In our last posts, we showed the main benefits of engaging teams and how to do it. In this article, you’ll see how we have effectively implemented an innovation process to engage teams of a large company.
The challenge was to develop a solution that would further engage the business team of a cooperative credit company, allowing managers to achieve their goals more objectively and provide the organization with more detail and transparency in relation to its performance. See below.
The project’s catalysts:
- Design Thinking and its unconventional thinking, in which hypotheses and questions are formulated based on the information collected during the observation period of a given context or problem (Immersion stage).
- Agile Methodologies, which are work approaches focused on the return on investment and not on product delivery, valuing the knowledge gained by the team throughout the project,and allowing greater customer participation throughout the software development lifecycle.
In this approach, the product scope is broadly defined in the early stages of the project and refined over small iterations. Each iteration provides the delivery of a product that adds value to the user and provides the knowledge gain that will reflect in the definition of priorities for the next stages of development.
STAGE 1 – DISRUPTION
In the disruption stage, a deep immersion is carried out in the context of the audience targeted by the organization. From the detailed mapping of the market and the profiles in question, a creative reframing of the initial product briefing can take place, thus considering the field findings.
Then, the concepts, which are based on the insights obtained through the survey, are prioritized, giving rise to an Action Plan.
Examples of activities carried out:
- Desk research to seek references in similar services;
- Market benchmark to refer to the digitalization strategy;
- In-depth interviews with users and stakeholders;
- Field ethnographic research.
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Activities carried out by the company:
- Research team’s presentation to stakeholders;
- Scheduling interviews with stakeholders and facilitating communication with users;
- Facilitating access to documents that are relevant to the project;
- Follow-up in field surveys;
- Participation in the co-creation and selection of ideas.
The estimated duration is predetermined through a mutual agreement.
STAGE 2 – PROTOTYPING
From the selection of the best solutions generated in the previous stage, mockups are created to perform tests with users in real contexts. In addition to facilitating the visualization of solutions for stakeholders, prototyping allows for agile assessments of conceptual and functional aspects, as well as early tuning and refinement, minimizing risks and ensuring assertive results in its implementation.
Examples of activities carried out in this stage:
- Definition of the architectural directions of the product;
- Definition of metrics for performance evaluation;
- Creation of prototypes for concept evaluation and usability;
- Adaptation and adjustments of the prototypes according to the notes provided by stakeholders and technical specialists.
STAGE 3 – PRODUCT MARKET FIT
During this stage, the wireframes based on the feedback obtained in the previous phase are developed. This stage includes the interfaces produced, as well as the conceptual and functional aspects. The final product is created at the end of this stage.
Examples of activities carried out in this stage:
- Creation of usage guidelines;
- Wireframes and templates development;
- Interface development;
- Usability testing.
TANGIBLE RESULTS
At the end of the project, a granular app was delivered in which account managers could better understand their metrics, visualize their performance, and compete with all units of the organization.
The app allows for better visualization of goals and offers a feed related to the application’s functions. In addition, the ranking can be filtered to show the best manager of the unit, region, or even the entire organization, providing an incentive to good competition towards goals and rewards.
