Innovation and Design Thinking

Innovation and Design Thinking- (BIDTK158)

Module 3
Design Thinking in IT
Design Thinking to Business Process modeling, Agile in Virtual collaboration environment,
Scenario based Prototyping

IT companies - They build software to make other businesses run smoothly, IT companies
build or maintain software so that businesses run more smoothly. Anyone who builds or
maintains software belongs to the IT sector.
IT industry is working on Agile methodology,
Agile is an iterative or incremental method of managing development and design. Each day,
the engineers have a set of tasks at hand, which they are required to complete in a day or
two.
Agile improves success rate by almost double by promoting better collaboration and
communication

SCRUM is an agile development method used in IT industry which concentrates specifically on

how to manage tasks within a team-based development environment.
Scrum believes in empowering the development team and advocates working in small teams
SCRUM consists of three roles:
Scrum Master: Master is responsible for setting up the team, sprint meeting and removes
obstacles to progress.
Product owner: The Product Owner creates product backlog, prioritizes the backlog and is
responsible for the delivery of the functionality at each iteration.
Scrum Team: Team manages its own work and organizes the work to complete the sprint or
cycle.

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 Innovation and Design Thinking

But Agile only provides way to solve problems and how does one can decide which is the right
problem to solve
This is where Design thinking plays a vital role
Combining both is not an easy task and requires culture shift

Advantages of using design thinking in IT

The solutions are prototyped.
The results are verified.
The best solutions are accepted.
The solutions are experienced by the client before approval.
Short iterations are possible to improve the user experience
Small cross-functional teams.
Incremental delivery is possible.
Fast feedback helps the designers and developers.
Continuous improvement is possible.

Design Thinking to Business Process modeling

Business process model (BPM) is a way of breaking down business processes into their most
basic elements: the tasks and activities a business carries out.
BPM shows, clearly and transparently, how a product or service transforms as it moves
through an organization's process sequence, often in near real-time.
Process models mediate communication between stakeholders: Business analysts, process
participants and software architects
Process models provide shared understanding so that everyone can contribute knowledge
BPM – Combination of various process related steps: Process mapping, Process discovery,
Process simulation, Process analysis and Process improvement.
By revealing the way things are done at an organization, and comparing that with the way
things should be done, BPM highlights the dependencies and relationships between people,

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 Innovation and Design Thinking
process, and technology - and where those elements are ready for improvement.
Design thinking is an ongoing, cyclical approach, with the practice of ‘design, test, and iterate’
at its center— that is, constantly creating and rapidly deploying prototypes or new ideas, then
testing and reflecting on them, including through fast feedback from customers.
DT is similar to BPM
Process improvement requires the same approach of identifying a challenge, generating the
information needed to understand why the process is inefficient, implementing a possible
solution, then measuring the effectiveness of that solution over time.
Merging the two disciplines essentially means using the insights gained through an effective
BPM framework to feed into the DT process, and enhance customer-facing business processes.

Benefits of Design Thinking to BPM

Competitive advantage, gained through a willingness to innovate, then ‘double-down’ on ideas
that work, and discard ones that don’t—before they become a liability
Moving beyond traditional process maps and case models to more customer-centric and
human-scale products and services
Pooling collective ease and enhancing collaboration, through building multidisciplinary teams
to focus on a single problem
Harnessing natural empathy, leading to a better understanding of the needs and challenges of
customers
Generating more revenue by ensuring a deeper level of customer satisfaction

Agile in Virtual collaboration environment

Virtual collaboration is the method of collaboration between virtual team members that is
carried out via technology-mediated communication.
Distributed teams use virtual collaboration to simulate the information transfer present in face-
to-face meetings, communicating virtually through verbal, visual, written, and digital means.
Virtual collaboration is commonly used by globally distributed business and scientific teams.
Agile methodology can accept changes anytime compared to that of a waterfall method, and
hence collaboration between collocated teams eases out the agile processes.
Besides coordination; interaction, development, planning, review etc. also immensely reduce
time and effort.
Businesses want to leverage talent round the clock, use the best talent which may not be
locally available, cheap labor by outsourcing to low cost countries, higher productivity and
numerous strategic reasons.
So the virtual collaboration is essential in agile method

Parameters affect the performance of virtual team

Allow transparency
Establish a transparent environment.
Provide a sense of trust in the team members with the decisions they make an organize
sessions with them to align these decisions with company goals and vision.
Be clear over job functions. Gather feedback.

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Establish open communication channels.
Establish a culture of continuous improvement
Drive improvements within the team.
Recognize potential improvement opportunities and obtain ideas from the team.
Listen to suggestions and rationally take appropriate steps.
Agile principle drives continuous improvement and thus team members are open for
improvement opportunities.
Communication
Communication is perhaps the most important artifact in any team.
How you structure your communication will determine the output
Construction of a rhythm
Three elements absolute necessary in agile methodology: Transparency, inspection, and
adaptation (known as 3 pillars of SCRUM)
It is important to create a tempo which operates around these pillars of Scrum.
Generate a culture of courage & flexibility
This also goes with the concept of fail fast.
Establish an environment where the team is courageous to take steps to try out something
new.
The idea is to reduce the delay.
Visualize everything
Establish a platform that allows the team members to view workflows, depict who is working
on what, align together be able to pick the right task of right priority and at a right time.
This solution will help to capture the right problem areas and effectively retrospect them to
improve the processes.
Establish a sustainable environment and work life balance
Distributed team end up stretching their normal working hours which lead to over working
than regular hours or working at odd time.
Establish rules and ensure all team members adapt these principles

Scenario based Prototyping

Design thinking is at its best if tangible prototypes can be used to envision new products and
services.
However, for complex software systems with multiple users usually such tangible prototypes
are not feasible.
To overcome this problem, scenario-based prototyping approach can be proposed for
designing complex software systems that is based on models, both structural and behavioral
models.
The approach will support the stepwise and interactive enrichment of the prototype model, the
traceability between the artifacts collected during earlier design phases and the scenarios.
The models provide a more formal outcome of the design process for the downstream
engineering activities, so that the gap between design and engineering can be narrowed.

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Scenarios describe a sequence of events, illustrating the activities of one or more people in a
real-world setting.
There are two scenarios
Use scenarios- which are a form of analysis of the interviews and represent what happens
today in real-world settings.
Design scenarios- which are revised versions of use scenarios that illustrate how a new
technology might be used.
Example: Developing an Android app and giving it to the customer for feedback
Instead of giving the original app developed, photos with real scenarios (push button enabled
or directing to the test case) may be done.
Communicated to the users for the feedback.
Finally after many revisions, the app is presented in its original form to the customer
Scenarios of software system
 Rich stories of interaction
 Plain text, pictures, sketches, screenshots etc.,
 Storyboards
 Scenarios make us think about the design in detail and notice potential problems
before they happen

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