Multiply the power of your Agile
team with Design
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Phil Barrett
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Designing Humans Offerzen
Dean Broadley
@philbuktoo@BroadleySpoken

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Why software teams need design
How good designers help your team work better
How to navigate the change
Today we’ll talk about…
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Why your product team needs design
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A telemedicine and record-keeping
system for use by clinic nurses.
Let’s start with a story

A telemedicine and record-keeping
system for use by clinic nurses.
Let’s start with a story

A telemedicine and record-keeping
system for use by clinic nurses.
Clinic nurses are not tech savvy
2.5 designers for 6 developers
Lots of painstaking design and remoteuser testing (and some clinic visits).
Let’s start with a story

A telemedicine and record-keeping
system for use by clinic nurses.
Clinic nurses are not tech savvy
2.5 designers for 6 developers
Lots of painstaking design and remoteuser testing (and some clinic visits).
Let’s start with a story

A telemedicine and record-keeping
system for use by clinic nurses.
Clinic nurses are not tech savvy
2.5 designers for 6 developers
Lots of painstaking design and remoteuser testing (and some clinic visits).
Let’s start with a story

A telemedicine and record-keeping
system for use by clinic nurses.
Clinic nurses are not tech savvy
2.5 designers for 6 developers
Lots of painstaking design and remoteuser testing (and some clinic visits).
Let’s start with a story

A telemedicine and record-keeping
system for use by clinic nurses.
Clinic nurses are not tech savvy
2.5 designers for 6 developers
Lots of painstaking design and remoteuser testing (and some clinic visits).
Let’s start with a story
“Our design-led approach has taken the
complexity of clinical care and presented it to
nurses simply, humanly and intuitively. Nurses
learn to use Healthforce in less than 45
minutes. In turn, this has opened many
opportunities with business owners who
appreciate that the solution will actually be
used.”
Saul Kornik
CEO

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So what do we mean when we say...

A thing customers really want,
even when they can’t tell you
what it is...
...made easy to notice,
understand, adopt, use (in
context), rely on and love.
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A good story… well told.

Symptoms that you have a design problem
Low adoption: We spent
months on it, but no-one
really used it
Failure demand: People
keep calling us because
they get stuck
High acquisition costs:
The sales team say that
customers won’t buy
Churn: Customers just
drift off and we can’t find
out why
Product
Support
Sales
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Diverge
Converge
Diverge
Converge
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(A big part of) the solution: Human-centred design
EMPATHISE DEFINE IDEATE
PROTOTYPE
& TEST
Identify problems
Make the right thing
Identify solutions
Make the thing right
Gather stories
to
capture real
customer needs
Make models
to
Understand
what to solve
Generate ideas
to
Find a really good
solution
Test and refine
to
To get the solution
just right
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Immersion with users tells you
what they really need
• “It doesn’t fit with my workflow”
• “I don’t know where to find the thing I want to do”
• “It works in a weird way. Nobody in this business
does it like that.”
• “It’s so fussy, it gives me RSI”
• “I never even noticed that!”
• “Having to press F5, F9, F3 and then paste that
thing over there, and then restart? Totally fine!”

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Good
designers
ask “why?”,
to dig out
the real need

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Good
designers
ask “why?”,
to dig out
the real need

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Good
designers
ask “why?”,
to dig out
the real need

“
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Actually building and launching
a product idea is generally the
slowest, most expensive way to
validate the idea.
Marty Cagan
Product Management Trailblazer
Remember that our higher order
objective is to validate our ideas
the fastest, cheapest way
possible.

Waste less time building the wrong stuff
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DESIGN MULTIPLIER 01

Waste less time building the wrong stuff
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(Bonus: Knowing what NOT to build at all).
DESIGN MULTIPLIER 01

Great ideas
show up when
you go looking
for them
Photo by Jo Szczepanska on Unsplash

Spend your time building highly valuable stuff
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DESIGN MULTIPLIER 02

Spend your time building highly valuable stuff
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Invest in good ideas. They are worth more.
DESIGN MULTIPLIER 02

The business value of design, October 2018
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Done right, design helps you win - 2x! 3x!

Good designers help the team think better

Fuzzy-edgedSpecific
Minimal Full featured
Pragmatic Ambitious
Solve and specify Imagine and inspire
Exploratory
Robust
Challenging
Discover and decide
Now Next Vision
The right artefact, context, structure… for every conversation

A remarkable thing happens at the time
you make the first object. That's the one
point where the transition is the most
dramatic.
It brings focus and it can galvanise a
group of people, which is enormously
powerful.
Jony Ive,
Led design at Apple
Make stuff

Kudos Matt Wilkinson, Candice Warnasuriya
Don’t talk your point. Demonstrate it.

Organise the content of the conversation around purpose
JBTD
🧓
FEATURE
BUILD

PEOPLE
PROCESS
PERFORMANCE
Shared fictions or purpose
Start here SHARED PURPOSE
Not here

Navigating the multiplication

👨💻INPUT OUTPUT
LOW VALUE DESIGN

👨💻
👩💻
INPUT
HIGHER VALUE
OUTPUT

Ways to make space for design to happen in your process
● Draw up and agree a new process with the whole team that includes
discovery and design. Expect to have to tune it a lot.
● Make discovery an explicit thing. Discovery docs. Discovery artefacts.
Discovery tickets.
● Have discovery workshops for epics, where the whole team can hear the
insights, sketch ideas.
● Deluxe: Build a discovery room where people can stick things up and
debate.

Managing dual track discovery and delivery
● Hard for one designer to handle both tracks on their own: not enough time!
● Discovery tickets move slowly, go backwards or sometimes reproduce
● Measurement often takes many sprints. How do you keep track and remember
to measure after release?

Discovery board
Don’t archive epics - move them to “measure”
Declare and applaud business impacts
Three tools that seem to help
Kudos Laura Mansur

Discovery board
Don’t archive epics - move them to “measure”
Declare and applaud business impacts
Three tools that seem to help
Kudos Laura Mansur

Discovery board
Don’t archive epics - move them to “measure”
Declare and applaud business impacts
Three tools that seem to help
Kudos Laura Mansur

ENVIRONMENT 1
🙂
🙂
🙂
ENVIRONMENT 2
🎉
🎉
🎉
ENVIRONMENT 3
🥳
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EDGE EFFECTS

It's not that easy…

🧠 🧠
WORLD VIEW WORLD VIEW
1 2
Combining these may feel wrong

“ When arguing with a
fool, make sure the
opponent isn’t doing the
exact same thing
Abraham Lincoln
US President

So remember...
• Design will make your team/product/
business more successful
• Good designers help your team think
better
• Actively practise to create a culture
and a process where design can
succeed.

So remember...
• Design will make your team/product/
business more successful
• Good designers help your team think
better
• Actively practise to create a culture
and a process where design can
succeed.

phil@fronttoback.orgdean@broadleyspeaking.design
Very thanks! So discussion! 👋