Design Thinking & Project Management

In May 2016, I presented a webinar to the PMI Community on the topic "Design Thinking & Project Management". 

In this article I address options and recommendations on how to structure User Experience (UX) Design teams within your organization.

Each company or organization is different. How you decide to organize your teams will depend on what works best for your company's goals and culture. The key organizational models for UX Design are: centralized, de-centralized (aka embedded), or hybrid of the two. There are advantages and disadvantages for each model.

1. Centralized Model

In a centralized team model, designers belong to a single unit and are "farmed out" to work on individual projects around the organization. When a particular designer's work is complete they return to the central group and are re-assigned to new work and new projects.

Advantages:

• Promotes uniform career growth of the design team.
• Provides emotional benefits of belonging to a group.
• Advances a coherent design experience across the organization.

Disadvantages:

• Reduces design to a purely execution function, not fully integrated into the project life cycle.
• Designers are inserted into a project that was already underway.
• Designers would not have participated in problem definition, a key activity that designers are well-suited to lead the team through.
• Perception of designers as outsiders - "not one of us".

2. Embedded Model

In this model, designers are embedded into multidisciplinary teams and report up through local management. Designers are dedicated to a team and each team is devoted to a distinct aspect of the product or software development.

Advantages:

• Over time, the team forms a cohesive unit and team members respect the contributions of the designer.
• The designer builds up specific business or domain knowledge and
• The designer establishes stronger bonds with key stakeholder (and decision makers) involved in the project.

Disadvantages:

• Designers have no sense of design community for support, they could become lonely.
• Designers work on their own, likely not collaborating with other designers within the organization.
• Team members are non-designers who do not speak the same professional language. 

3.  Hybrid Model

From recent experiences, we overcame the disadvantages of the two previous models by evolving a hybrid model with both embedded and centralized attributes. We found that having UX designers embedded in the development teams, but also members of a design group within the organization, worked best. The result had the combined advantages from both models.

In the hybrid model, there is a degree of commitment and engagement desired from the embedded designers assigned to specific projects. In this case, the designer understands the full life cycle and is deeply wedded to the business or domain. Having a centralized reporting structure lets designers to be managed by other designers. This allows for peer design, knowledge sharing across projects and quickly ramping up on a project.

I am passionate about evangelizing Design within the Project Management community. I welcome any feedback or comments on this article. 

Connect with me on Linkedin or follow me on Twitter @brucegay

KPMG released their U.S. CEO Outlook 2019 report with survey results from 400 U.S. CEOs. Key Findings from the survey provided some very relevant insights for Project Leaders who want to grow in their careers and remain on the forefront of technical, cultural, and economic change. I decided to turn the insights into an infographic which can be downloaded here: 

-->  CEO Outlook and Insights for PMs

You can read the full KPMG CEO Outlook report here:  https://home.kpmg/content/dam/kpmg/us/pdf/2019/06/2019-ceo-outlook.pdf

Summary of the Key Findings: https://home.kpmg/us/en/home/campaigns/2019/05/key-findings.html

Key Finding: CEOs reported a positive outlook and tempered optimism. A majority of U.S. CEOs (81 percent) plan to pursue inorganic growth, favoring strategic alliances and M&A.

Actions you can take based on this finding:

• Build out networking skills
• Build competency in organizational change management
• Cross-train on Business Analysis skills

Key Finding: CEOs have more realistic expectations of AI implementation and are becoming more enthused about AI-driven decisions.

Actions you can take:

• Become more versed in AI terminology, its applications, and AI’s limitations and risks
• Identify and network with AI vendors for business partnerships and knowledge sharing

Key Finding: Agility is a critical capability and requires innovation maturity. Sixty-three percent (63%) expressed the need to improve innovation processes and execution in the next three years.

Actions you can take:

• Research and become more informed on innovation models
• Become an “expert” at your organization’s innovation process
• Help executives understand the cultural changes needed for agility success

Key Finding: Investment in tech is prioritized over people. When asked to make a point-blank choice between investing in technology or people, more than two-thirds of CEOs chose technology.

Actions you can take:

• Leverage the fact that capital budgets for technology may be easier to secure sign-off than for new job openings
• Help executives understand risks inherent in trade-off between people vs. technology
• Position yourself to manage technology change

Key Finding: Companies are actively disrupting their sectors. Seventy-six percent (76%) noted that their growth relies on their ability to challenge and disrupt any business norm.

Actions you can take:

• Look outside your industry for trends that can help catapult your organization into a new growth area
• Help team members become more customer-centric to identity unmet customer needs or opportunities

Key Finding: Cyber security risk is slowly being seen as a top organizational risk. CEOs no longer look at cyber risk as a separate IT topic and are embedding cyber in all technology-fueled growth decisions. Only a minority (16 percent) point to cyber security risk itself as their organization’s top threat.

Actions you can take:

• If your organization has a CISO (chief information security officer), become educated on his/her needs as well as the vision and strategy that they are laying down at your organization
• Become more versed in cyber security risks and how they relate to you and your team's work

Key Finding: ​Organization want to align policies to reflect the values of their customers. Seventy-seven percent (77%) of U.S. CEOs believe that they could significantly improve their understanding of their customers. Eight-one percent (81%) feel it is their personal responsibility to ensure that their organization’s Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) policies reflect the values of their customers.

