Appunti - Management of Design and Innovation Projects

OKR• The Gorilla Test

The Gorilla Test is a particular kind of test done on the mockups and on the wireframes: it uses qualitative data, is done with few customers and its aim is to gather insights or validate your idea.

For more information about this speech, please visit the official website of the company and its social media pages.

Lecture 06 Agile Approaches in Project Management: Scrum

We now explore a trend topic, which is the "agile". The agile methodologies were born as a response for the nowadays continuously changing environment, that forced companies to be fast to change and adapt in different kinds of scenarios. Here, we will compare agile with another very common approach to project management: the stage gate or waterfall (note but we are adopting different processes!).

Stage gate (waterfall)

In this process we have different stages separated by milestones (also called "gates"). Each stage has its own resources.

(monetary and not monetary) to be allocated and has specific economics levers and timewindows to respect. On the other hand, the gates represent decision moments, in which the team takes thismoment as a moment to check. Approvals happen in gates: if everything is fine, the stage is frozen and theteam moves on to the next stage. Every gate is a sort of "go no-go decision": in a sense, one the decision istaken, you can't come back to the very first gate, but to the previous one. We can state that the waterfallprocess represents a linear perspective to advance in the project, a linear way to go on. In these kinds ofprojects, also, there's usually a project manager that guides the entire communication within the team,following a pyramid perspective.

In which situations do we use stage gate?

• When the project is critical and complex.
• When high levels of investments are needed (these projects are, in general, also long in terms oftime required).

• When you need to have a strict control over the project (for example, using Gantt, charts, visualizations about costs...).
• When your organizational culture demands order (there are strict rules and phases to follow).
• When you prefer control over innovativeness.

• When activities are linear and always done in the same way.
• When you need accuracy.
• When you deal with a kind of innovation that lasts in time.
• When you already know the end point of the process.
• don't need any interaction with the market.

Thus, forming a sprint Agile was born in 2001 in the software industry by senior developers who worked in small teams and had a common vision: in this scenario, the requirements of the products they were developing changed often and the teams leveraged on creativity combined with a culture that was embracing challenges and changes.

In which situations do we use agile?

• When we are dealing with uncertainty and unknown situations.
• When iteration is possible and needed (a loop of activities can be done). In every single iteration, you can modify the project: in a sense, agile is about a continuous evolution that can take inspiration along the path.
• When you are delivering a version of the product (not the final one).
• When the project requires creativity and freedom.
• When you don't know the end point and the output is difficult to predict.
• When the criticality of the project is low.
• When you embrace risk (coming from complexity, trends...).

• Traditional stage gate: A project manager takes all the information and makes decisions, while other team members just do their tasks. The project manager is at the top of the pyramid, following a spider interaction.
• Agile: A servant leader supports the team and facilitates interaction among the members. The whole team is accountable for the results and the structure follows a diamond interaction.

Agile achievements

Thanks to agile, companies could benefit from several advantages. Here, we report the most important ones:

• Higher speed: Sprints lead you to be faster to market.
• Flexibility: Thanks to iteration and interaction between stakeholders to manage, change requirements and upgrade/downgrade (if needed) the scope of the project.
• Risk management: You can increase awareness and continuously interact with the market thanks to the moment of reflection at the end of every sprint and retrospective.
• Cost control: Thanks to iteration: what is really valuable for the user?
• Quality: Both project quality (the way of doing things) and outcome quality (you have higher quality valuable for the user) because you know what's right product.

Again, thanks to the interaction with the market, helping you to create a product that perfectly matches the

Expectations of your client.

Management of Design and Innovation Projects (A.Y. 2020/2021)

• Everyone knows what's happening (every team member is easily aligned and is able to maintain a clear communication with others). - Transparency

Agile also has some disadvantages: in very complex projects (with lots of criticalities) we can have too much waste of time due to iterations; also, high costs can arise if you are not able to master the sprint. Thus, with critical projects, it's better to adopt a traditional approach, since you are surer about the outcome.

Scrum: Overview (in this case, it's not an approach or a methodology) that Scrum represents a set of rules and principles is rooted on creativity to answer users' needs provides a general framework to help addressing problems. It is simple to understand, but difficult to master: you don't need to know too much about how to do the activity, but it can be

Scrum is a very complex framework. Its goal is to perform "lightweight" activities in a coordinated way, with no leader: in this sense, Scrum can be considered a tool (i.e., no full hierarchy within the team), meaning that the structure is not overcomplicated and decisions are taken in a democratic way.

There are some key factors that you need to know about Scrum before applying it:

• The stakeholders know what's happening during the process - Transparency (of the process) All and a common language exists to easily understand the important concepts. For example, we can mention the Done: it allows to transfer to the market what you have done and constitutes the goal of each sprint (it can be considered a sort of MVP, a result of the process).
• Inspection - It represents a moment in which the team looks back at the process and thinks how it can be improved. What can be done better in the future? Have we done the things in a proper way? Have we been able to achieve the goals?

• Adaptation - Feel free to adapt and modify the process live. How can we make things work in a better way and optimize them?

• Scrum master - It's the master of the process; it is the facilitator (like in the design sprint). The Scrum master takes care about the process, but doesn't take part in the activities (it is not involved in the development of the solutions and in the creativity path). It can also be the master for different projects simultaneously.

The team (making it work better), but it's not involved (namely, it doesn't have an operative role) in the daily activities and in coding. Its help is crucial to create a good planning of the activities and to transfer the value of the Scrum process: in a sense, it should be a coach who removes impediments in the development team. Note "social interactions problems"! that it is not a technical guy, but solves

Development team It leverages on creativity and actively does the job. It can use lateral thinking to overcome obstacles. They are developers, with no hierarchy (the team is self-organizing, with no strict roles), and fully dedicated (namely, there're no sub teams) to a specific Done. Usually, it ranges from 3 to 9 developers (more than 9 we lack of a smooth and clear communication): they are skilled and expert, to cope with customers' requirements and overcome often cross-functional and adopt lateral thinking problems.

Product owner

It is responsible for the product and its requirements: it defines the requirements of the product itself and represents the bridge between the business owner and the stakeholders. It is asked to answer the question: what are the needs of the stakeholders?

Management of Design and Innovation Projects (A.Y. 2020/2021)

The product owner is responsible for the backlog items (namely, the sum of the whole set of activities and features that must be part of the final product). One of its tasks is also to ensure transparency along the process (a lack of transparency means difficulties in getting the job done, because people need to understand what they need to do) and to be in charge of the Done. It also needs to create a common level of understanding of priorities within the team, that needs to come what's more valuable for the users? For the stakeholders.