Service Design & Agile: Combining Methodologies
Speed up the development process while delivering great experiences
When you think about creating a new product or service, what are the first things that come to mind? Chances are, these two factors are among them:
Relevance: The ability to be and stay relevant in order to stand out in an ever-evolving world.
Time: The increasing need for immediate solutions that respond quickly to the challenges we are constantly facing.
When you combine these two factors, they often translate into pressure on product owners, designers and engineers in order to deliver excellent products to market faster each time.
The Agile methodology is very useful to quickly execute solutions. However, one of the risks of using this methodology alone is that we may end up building products that end up not solving actual problems.
Products and services are not launched in a vacuum, they are delivered to the real world, where they will be used alongside many others, each playing a part in a complex experience. In this scenario, relevance is related not only to usefulness, but also to how much it impacts the experience, not just for the customer but for all stakeholders in the process.
It is important to define the overall vision for the product or service, hence the need for Service Design. By using tools such as journeys to expose pain points during the experience cycle and identifying relationships between stakeholders we are able to understand the true essence of what the real problems are, and which ones need solving. Only then can we start the search for the best solution.
How to combine Service Design and Agile?
Service Design has a holistic approach that allows a global vision of the experience, as well as the identification of solutions that impact the whole process. Using this methodology we are able to define a concept for the product or service that is aligned with the organisation’s strategy and matches the needs of all stakeholders.
Agile has an operational approach that breaks down big projects into smaller chunks, with the goal of delivering quick results, in a cycle that starts with the definition of the requirements.
The challenge is about how to translate the product or service concept into epics and user stories in order to plan its implementation.
As we identified this challenge in our projects at Cocoon, we started to design future journeys which would serve as the foundation for the development and implementation of each of the moments that make up the experience. We define epics by creating a narrative with user stories and combining these with the corresponding technical components.
By doing that, we are able to:
- Make the gain perceptible with each feature
Looking at the features separately they may seem underwhelming and without much impact. It is only when you step back and look at the greater picture, that you allow yourself to see and feel how the experience should — and can — be. Whilst being able to map out what is needed to accomplish that vision. - Decrease the time gap between defining the concept and starting implementation
It becomes easier to set priorities and define a launch strategy when journeys already expose and relate the epics to each technical component.
Conclusion
Service Design defines the Why and What of a solution, Agile is about How to efficiently implement and refine the solution.
Through the strategic focus of Service Design and the operational focus of the Agile methodology we have seen an increased ability in delivering great products and experiences, without sacrificing time-to-market.