Actions you can take:

• Advocate funding and opportunities for your teams to engage with customers to better understand their values and needs
• Help your teams become more customer-centric

Again, a copy of the infographic can be downloaded here: CEO Outlook and Insights for PMs

ASSERTION: The era of the big bang transformation and delivery is dead. Rapid, hybrid solution delivery is ascendant and necessary.

- Do you agree or disagree?

Given the rapid pace of technology and business disruption, most organizations are investing heavily just to keep up with the changes. What differentiates the leaders from the laggards in addressing this disruption is how they organize their business to execute against strategy.

We can no longer use the model of monolithic programs that go on for 2-3 years. Organizations find that what they set out to do or solve at the beginning is not what they will finish doing.

In the current business environment, traditional delivery models are now looking too rigid and organizations are locked into investments that often miss the mark. Leading organizations are using rapid delivery cycles that mobilize a project very quickly, aiming to release the product into market or to customers with minimum investment.

- How does role of the Project Manager change with this trend?

- How does the role of the PMO change?

- Does the approach to portfolio management need to adjust?

Design and design thinking is "old news."  As Project Managers, we are late to this party. 

If you have not yet seen my webinar on Design Thinking & Project Management, here is a link:  https://www.projectmanagement.com/videos/330087/Design-Thinking---Project-Management

Design thinking has emerged as a major trend for how innovative organizations are approaching problem-solving. Design thinking encourages innovative solutions by drawing on approaches from engineering and design, and combining them with ideas from the arts, social sciences, and the business world.

Design Thinking is ...

1)  People-centered. Empathy is at the core.

Empathy gained through user research is at the center of design. The PM and project team should strive to include all project stakeholders and customers in the process, starting from project initiation. The goal is to get immediate and timely feedback from the customer and make changes and revisions along the way.

2) Extensive interdisciplinary collaboration.

A common challenge across projects is communication. Words, and the meaning behind them are often misunderstood. Different people with different backgrounds and experiences use language differently. Design Thinking tools and methods, like sketching, mind maps or physical models, can be extremely useful. They force people to remove imprecise words and organize around a “synthesized” picture to describe the concept. Additionally, people are terrible at recall, but we’re awesome at recognition. Project Managers should utilize these tools and methods to bring people together and work more effectively.

3) Highly creative. Strives for diverse viewpoints.

As a PM, you should staff your project team with people that possess different perspectives for the best results. You absolutely need people who think differently, but to be efficient, you need to find ways to communicate, prioritize, share in decision making. Seek out staff that can “think laterally” and are willing to try connecting ideas that might not seem to intuitively go together. 

4) All about doing and being hands-on.

Design Thinking is about taking ideas and concepts and quickly giving them form. Whether a napkin sketch, a prototype carved from foam rubber, or a digital mock-up, the quick-and-rough models that designers constantly create are a critical component of innovation. When you give form to an idea, you begin to make it real and can elicit emotional responses from end users and customers. You have to make in order to learn. 

5) Iterative.

Lastly, Design Thinking is iterative. You and your team will never get it right the first time.

As part of your project management process, you need to embed the cyclical process of prototyping, analyzing, and refining a product or service. Your team needs to secure timely feedback from the customer in order to make iterative/incremental improvements along the way. My advice -- the iterative nature of design is not as costly as not doing it at all.

A few closing thoughts on this topic:

1. Design Thinking is not magic. There is rigor to it. You can learn it. You can practice it, you can get better at it.
2. There are many design models to choose from and no single process or toolkit serves every case. As a PM, you need to understand whatever model you are using and account for it in your project planning and execution. 
3. Design is a set of tools to solve problems. If you do it well, it is a sustainable activity that can transform your projects and your entire business.

I am passionate about evangelizing Design Thinking within the Project Management community. I welcome any feedback or comments below. 

Recently I have been working on a turnaround project that needed some additional project management discipline and rigor. I have been providing come guidance to some of the junior PMs, that I wanted to share with the community here.

Guidance for Project Managers:

• Empathy and listening is key to being a successful Project Manager. Ask your teams “Where can I help?” and they will tell you.

• Teams do not communicate well. It is our job as PMs to make sure any mis-communications or delays in communication are beaten down.

• Be an escalation point for your teams to ensure that their open items and concerns are being addressed in a timely manner.

• Get your hands dirty. There is a lot of important work that no one team is assigned to do yet needs to be done for the project to be successful. (e.g. “herding cats”, action item follow-up, procuring additional software or resources, generating drafts of documents for the team to react to, etc.).

• Think strategically and think about the bigger picture. Someone needs to help guide and focus the team on “The Goal”.

• Keep a watchful eye on dependencies and their impacts on milestones.

• Stay focused on the Top 3-4 critical issues that could delay or derail the teams’ progress.

• Make sure the team takes time to prepare for key stakeholder meetings. Conduct dry runs if needed, but at minimum presentation materials should be reviewed prior to sharing with stakeholders.

• Shield the team from as much administrative work as possible.

Connect with me on Linkedin or follow me on Twitter @brucegay