UX STRAT 2014: Todd Wilkens, "Putting UX and Strategy at the Heart of the Product Team"

IBM Design

Todd Wilkens, Design PrincipalUX STRAT, Boulder, September 2014

IBM Design

Putting UX and Strategy at the heart of the Product Team

IBM Design :: ©2014 IBM Corporation

But on further thought…


Todd Wilkens, Design PrincipalUX STRAT, Boulder, September 2014

IBM Design

Killing UX Strategy to save UX and Strategy


Challenge: How do we create a sustainable culture of experience-focused product development that delivers great product and solution outcomes at IBM's scale?


A small digression about large scale.


IBM is B-I-G

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— John Doe

“This is a quote that makes a great point”

400,000+employees


— John Doe


product teams3,000


— John Doe


product teams3,000

IBM Design :: ©2014 IBM Corporation 10

100+years old



Everything we do at IBM Design requires equal parts

Audacity + Humility

12


Core Beliefs

Agile/Lean/DevOps is also key because of the need for speed, flexibility, and quality.

Experience-focused decision making and planning is the key to delivering real value to market.

Whole organizations (not just designers) deliver great experiences to market.

Creating great experiences requires a strong design competency.



Core Belief



Core Belief


Corollary #1: There is no such thing as enterprise software anymore. There is just good software and bad software.






Corollary #2: Focus on good experience and design need to be in the DNA of your company culture.


Corollary #2: Focus on good experience and design need to be in the DNA of your company culture.


Good design is good business.

—Thomas Watson Jr. Chief Executive Officer, 1973

“Good design is good business.”


Studio Opening

“I believe, if I could be so bold, that the work done here will change the world. This is a re-commitment to a heritage of innovation that has transcended IBM.”

– Ginni Rometty, CEO


An Historic Legacy


An Historic Legacy


An Historic Legacy


An Historic Legacy


An Historic Legacy

IBM Design :: ©2014 IBM Corporation IBM Design :: IBM Confidential :: ©2013 IBM Corporation

An Historic Legacy



Creating great experiences requires a strong design competency.

Core Belief

IBM Design :: ©2014 IBM Corporation 23~300%Increase overall UX staff by


Recruiting hundreds of talented designersmore than 200 since January 2013

IBM Design :: ©2014 IBM Corporation IBM Design :: IBM Confidential :: ©2013 IBM Corporation 25IBM Design :: IBM Confidential :: ©2013 IBM Corporation 60 designers started the same day (July 8, 2013)


Whole organizations (not just designers) deliver great products to market.

Core Belief


Whole organizations (not just designers) deliver great products to market.

Core Belief


Corollary #1:There is no such thing as UX Strategy or Design Strategy. There is only Product Strategy.






Corollary #2:Product Strategy is driven by product management but only works when UX is in the hearts, minds, and hands of everyone on the team.


Corollary #2:Product Strategy is driven by product management but only works when UX is in the hearts, minds, and hands of everyone on the team.


IBM Design is now responsible for the product management practice for IBM as a whole.


IBM Design is now responsible for the product management practice for IBM as a whole.


But this isn’t about simply about teaching PM’s

Design Thinking.


But this isn’t about simply about teaching PM’s

Design Thinking.


We need Design Thinking++.






“Design thinking” is a way of solving problems that is especially helpful for

creating product and service experiences.








But it isn’t necessarily an approach for delivering products to market.


But it isn’t necessarily an approach for delivering products to market.


A framework for whole teams to deliver great experiences to market

IBM Design Thinking


Prototype

Evaluate

Understand

Explore

Design Thinking


Prototype

Evaluate

Understand

Explore

IBM Design Thinking


Core Principles and Practices of IBM Design Thinking

Playbacks align your team, stakeholders, and clients around the user value you will

deliver, rather than project line items

Sponsor Users help you design experiences for real target users,

rather than imagined needs

Hills focus your project on big problems and outcomes for users, not just a list of feature requests


Hills


COMMANDER’S INTENT

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“a framework for freedom to act”

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Hills

Hills frame your releases and planning periods around user-centric market outcomes, not feature requests.

Example from an internal project


Hills


Deliver a custom wiki community template to allow agile teams to collaborate on client projects



Hills



A GMU-based sales leader can assemble an agile response team from across IBM in 24 hours without management involvement (Deliver by November 2014)



Hills



A GMU-based sales leader can assemble an agile response team from across IBM in 24 hours without management involvement (Deliver by November 2013)


Who What Wow


Hills fill the gap between a vision statement and a backlog.


The “teeth” in Hills

Invest resources across three Hills + a Technical Foundation to combat arbitrary features and reallocation

Hill

Hill

Hill

Technical Foundation

Hill 3 20%

Tech 15%

Hill 1 20%

Hill 2 45%


Sponsor Users


Sponsor Users

A set of real users recruited to “join” the product team for a period and do participatory design.

Sponsor Users


Playbacks


A picture is worth a thousand words.


A prototype is worth a thousand meetings.


The greatest value of a prototype is often how it tells a story of user value.


What is a Playback?

In a Playback, the user experience for a defined scenario is “played back” to stakeholders to foster

collaboration, feedback, and alignment. !

All conversation and alignment is around the user value that the team will deliver, rather than project line items.


Playbacks

<This space intentionally left blank.>


A culture of showing versus telling


Educating and activating teams

IBM Designcamp


— John Doe


IBM DesigncampAccelerating projects through experiential, multi-disciplinary learning & IBM Design mentoring

IBM Design :: ©2014 IBM Corporation IBM Design :: IBM Confidential :: ©2013 IBM Corporation 56

Designcamp for Product Teams


Designcamp for Product Managers


Designcamp for IBM Executives

IBM Design :: ©2014 IBM Corporation IBM Design :: IBM Confidential :: ©2013 IBM Corporation IBM Designcamp :: IBM Confidential :: ©2013 IBM Corporation 59

Designcamp for New Hires

IBM Design :: ©2014 IBM Corporation IBMDesign::IBMConfidential::©2013IBMCorporation

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298493142263

757875136092

35875305

71112

233811301

Designcamp by the numbers


Designcamps held35+


Project Teams75+


feet2 butcher’s paper64,000


post-it notes336,100


singing gorilla1


Agile/Lean/DevOps is also key because of the need for speed, flexibility, and quality.

Core Belief

IBM Designcamp :: IBM Confidential :: ©2013 IBM Corporation

IBM Design Thinking is a framework for collaboration that helps us create innovative experiences with real


DevOps is a framework for collaboration that delivers experiences to market, evolving them quickly and responsively, and


IBM Design Thinking + DevOps makes a truly modern, iterative approach to creating, delivering, and evolving quality experiences with market

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IBM Design Thinking and DevOps Three shared values

Outcomes for users

Continuous learning

Radical collaboration


Continuous alignment

IBM teams take shared ownership of user outcomes

Design

Code ProductManagement

Ops

Test

MarketingInside Sales

Support





Outcomes


68+ project teams have

participated in Designcamp

IBM Design Thinking is now in wide use

500 leaders participated in

two Leadership Summits in 2014

70+ software projects using

IBM Design Thinking today


Two examples of success


IBM Mail Next


#IBMConnect

IBM Mail Next


#IBMConnect

IBM Mail Next

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