Reflection Assignment – Learning Launch

Challenge     I’m a member of my organization’s Design Thinking and Digital Consulting practice and our  challenge is to improve the structured planning and progress tracking of our portfolio of work  (framework, activities, timelines, and projects) within the department in order to avoid recreating  a unique process, activities, & tools to solve similar customers problems. The project scope  includes our team who is composed of six employees, as well as the larger Digital Consulting  practice, with whom we work closely. The project is limited to internal resources (i.e., budget  and employee time). The project should not exceed 30 business days and the solution should  include an even distribution of working hours amongst the team members. We will focus on  trying to uncover what our team members, as well as key stakeholders within the larger Digital  Consulting practice, consider to be ineffective or problematic with regard to how we plan,  execute, and report on client engagements.    Selection    Our team has already gone through several design thinking activities/tools, 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 how we approach client projects and aligned on a  common framework and a standard set of activities and tasks that would need to be facilitated on  nearly all engagements.  We spent two weeks conducting 5 workshops to identify the underlying  challenges, we ideated on those challenges, tested assumptions, and ultimately determined that  we needed to focus on an Agile PM tool & process to help us address our core planning,  execution, and management challenges.      Next, we went through three interactive workshops to structure our most common tasks and  processes to facilitate customer engagements. These three sessions occurred within in a one- week timeframe. We expected to produce a document clearly outlining our framework,  processes, activities, and a common execution timeline.    For our second learning launch, we focused on gaining clarity on tools/platforms that can help us  more effectively plan and manage the project/engagement.  This tested our assumption that  because we lacked a project/program management tool to facilitate planning and execution of  client engagements, significant deviation existed for project duration, activities, deliverables, and  ultimately impacting client satisfaction.  Our team constructed, sent, and compiled feedback  from an anonymous survey. 10 executive stakeholders from the larger Digital Consulting  practice completed this survey. The surveys included questions about our proposed process,  understanding the process and milestones, activities, outputs and deliverables, tools, and overall  sentiment/feedback on the proposal.  This last launch was accomplished in five business days.

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 tool to help plan, execute, and manage client engagements would deliver stronger outcomes  for clients and help our practice be more efficient.  Our actual results were slightly different from  what we anticipated in that the key stakeholders from the Digital Consulting practice expressed  concerns with costs associated with a new platform and suggested leveraging free tools that were  already widely available within the company.  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, as launches come before a full rollout in the design thinking timeline.     Approach    Given that our team has already gone through several design thinking activities/tools and are at  this stage in the timeline, the learning launch is the appropriate tool. As previously mentioned,  our team needs to review the insights gained from our first two launches and incorporate this  feedback into future launch designs. Future launch designs should reflect insight gained, progress  made, and come closer to a compelling solution ready for full rollout.

