Presentation – Agile Strategy and Design Thinking by Guðbjörg Eggertsdóttir
Agile Project Management Explained
Definition
Agile project management is a flexible, iterative approach to planning and executing projects. It focuses on delivering value quickly, adapting to change, and involving stakeholders throughout the process. Instead of following a rigid plan, teams work in short cycles called iterations or sprints, continuously improving based on feedback.
Core Principles
- Customer Collaboration Over Contract Negotiation – Agile emphasizes working closely with customers to ensure the final product meets real needs.
- Responding to Change Over Following a Plan – Plans are adaptable; teams adjust priorities as new insights emerge.
- Individuals and Interactions Over Processes and Tools – Communication and teamwork are valued more than strict procedures.
- Working Solutions Over Comprehensive Documentation – The focus is on delivering usable outcomes rather than lengthy reports.
Key Practices
- Sprints or Iterations: Short, time-boxed periods (usually 1–4 weeks) where teams deliver a usable increment of the project.
- Daily Stand-ups: Brief meetings to align the team, discuss progress, and remove obstacles.
- Backlog Management: A prioritized list of tasks or features that evolve as the project progresses.
- Retrospectives: Regular reviews to reflect on what worked, what didn’t, and how to improve.
Benefits
- Faster delivery of value
- Greater flexibility and responsiveness
- Improved collaboration and transparency
- Continuous learning and improvement
Common Frameworks
- Scrum: Focuses on defined roles (Product Owner, Scrum Master, Team) and structured sprints.
- Kanban: Visualizes workflow to improve efficiency and limit work in progress.
- Lean: Emphasizes eliminating waste and maximizing value.
In Essence
Agile project management transforms how teams work — from rigid planning to adaptive, human-centered collaboration — enabling organizations to innovate and deliver results in dynamic environments.
Design Thinking Explained
Definition
Design thinking is a human-centered approach to problem-solving that combines creativity, empathy, and rationality to develop innovative solutions. It focuses on understanding the needs of people, reframing challenges, and experimenting through prototyping and testing.
Core Principles
- Empathy: Understanding the experiences, motivations, and challenges of the people you’re designing for.
- Define: Clearly articulating the problem based on insights gathered from real users.
- Ideate: Generating a wide range of creative ideas without judgment or limitation.
- Prototype: Building simple, tangible representations of ideas to explore and test them quickly.
- Test: Gathering feedback from users to refine and improve solutions.
Mindset
- Human-centered: Focuses on real user needs rather than assumptions.
- Iterative: Encourages experimentation and learning from failure.
- Collaborative: Brings together diverse perspectives and disciplines.
- Action-oriented: Moves ideas into tangible forms early to learn by doing.
Benefits
- Encourages innovation grounded in empathy and practicality.
- Reduces risk by testing ideas early and often.
- Builds alignment across teams through shared understanding.
- Creates solutions that are desirable (for users), feasible (technically), and viable (for business).
In Essence
Design thinking blends creativity and structure to help organizations solve complex problems with empathy and innovation — turning insights into impactful, user-centered solutions.
Strategic Questions
Strategic Questions for Integrating Agile Management and Design Thinking
1. Understanding Purpose and Direction
- What problem are we truly trying to solve, and for whom?
- How does this initiative align with our organization’s purpose and strategic goals?
- What would success look like from the user’s perspective?
2. Empathy and User Insight
- Who are our key users or stakeholders, and what are their real needs or pain points?
- How might we better understand their experiences through observation or feedback?
- What assumptions are we making about our users that we need to test?
3. Ideation and Innovation
- How might we reframe this challenge to uncover new opportunities?
- What unconventional ideas could we explore without judgment?
- How can we balance creativity with feasibility and business value?
4. Experimentation and Learning
- What is the smallest experiment we can run to test this idea?
- How will we measure learning and success from each iteration?
- What feedback loops can we build to continuously improve?
5. Collaboration and Alignment
- How can we ensure cross-functional teams stay aligned on purpose and priorities?
- What rituals or practices (e.g., stand-ups, retrospectives) will help maintain transparency and trust?
- How do we empower teams to make decisions quickly and adapt to change?
6. Scaling and Sustainability
- How can we scale successful prototypes or pilots without losing agility?
- What structures or mindsets need to evolve to sustain innovation?
- How do we embed continuous learning and user-centered thinking into our culture?
In Essence
These questions help leaders and teams navigate complexity with agility and empathy — ensuring that strategy remains adaptive, human-centered, and aligned with real-world impact.
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