Design + Agile: Combination of Problem finding and Problem solving for better outcomes

Most important reason for failure of IT projects to deliver intended outcome is their misalignment with customer and business needs.

Many IT leaders believes that Agile methodologies like scrum when implemented correctly will solve this issue. Which is partially true, as it allows development team to iterate towards optimal outcome and build solution incrementally with focus on communication and collaboration. Despite this it doesn’t guarantee truly engaging and impactful solutions.

The reason is, while agile is proven approach to deliver solutions in optimal manner but it doesn’t guarantee that we are solving the right problems. To solve this gap, many enterprise IT organization have started leveraging “Design thinking” in conjunction with Agile.

Design thinking 5 stages calls to empathize with customers, understands them, develop innovative ideas, challenge assumptions and redefine problems, with the intent to identify alternative solution which might not be apparent.

Once right problem and their best possible solution is identified, development team can leverage agile to develop incrementally, taking it from MVP to pilot to large-scale production.

To conclude this article, just wanted to say that while design thinking and agile can be applied alone, the two approaches are better together, creating a mutually reinforcing environment focused on user-centricity and rapid iteration as a means of reaching optimal outcomes. Design thinking brings a strong user focus while agile is an excellent way to incrementally deliver solutions, ensuring user needs are kept front and center throughout the entire design and development process.