More and more companies are trying to adopt Lean, Agile and Design Thinking to internal working practices, methodologies. At some certain point, people might feel confused or even chaos to determine what tool they need to use in specific contexts. Some companies might face a situation where tech teams use agile, product teams practice lean and design teams follow design thinking. Are they going in different ways? and where their products will go?
In the Lean, Agile, Design Thinking talk, Jeff Gothelf shares valuable thoughts on how to make those approaches work together:
- Don’t worry about how we label the process we are following & Hold regular retrospectives to reflect and improve 1 or 2 most important things.
- Put customers at the center & get alignment, make decisions toward customers’ benefits. Customer value == Busines value.
- Working in short cycles. So, we have a chance to discover what customers truly need. How the team can move faster or easier.
- Go and see (or Gemba walk): to find out what works, what doesn’t work with teams. Then, amplify the good things no matter it is lean, agile, or design thinking.
At the end of the day, our customers do not care about what methodologies we are using & those methodologies are actually evolving over time. We should focus primarily on the products, services to deliver value to the customers. Then, we can work backwards to find out what is the better process to do so.