We help companies improve the odds of building successful products.

Most companies say they are following agile development practices but in reality most are still following waterfall processes.

We help companies uncover better ways of working and improve the odds of success.

90%

of features
fail to deliver
the expected benefits.

The challenges - Why most agile processes are not effective

There are always more ideas to build than budget to build them. Management are responsible for funneling the limited company funds towards the ideas that will best deliver on the strategy.

A scales showing a balance ebtween ebenfits and costs

Prioritisation. How are we to prioritise different ideas if we don't know what we are going to build or how successful they will be? Iterative design can look like you're trying to skip out of the hard planning work.
Alignment. How do we know that teams will build features that align to the current business strategy if they have autonomy to build anything. We could end up wasting time and money building the wrong things.
Skills. Our people are experts in design, development and other areas. We have more work than they can currently do so asking them to take on this additional work, which isn't their core skill set, isn't a good use of their time.

Business cases solve these problems, but they force waterfall processes.

But to build a business case, you need costs. To get costs, you need estimates. To get estimates, you need a design. To get a design, you need requirements. And then to ensure that you keep within those cost estimates you need to ensure that the requirements do not change.

You're locked into your first idea which is wrong 90% of the time.

What we wanted

Iterative delivery

Empowered teams using iterative development and quick feedback loops to test and validate ideas, and pivot based on what they learn.

What we got

Incremental Water-Scrum-Fall

Waterfall stages up until the build phase when we break down the solution into sprints. We get the overhead of more management without the benefit of improved outcomes.

There is another way - Improving outcomes using enabling constraints

We can achieve the goals of the business case without having to lock ourselves into a solution upfront by solving the problems of prioritisation, alignment and skills by empowering teams with enabling constraints

The UXDX Model with a loop showing Continuous Research, Continuous Design and Continuous Development representing the skills teams need. Surrounded by a six sided shape representing the constraints. The sides are Values, Structure, Leadership, Vision, Strategy and Objectives.

Fund teams, not features

By splitting the product teams along value streams, management can control the amount of investment in each part of the product in line with the strategic goals. But funding also impacts on governance processes - and changes require coordination across the business - which isn't easy.

UXDX Stream

Enabling the Team. We feature senior executives from leading companies (not consultants) because they have lived and breathed the politics and challenges of changing deeply embedded processes like these. They share the challenges and successes that they have had covering concepts like funding, team design, architecture and the leadership skills and practices needed to create empowered teams.

Funding unlocks our next challenge: you might have the best empowered, autonomous teams with amazing leadership but there is still the risk that these teams will build features that are not aligned with the product vision and strategy.

Share context, not requirements

By creating a product vision, defining the strategy and then creating short term objectives for each Stream team management can ensure that teams have the right context and incentives to build solutions that will result in the right business outcomes.

UXDX Stream

Product Direction. We cover the skills Product teams need to define compelling visions, implement successful strategies, develop roadmaps that work, create tangible objectives for streams and to evangelise the vision continuously so that the message is heard across the organisation.

Alignment unlocks our next challenge: everyone might be on board with the vision, strategy and objectives but asking teams to identify, validate and build solutions to customer problems is a different skill set to the one they have used before.

Embrace Discovery, Design and Delivery

By holding back from giving people responsibility they will never be able to prove that they can rise to the occasion. Instead, if we identify the necessary skills and then provide training and a safe environment to practice, we can ensure that teams are able to deliver on the vision and strategy.

UXDX Streams

Continuous Research. The ideation, prototyping and validating skills to quickly and cheaply identify the best solutions to the identified opportunities
Continuous Design. The ideation, prototyping and validating skills to quickly and cheaply identify the best solutions to the identified opportunities.
Continuous Development. The development, testing and deployment skills to produce high quality, sustainable products.