The impact of good design cannot be overstated. Design is everywhere. Everywhere. From the coffee pot you use first thing in the morning, to the car you drive to work, to your company’s website, to the atmosphere of a hospital waiting room. These things all required consideration of the user’s entire experience, the human experience, to be created. Historically, designers have occasionally been viewed as wistful creatives- slightly more sensible than full-on fine artists, but still on the opposite end of the career spectrum from an accountant, an archetype of “The Businessman.”

The traditional ideal of what a designer is isn’t entirely incorrect. The role of a designer incorporates understanding aesthetic and drawing from emotion. Translating these subjective experiences into an interactive solution requires an incredible amount of creativity.

But the truth is, the skillsets required of designers may have a much more prominent place in business than one might think.

We had the opportunity to discuss the value of design thinking with User Experience Subject Matter Expert & Design Leader, Rachael Acker.

At Eliassen Group, we’re proud to work in the strategic consulting and talent solutions industry. But what does "strategic consulting and talent solutions" mean? To some in the industry, it equates to putting “butts in seats,” and instead of seeing the faces of consultants, those folks see a row of dollar signs culminating in a bottom line.

Measuring Value & Outcomes

In Part 1 of this series, we discussed three primary metrics of an Agile transformation: value, flow, and quality, aligned with the roles of scrum: PO, SM, and Dev Team, respectively. While these may be considered geek metrics, they do eventually align with ultimate business performance when financials are available months or quarters later. Furthermore, they remain somewhat abstracted from the reasons why organizations choose to implement Agile (see the graph below.) In this article, we explore the value & outcomes category of metrics to holistically steer an organization.

Why Scaling with SAFe is an effective way to realize the full potential of Agile

In the first part of this article, we explored the rationale behind Agile Scaling and briefly toured some of the popular Frameworks, with a specific focus on the Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe). In this segment, we will continue our ascent by examining some approaches for successfully leveraging SAFe.

It’s no secret that women, in particular, are faced with incredible hurdles when striving to advance and maintain their careers. Often, many of these challenges are related to a sense of self-doubt. As a YouGov survey reports, “when asked to compare their own intelligence to that of ‘the average American,’ about a quarter of men declared themselves ‘much more intelligent,’ vs. just 15 percent of women.”¹ The notable amount of self-doubt that many women grapple with often inhibits them from realizing their true worth and potential, and this can translate to women experiencing a skewed and limiting perception of themselves in their work lives.

What are Net Promoter Scores?

Have you heard of Net Promoter Scores? A company’s NPS or Net Promoter Score is a measurement of customer satisfaction.¹ These scores are especially useful in the staffing industry, in which feedback isn’t linked to a tangible product, but is instead related to a more subjective service or experience. For example, when a client says their experience with us was “good,” it’s difficult to derive true meaning from that response, especially as the definition of “good” likely varies vastly from client to client. Thus, the staffing industry was in need of a universally understood, tangible measure of a subjective experience. Enter NPS. While NPS surveys can ask a number of questions, the concept truly focuses on only one:

Why Scaling with SAFe is an effective way to realize the full potential of Agile

Transformational change in organizations requires a razor focus on a future state that must draw leaders and employees out of their current world to embrace a different focus. Creating this pull to change involves fundamentally shifting how individuals understand their value and purpose, and in practice, this can be incredibly disorienting and look high-risk. However, the highest risk comes from continuing the same pattern and entrenching dysfunction.

An Agile transformation is intended to build new business capabilities- to get things done faster, to improve product quality, to reduce risk, to improve predictability, and to improve productivity. Yet, many Agile transformations lack any plan for measuring success. Executives supporting Agile transformation programs often become frustrated with this lack of meaningful metrics. Meanwhile, practitioners debate the relevancy of metrics, often from a silo rather than an end-to-end perspective. Months into the transformation, executives wonder whether the program even merits continued funding. They struggle to pull together data after-the-fact. Because they didn’t have baseline measurements from the start of the transformation, it is hard to demonstrate progress. Often, any data that is freely available becomes the metric of focus.

Principia - meaning “collection of Principles” was first used by Isaac Newton in 1687 (one of the great heroes of the Enlightenment) as the title for his treatise on fundamental mathematics and physics¹

Principia - meaning “collection of principles” was first used by Sir Isaac Newton in 1687 (one of the great heroes of the Enlightenment) as the title for his treatise on fundamental mathematics and physics.

Before we Start – a Quick Preamble

This blog may be viewed as a little controversial by some within the Agile community. However, my intent is simply to challenge some of the established norms, and maybe in doing so, rattle the proverbial cage a little. At the end of the day, and in the spirit of experimentation, this piece is meant to be a playful exploration of alternatives to the status quo. Hopefully, this will lead to a fresh perspective and stimulate some new dialogue on a somewhat stale subject - Process.

Millennials. The generation of lazy, narcissistic, self-righteous, participation trophy-toters. As one of those very Millennials, I can attest to the bad rep that we have. Gen X co-workers don’t know how to work with us, and our Baby Boomer bosses struggle to understand how to connect with us. We realize there’s often a disconnect between the generations in the workplace, so I’d like to help shed some light on what we need in order to thrive.

Let’s say you’re a consultant. You just started a new project working for a fantastic client, and you love your role. Even though your employment situation is ideal, you still need some help. It’s late on a Friday night, and you have a problem. You think about calling your recruiter, but it’s outside of business hours. You’re tired, stressed, and unsure where to turn. Sometimes things go wrong, and that’s where our Consultant Advocate Program comes in.

 Companies looking to get the benefits of a DevOps mindset often get stuck in the trap of focusing on buying the "best" tool and implementing "best" practices.¹ Tools are chosen with very little, if any, collaboration with developers, testers, or operations staff. "Best" practices are determined by committees, again based on scant practical organization experience. While there are benefits to standardization, premature standardization, or standardization with no room for experimentation leads to stagnation and poor overall performance. And what works today will be unlikely to work as well in the future. The pace of change and innovation in DevOps means new opportunities for improvement are arising regularly.

As Bob Fischer points out in a recent blog post, Technical Debt is a Business Problem, “technical debt is rarely understood by non-technical business people.” So the question is: How do you go about having a productive conversation that enables non-technical people to appreciate the need to actively and continually keep technical debt low?

My solution is simple: keep it visual.