Learning Launch:      Challenge     Myself is working as Sr. Consultant in IT Infrastructure  Development (providing IT solutions and projects implementation)  Team and our challenge is to improve the workflow in terms of  quality and timelines within the team in order to increase  productivity in IT infrastructure development to clients/users.   The IT department has 65 employees and divided by various  portfolios include reality, HR, Finance, risk & compliance,  healthcare and banking etc,.  My portfolio team composed of 6  employees.  We handle different projects in our day to day  activities and the projects are limited to internal resources  (i.e., budget and employee time).  Here, I took one of our  critical projects that wanted to share as an example for  Learning Launch (how we test quickly and implement).  The  project completion deadline is very short term with limited  resources.  We will focus on trying to uncover what our team  members as well as key stakeholders within the IT department  considered to be ineffective or problematic with regard to the  workflow.  Our issue is that we need to deliver the whole  environment within the stipulated time with quality with current  work flow process.  So we wanted to restructure the workflow  process and test it out in lab environment.      Selection     Our team has already gone through several design thinking  programs.  Design Thinking begins with a set of principles that  get to the heart of these questions like how do we better  understand our users?  How do we deliver breakthrough solutions  that fulfill our users’ needs?  How do we do this at enterprise  speed and scale?  These principles provide the foundation for  delivering  solutions  that  meet  or  exceed  your  users’

expectations.    In a highly commoditized industry, you may prioritize cost of  delivery over user experience. As a design thinker, you may not  agree with that, but it’s still a valid strategy to pursue.  But  we’re no longer measured by the features, functions and  solutions we deliver.  We’re measured by how well we fulfill our  users’ needs. Whether we’re helping our clients discover a  solution for their needs, collaborate across continents, or just  do their expense reports a little faster.  Users rely on our

solutions to get their jobs done every day.  This is not a  responsibility we take lightly.  By thinking about users and  user outcomes, we deliver more useful, usable, and desirable  solutions.  Most importantly, we earn the trust, respect, and  repeat business of the clients/users we serve.  When we only pay  attention to metrics like revenue and operating costs, it  undermines your team’s effort to focus on the problems that  matters most to the people who use our offerings and solutions.   Try Measure outcomes during development, Measure usability,  usefulness, and desirability.  Choose appropriate metrics that  will enable learning and understanding.  So, we are ready to try  the Learning Launch tool.  Broadly speaking, the Learning Launch  is an experiment meant to quickly test an idea and prototype.      Application     For our first Learning Launch, we focused on the planning, build  and execution of our application development tasks in lab  environment.  We wanted to introduce new workflow management  where this allows individuals to automate repetitive business  processes, followup automatically on uncompleted tasks in the  progress, and most importantly it gives overall picture of the  workflow along with the performance matrics etc.  In particular,  we wanted to see if we could structure our tasks, projects, and  processes to adapt the methods of Scrum project management for  our work (e.g., time boxed, daily, specific meetings, reviews,  etc.) in an effort to become more agile.  This tested our  assumption that the structure and execution were the main causes  of our workflow challenge.  Our team went through two-day  training with a Scrum project management coach.  Next, we went  through two workshops to plan/structure our tasks and processes  in a more agile way. These two sessions occurred within in a  two-week timeframe.  We are expected to produce a document with  a clear description of our new, more agile processes/workflow.    For our second learning launch, we focused on gaining clarity  about our tasks and priorities.  This tested our assumption that  our prioritization of tasks was the main cause of our workflow  challenge.  Our team completed an anonymous research/survey.   The surveys included questions about our new, proposed process,  understanding the process and the prioritization of tasks, and  feelings about the change, and were conducted within a one-week  timeframe.    Insight

By applying the Learning Launch tool, our team identified our  assumptions and designed launches to test these assumptions.   Additionally, we thought through anticipated results, expecting  to find that a more agile approach would improve our workflow,  and that both our team and the key stakeholders would be fairly  open to the new prioritization of tasks and process.  Our actual  results were slightly different from what we anticipated: while  our team was open to the prioritization of tasks and process,  the key stakeholders in the larger IT department and IT  department expressed some concerns.  Moving forward, our team  will review this insight and incorporate it into future launch  designs.  The ongoing incorporation of insight is particularly  important at this stage, before a full rollout in the design  thinking timeline.    Approach    Earlier  we  used  alternate  approach  without  any  workflow

management in place and now we introduced automated process to  save time and induce more productivity.      Given that our team has already gone through several design  thinking programs and are at this stage in the timeline, the  learning launch is the appropriate tool.  As previously  mentioned, our team needs to review the insight gained from our  first two launches and incorporate this insight into future  launch designs. Future design launches should reflect insight  gained, progress made, and compelling solution ready for full  rollout.

