Iterative Reviews and Incremental Revisions in Agile Human Centered Design

I love the Agile development process. I love that there are short development cycles to pivot quickly in these ever-changing markets we are in; continuous reviews with stakeholder to ensure we are delivering the right business value or course correct if needed; and the use of stories to keep the focus on the people who … Read more

Agile Design Thinking Sprint Planning

The highest priority of Agile Development is to “Satisfy the customer through early and continuous delivery of valuable software.” Agile Development advocates adaptive planning, evolutionary development, early delivery, and continual improvement, and it encourages rapid and flexible response to change. Agile development achieves these goals through short development cycles called “sprints.” The short time frame … Read more

Easy to Use 2.0 Audiobook

You can now listen to the Easy to Use 2.0 audiobook! Here are few things that folks have been saying about Easy to Use 2.0: “It’s refreshing to see the thoughtfulness and design expertise Sean Van Tyne brings to the enterprise software space. It is a technology category that’s ripe for design-led disruption, and this … Read more

Fail Fast, Succeed Faster

“Success is a lousy teacher. It seduces smart people into thinking they can’t lose.” – Bill Gates, Founder of Microsoft “Early success is a terrible teacher. You’re essentially being rewarded for a lack of preparation, so when you find yourself in a situation where you must prepare, you can’t do it. You don’t know how.” … Read more

Test Your Riskiest Assumptions First

How do you know you’re making the right bets with your ideas? Which bets do your ideas hinge on? These are our riskiest assumptions. They need to be tested before you spend your valuable time and money. With the ‘problem’ in mind, map out the customer journey to identify the riskiest assumption. Armed with a … Read more

It’s Really a Riskiest Assumption Test, Not a Minimal Viable Product

“There is a flaw at the heart of the term Minimum Viable Product: it’s not a product. It’s a way of testing whether you’ve found a problem worth solving. A way to reduce risk and quickly test your biggest assumption. Instead of building an MVP identify your Riskiest Assumption and Test it.” – Rik Higham, … Read more

MVP is Not Simply a Release

A common misconception is that a Minimum Viable Product (MVP) consists of the minimum set of features deemed necessary for a working software product, with the goal of bringing it to market quickly. This is incorrect as there is an over-emphasis on speedy delivery and time to market, as opposed to focusing on customer and … Read more

Increase Quality and Time to Market with Rapid Prototyping

Markets are changing faster than ever. Driven by expediential changes in technology, customers want more personalized experiences and they want it now. How do you keep up with the ever-changing market landscape and deliver high-quality products and services? No matter how deep our up-front understanding is of our market, we really cannot predict our customers’ … Read more

Agile Develop Success, Sprints, Planning and User Experience

In Agile Development, a “sprint” is one iteration of a continuous development cycle. Within a sprint, planned amount of work has to be completed by the team and made ready for review. During the sprint: No changes are made that would endanger the sprint goal Quality goals do not decrease Sprints are limited to a … Read more

Experience Design, Lean and Agile

In today’s experience economy, successful companies don’t stand out because of their efficient production or their better engineering. It is their dedication to understanding their customers and their strong commitment to solving customers’ problems and servicing their needs. Experience Design focuses on the customer problems and needs. Applying human-centered design helps companies become more agile and flexible in their … Read more

User Story Maps and Wireframes

In Agile, user story maps are a holistic view of your product backlog. A product backlog is a repository of requirements for the releases of the product. The user story map is focused on the user experience target outcomes and identifying the best way to ‘slice’ your product releases by minimal viable product (MVP). A … Read more