7. Lean & Agile Management

Now that we know what Design Thinking is, let’s consider how it fits into the overall product management process. You may have heard terms like “lean” and “agile” in the work environment already. It is important to understand what these two approaches are and how they interact with Design Thinking.

Based on the principles of lean manufacturing, lean management focuses on streamlining the work process as much as possible—minimizing waste and maximizing value. Some core tenets of lean management are:

• Cross-functional collaboration between designers, engineers, and product managers.
• Gathering feedback quickly and continuously, ensuring that you’re constantly learning and adapting as you go.
• Deciding as late as possible and delivering fast, with less focus on long-term deliverables.
• A strong emphasis on how the team operates as a whole.

Lean management is a technique that works in conjunction with agile development methods. Agile is a software development process that works in iterative, incremental cycles known as sprints. Unlike traditional development methods (such as the waterfall method), agile is flexible and adaptive. Based on the Agile Development Manifesto, agile adheres to the following principles:

• Individuals and interactions over processes and tools.
• Working software over comprehensive documentation.
• Customer collaboration over contract negotiation.
• Responding to change over following a plan.

Design Thinking, lean, and agile are often seen as three separate approaches. Companies and teams will ask themselves whether to use lean or agile or Design Thinking—but actually, they can (and should!) be merged for optimal results.

Why? Because applying Design Thinking in a lean, agile environment helps to create a product development process that is not only user-centric but also highly efficient from a business perspective. While it’s true that each approach has its own modus operandi, there is also significant overlap. Combining principles from each can be crucial in keeping cross-functional teams on the same page—ensuring that designers, developers, product managers, and business stakeholders are all collaborating on one common vision.

As we’ve learned, Design Thinking is a solution-based approach to exploring and solving problems. It focuses on generating ideas with a specific problem in mind, keeping the user at the heart of the process throughout. Once you’ve established and designed a suitable solution, you’ll start to incorporate lean principles—testing your ideas, gathering quick and ongoing feedback to see what works—with particular emphasis on cross-team collaboration and overcoming departmental silos. Agile ties all of this into short sprint cycles, allowing for adaptability in the face of change. In an agile environment, products are improved and built upon incrementally. Again, cross-team collaboration plays a crucial role; agile is all about delivering value that benefits both the end-user and the business as a whole.

Together, Design Thinking, lean, and agile cut out unnecessary processes and documentation, leveraging the contributions of all key stakeholders for continuous delivery and improvement.