more and more complexities, we need a systemic approach to focus more on components’s interactions instead of components themselves (Fig 3).
Fig . 3. Story mapping focus on scope&time interactions and outcomes
Story mapping respond to the fundamental questions: Who? What? Why?. The user needs to execute an action in order to achieve an outcome.
In this way it connects any activity to the output, the output to the outcome and the outcome to the specific stakeholder. Moreover, it gives the meaning for doing.
When the team use the story as exchange background, it will be empowered to share a deep understanding, explore options to realize the product/service/solution, find any hole in dependencies and doing so will prevent any scope creep and optimize the effort. Above all, il will boost understanding and continuous learning and improving.
Among the strength of story mapping is pacing the product/service/solution creation in time. It also helps to prioritize outcomes in time by the most urgent outcome, the most necessary to the least one which could be created later. Another way of optimizing effort and financing sources.
Conventional projects are about doing but R and R&D projects are about learning.
At the start of any R or R&D projects, there is always confusion. Confusion about market potential, used technology, abilities and competencies availability, in short, confusion about, what, how and for whom. Put it another way, the other flip face of confusion is the learning potential. As confusion is huge, the learning and improving potential is also huge. Planning to learn is building the smallest viable form of the product/service/solution and run the learning loop by gathering the maximum feedback from specific stakeholders.
The MVP is also “ a minimum viable product that is also the smallest thing you could create or do to prove or disprove an assumption” (User Story Mapping: Discover the Whole Story, Build the Right Product, Jeff Patton, Peter Economy). It allows you to make inexpensive mistakes rather than finding out that something isn’t working too far down the road. This is where Agile methods and Design thinking tools come together to help R and R&D project managers.
Fig . 4 : Design thinking lenses (IDEOU)
After each loop we need to sit down with our big idea and return to our three lenses of design thinking ( Fig 4) . Ask ourself what questions we have, question out assumption, dig deep behind them remake our creating product/service/solution story.
After story mapping, the other useful tool is the product roadmap. However, the change is never smooth. That will be the subject of next article.