"One of the problems with traditional project management methodologies is that they make people spend more time in executing the solution and less time on defining the problem."
Well, if you spend too much time defining the problem, you might never get around to solving it.
In fact, I would say the opposite is in fact true right now - how many times have we complained that companies are too slow to react? They're huge monoliths. The top level takes too long to execute any solutions. If solutions aren't executed, nothing ever gets done.
Photo credit: String Theory by Michael Krigsman
The endless succession of failed projects forces one to question why success is elusive, with an extraordinary number of projects tangling themselves in knots. These projects are like a child’s string game run amok: a large, tangled mess that becomes more convoluted and complex by the minute.
In my view, the core problem lies in mismatched expectations, poor communication, and a host of other non-technical causes.
During the last few years, the practice of “design thinking” has become popular among some enterprise practitioners and observers. Design thinking helps structure team interactions to cultivate greater inclusiveness, foster creativity, and align participants around specific goals and results.
I first learned about design thinking during conversations with people like Chirag Metha, an enterprise software strategist and design thinking expert; Chirag is one of the most thoughtful folks I know and writes a great blog on enterprise software. With these qualifications, of course I asked him to write a guest post explaining how design thinking can help project teams run successful implementations.
Chirag Mehta is an enterprise software generalist with 15 years of experience in strategy, design, architecture, product management, and product development in areas such as ERP, CRM, BI, middleware, and infrastructure. He is a top independent blogger on cloud computing, an adjunct faculty member, and advisor to many entrepreneurs. Chirag is passionate about design thinking and has coached others at Stanford d.school.
Chirag works for SAP driving business development and early adoption of new applications built on SAP’s in-memory computing platform. Previously, he was a strategist with SAP’s office of the CEO (and CTO), where he served as trusted adviser to the company’s CEO, Chairman, CTO, and executive management on topics such as design thinking, cloud computing, SaaS, Web 2.0, BI, in-memory computing, location-based applications, social media, and sustainability.
Thank you to Chirag Mehta for writing this guest post.
——–
IT projects fail all the time. Business blames IT, IT blames the system integrator (SI), who then blames the software vendor. After all this blaming and shaming, everyone goes back to work on another project without examining the project management methods and processes that caused the failure. And, so, they fail again.
There’s no one definition of design thinking. It’s a mindset and set of values that applies both analytical and creative thinking towards solving a specific problem. Design thinking is about how you think and not what you know; it is about the journey and not the destination.
Having followed Michael Krigsman’s analysis of IT project failures, it became evident that design thinking can play an important role in improving enterprise software development and implementation. The design thinking approach offers a means to address the underlying causes of many project failures — poor communication, rigid thinking, propensity toward tunnel vision, and information silos.
I have distilled important lessons from design thinking into six principles that can help stop project failures. Along the way, we will draw comparisons with Agile development, since that distinction is often a source of confusion when discussing design thinking.
