Design is not just about a visual result. Many methods are involved in getting this visual result, and product managers can learn a thing or two from the designer’s mindset. — Switching from a design role to a product management role is not that common as far as I can tell. For me, the switch came as a surprise, but at the same time naturally. I often felt limited in a design role, because regularly in teams, design was an afterthought…

I sometimes see Scrum-(flavored)-teams that iteratively produce incremental work and expect that improvement is the result. But I think improvement is not automatically a given from this way of working. — First of all, let’s talk about what I mean when I’m talking about increment, iteration, and improvement. And even more important is how the Scrum guide talks about these terms. Increment The Increment is in the core of Scrum as one of the Scrum Artifacts. The Scrum guide mentions the increment…

Original illustration by Vijay Verma from Ouch! Designers should collaborate, not just with presentations and critique, but with proper collaboration methods. I will describe some proven methods here. When working with different design teams, I see a repetitive pattern. They work alone in isolation and just get together to present…

Service Blueprints are nowadays an established tool used by designers. But I would like to argue, that their real power develops as a tool for management. — The inventor of the Service Blueprint G. Lynn Shostack wrote in her Harvard Business Review article: Such a blueprint gives managers a context within which to deal with the management and control of the process. But today we usually see (Service-/Strategic-/UX-/Product-/Younameit-) Designers using Service Blueprints as a powerful method to…