This article first appeared in LinkedIn November 14, 2017. Written by one of my heroes, Tim Brown, CEO at IDEO: Some of today’s most successful companies—Airbnb, Nike—have CEOs who are also designers. And leading organizations across industries, like Apple, 3M, and Pepsi, have highly influential Chief Design Officers at the helm. Making design a priority isn’t just … Read more
Markets are changing faster than ever. We are living Moore’s Law. In 1965, Intel co-founder, Gordon Moore, noticed that the number of transistors per square inch on integrated circuits had doubled every year since their invention. Moore predicted that this trend will continue into the foreseeable future. Although the pace has slowed (the number of … Read more
A product or service feature will drift over time from a delightful innovation to a basic need. The drift is driven by customer expectations and by the level of performance from competing products. For example mobile phone batteries were originally large and bulky with only a few hours of charge. Over time we have come … Read more
I recently helped a large enterprise software organization define and develop their UX strategic objectives and Key Performance Indicators (KPI). We held a two-day offsite. On day one, in the morning, we discussed how they did Agile and UX. Agile was a big part of their operation. We also talked about how they did UX … Read more
Full disclosure, I love Aha! Product Management road-mapping software and have introduced it to several companies. When I saw this post by Brian de Haaff, Aha! Founder and CEO, I had to share it. Here’s what Brian shares on how to create a brilliant product roadmap: Define your strategy. What is the market potential, and … Read more
“A pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity; an optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty.” – Winston Churchill In today’s dynamic markets, teams must be curious, optimistic and thoughtful. Curious to explore new trends and new ideas. Optimistic to keep motivated and motivate others. And thoughtful to have empathy for the people that you … Read more
Over the years, this is the most consistent question I get asked is “How do you hire the right User Experience talent?” Here are my guidelines: Understand Your Vision and Strategy What is your organization’s vision and strategy and how does the experience you deliver to your customers support it? Your vision is probably to … Read more
I joined host, Armond Merhabian, and co-host, Daniel Spencer, to discuss how Design Sprints can accelerate Product discovery and development. We discussed how Design Sprints take the five stages of Design Thinking and do them in five days. This is not done in the Development phase, but earlier in the Portfolio phase, to determine if … Read more
Customer Collaboration Over Contract Negotiation is one of the four statements of the Agile Manifesto. If you are a small software company or you are working in a JAD with your customers, then customer collaboration is the actual customer who is purchasing your solution. If you are large organization, the customer may be your internal customer … Read more
IBM formalized the Joint Application Design process in 1974. In JAD, customers and end-users jointly define and design their solution with the solution provider that is developing and delivering it. It closes the gap in time and cost around understanding requirements early and throughout the application development lifecycle. In the JAD process, sessions are held … Read more
The term agile was first coined for this in 2001, in the Manifesto for Agile Software Development. According to the manifesto Twelve Principles of Agile Software, their highest priority is to “Satisfy the customer through early and continuous delivery of valuable software.” Which is a good thing, especially in today’s rapidly changing marketplace. Another one of their … Read more
“In preparing for battle I have always found that plans are useless, but planning is indispensable.” – Dwight D. Eisenhower In the Agile Manifesto, it is stated that the value of Responding to Change Over Following a Plan. The Agile movement seeks alternatives to traditional project management like waterfall and traditional sequential development that cannot adapt quickly enough … Read more