Design Thinking Reflection – Visualization

Challenge and Selection:

I‘m working in the IT project management team of a Consulting company that offers web based  assessment solutions to optimize recruiting processes of our clients.

The company has grown very quickly from being a start-up and just became part of an international  corporate company. New client and product development projects are getting more and more  complex due to client requirements as well as technical and legal requirements. Especially when it  comes to very technical projects that will result in infrastructural development of our IT solutions the  IT department approaches the work single-handedly which makes it very difficult to take care of the  project management and make sure everything is done in time and tested properly before going live.  Furthermore, for those types of projects there is no official kick-off meeting.

To help get an understanding of what IT is working on I would like to introduce project kick-off  meetings that will include a visualization of the planned solution. This – in my eyes – will help to get a  shared understanding of the work being done, support to document our IT infrastructure and help  knowledge sharing between IT and IT project management co-workers. This will benefit the  implementation process itself and also the overall understanding of our IT infrastructure which is  beneficial knowledge when it comes to further IT development.

Application:

For the project kick-off we would like to get together all colleagues that have direct interest for the  project as well as those who should know about for future reference. For infrastructural IT work  those are most likely:

-  All relevant IT staff that will work on this solution or is directly/ or indirectly affected by  potential changes

-  All IT staff that should learn about what we are doing

-  At least one IT project manager

-  At least one Quality assurance manager

-  At least one 1st Level support or Operations representative

The future project outline should not only phrase the aim of the project and responsible roles but  also include a visualization of the project. So as soon as the first specification is presented to the  group I as the participating IT project manager will draw what I understand as the solution on a flip  chart or whiteboard. The kick-off meeting group will suggest how to improve the drawing if they  don’t agree. A discussion might come up uncover unclarities or misunderstandings or (wrong)  expectations about the solution. This is what visualization reveals. As Angela Meyer tells in her video  people will react on the drawing and this will start the necessary discussion about the solution which  will lead to a better understanding, more engagement and improved knowledge sharing.

Insights & Approach:

As I have just completed the Design Thinking course and this a very new tool to me I didn’t have the  chance to try it out yet. However, in my experience using just words leads to tons of

misunderstandings, especially when the topic is very complex, technical, difficult to understand. I’m  sure that visualization will help to clarify on the expected solution better than just words.

