Intertwining Lean and Design Thinking: Software Product Development from Empathy to Shipment
A few years back, everybody in the industry seemed to be talking about how “Lean Thinking” can improve software development. Best practices emerged, books were written and Lean Thinking, associated with agile process frameworks became somewhat of a standa
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Abstract
A few years back, everybody in the industry seemed to be talking about how “Lean Thinking” can improve software development. Best practices emerged, books were written and Lean Thinking, associated with agile process frameworks became somewhat of a standard work culture in software development. Now that many people are actually practicing lean and agile development, they have started to wonder about something called “Design Thinking”. When we coach development teams in a large software company, we’re frequently being asked whether Design Thinking is the next big thing substituting lean software development. After having guided several teams through successful projects, our verdict is: Design Thinking is not Lean’s heir; in fact the two schools can be intertwined in many ways and complement each other very well. As we will elaborate in this case study, they share some integral core values and goals, and can therefore be applied in the same project without corrupting each other. As a proof of concept, we combined and utilized the underlying set of methods in order to explore a yet relatively unknown and unusual domain for SAP business applications: Software for professional sailors and their coaches that helps them to optimize their training experience and competitive performance.
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Introduction: Related Work and Research Objective
Before we get into the actual sailing case study, it is important to note that SAP, world market leader in business software for large enterprises, has started a broad initiative to educate teams in Design Thinking, not only in development but across
T. Hildenbrand (*) SAP AG, Walldorf, Germany e-mail: [email protected] J. Meyer Hasso-Plattner-Institut Academy GmbH, Potsdam, Germany e-mail: [email protected] A. Maedche et al. (eds.), Software for People, Management for Professionals, DOI 10.1007/978-3-642-31371-4_13, # Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2012
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all business areas. The work culture we describe is not restricted to this project, but is currently being broadly adopted in the company. Why would the teams that already practice lean and agile development for several years (Schnitter and Mackert 2011) need additional values, practices and another set of tools to do their job? Let us be frank here from the beginning: developing business software is becoming more and more challenging. Together with the transforming requirements of business customers in different industries, products have to be in a constant cycle of innovation and adapt to ever new environments (Smith and Reinertsen 1992). Operating in such an environment, a steady flow of good ideas is the only justification for a business software company to flourish (Reinertsen 1997, 2009). Such a company therefore needs a structured framework not only on how it turns ideas into sellable products, but also on how to come up with those ideas in the first place. Design Thinking is such a framework, intended to increase the likelihood and reliability of innovat
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