“Enlightened trial and error succeeds over the planning of the lone genius”
is a quote from a great video demonstrating how teamwork and agile concepts at IDEO is used to successfully deliver innovation and solutions in a non-IT environment in just 5 days!
Some highlights which I thought were pertinent to agile:
- The people are not experts at any given area. They innovate by using and applying the process.
- The person leading the team is the leader because he is good with groups, not because of seniority.
- There are no titles, no permanent (role) assignments – everyone is a generalist but brings specific skills.
- Everyone communicates and share what they learn.
- Iterative development with showcases/demonstrations of prototypes to get feedback for the next iteration of the product.
- Some of IDEO’s mantra for innovation:
- One conversation at a time
- Stay focused on topic
- Encourage wild ideas
- Defer judgment
- Build on the ideas of others
- No criticisms (this is self moderated)
- Time-boxing, to prevent the process from going on for ever (Parkinson’s Law and Pareto Principle comes to mind).
- Self-organization.
- Team judges what are the best ideas (team votes).
- Fail often in order to succeed sooner (fail safe culture).
- Having an open mind – think outside the box.
- Belief that focused chaos can be constructive.
- High use of visualization tools, story boards, information radiators.
- Fresh ideas come faster in a fun place.
- High level of collaboration.
- Teamwork, teamwork, and more teamwork!