"Insufficient maturity of a team can block the impact of the design" But don't worry – maturity can be learned. Like a dino learning to walk first. 🦕**
If the design feels alien to the rest of the team, it easily breaks down into sub-processes that bottleneck development. Similarly, understanding customer value should be at the heart of every team members daily work. In reality, however, it is easily only perceived - if not forgotten altogether - by team leaders or designers.
To be successful as a customer-centric agile team, we need to agree on what this even means. Customer-centred design needs a team that understands and appreciates it. Sharing knowledge about the roles and daily work of designers is important to break silos, create a common mindset and improve collaboration.
The whole team, including designers, should understand the full potential of design. Listening to the goals of the team and the IU can help us see how client-centric we really are. Are the goals aligned with the clients goals and do the clients and end users participate in the discussions?
To determine what the current maturity level of the teams is, we need to ask ourselves the right questions in the most important areas:
Agile team culture:
- Do our teams have effective reflection meetings where everyone is listened to and can have their say?
- Do our teams have enough autonomy to make decisions about the product: Are you achieving results rather than just delivering features?
- Can our teams improve the way they work independently?
- Is everyone aware of their power as a member of an agile team?
Customer-centricity:
- Is your company willing to focus on customer value rather than resources?
- Do our teams measure success by customer outcomes?
- Is there continuous collaboration between our teams, customers and other stakeholders? Who feels accountable for this?
- Do we meet with end users and prototype regularly?
- Are customer and end-user insights shared within teams?
Design collaboration:
- Does the whole team take responsibility for improving design collaboration?
- Do designers participate in joint meetings and rituals?
- Do the tools used by the team enable cross-functional collaboration?
Tips for improving maturity
- Go ahead and ask - there are no stupid questions! But it will be easier to suggest changes and improvements if trust has already been built with the team. Trust is the foundation for everything. 🤝
- Together with the team, draw a map of the team and its stakeholders. Make sure everyone understands the roles in the team from the beginning.
- Improve the opportunity and nature of reflections to create a space for discussion. A frequent, honest and safe culture of reflection is key to growth and the first point for improvement.
- Offer courses and coaching for yourself and the team. Never assume that everyone understands design or the agile way of working.
- As a team, set small, shared goals for improvement. Change will happen more easily if these goals come from team members and align with their individual development goals.
- Always be patient, change takes time.
- Visualise the journey of change as a team: create a document together where all members can track the improvements made by the team. This shows how far we have come.
Clarification of Terms
Customer
In this article we mainly talk about customer orientation and customer value. These terms refer not only to customers, but also to potential end users and other stakeholders.
Team
Team refers to all the people involved in creating a product for the customers and end users. Whether they are developers, designers, product owners, managers or other specialists, everyone is seen as part of the team.
Design
We do not draw boundaries between different design roles and designations (UI designer, UX designer, product designer, service designer, ...), as many types of designers are valuable members of a cross-functional agile team. However, we strongly define design by a customer-centric mindset and put it in the context of teams developing software as part of the service.
Agile
The word agile is a characteristic that describes certain software development teams. Agile teams have the autonomy to organise their work in short feedback loops that allow them to constantly evolve the way they work, learn from customer feedback and adjust their goals to maximise customer value.
