In the world of technology, agility has become synonymous with results. With the consolidation of the Agile Methodology, it was noticed that taking this mentality to other areas such as Human Resources and Marketing, for example, was vital for the strategic alignment and planning of organizations. With that in mind, we share in this content concepts and benefits of Business Agility.   

In the article below, in addition to addressing the importance of Business Agility, we will also show you how SoftDesign’s Agile Consulting  diagnoses obstacles, removing impediments and boosting your company’s growth. Do you want to know how we can insert agility into your organization’s routine? Fill out the form below and talk to our experts right now. 

What is Business Agility?  

It’s not a method, nor a framework. However, with each passing year it becomes more popular and necessary for corporates that intend to survive and prosper in the future. According to the Business Agility Institute, “Business Agility is a set of organizational capabilities, behaviors, and ways of working that affords your business the freedom, flexibility, and resilience to achieve its purpose”. 

Through this purpose, Business Agility gained prominence among leaders and subordinates, and was also described as a modus operandi aimed at delivering value to the market. Therefore, it can be understood as a company’s ability to adapt to changes and respond flexibly to customer and user demands.   

In the podcast Os Agilitas, the CEO of Surya Digital – Business Agility Getting Real, Luiz C. Parzianello, stressed that to put this agile mentality into practice, you need to think with the head of the owner. “Business Agility is about accelerating business growth and positively impacting all stakeholders. But for that to happen, we need strategic leaders who act with visionary leadership”.  

Therefore, we can say that through Business Agility your company becomes:  

• Adaptive: becoming increasingly prepared to deal with changes in society and the market in which it operates.   
• Flexible: understanding that consumption habits, consumer behaviors and demands always change.   
• Agile: facing the fact that every business needs to respect the time-to-market and that quality delivery is the minimum expected, and no longer a competitive differential.  

Business Agility in practice  

The decentralization of information is essential to exercise Business Agility. Imagine a century-old company, which has a large structure and several departments. As in any organization, its board has a consolidated strategic plan. However, some areas act more strategically than others, and this ends up creating bottlenecks and bureaucracies that limit Business Agility.   

Over the years, what was noticed in practice was that the technology started to have a very efficient delivery capacity. However, there were barriers external to the IT sector. This became even clearer when the product teams, for example, reached high performance and delivery started to be made on time.   

Faced with this reality, an important question began to gain prominence: How can we achieve results and improve end-to-end delivery? For SoftDesign’s Agilist, Raphael Rodrigues, the answer is simple: all employees must observe the market, not just decision makers. “Corporates need to be more flexible and aligned. That’s the only way we can cross the borders of the board and bring knowledge to the entire organizational structure”.   

This means that there is no point in promoting Digital Transformation in isolation. It was precisely to solve this problem that Business Agility came up. “We don’t have control over many things. So, in some cases, the best we can do is seek adaptation. It’s this kind of thinking that helps shape the company. Remember that agility is flexible and aims at executing feasible strategies”, highlights Rodrigues. 

Diagnosing problems, finding solutions

With the Agile Methodology consolidated, we started to observe the problems of our customers in a broad way, analyzing not only their IT sector. The proof of this is that the first step in the diagnostic process is precisely to understand the scenario in its entirety, and not just what the client understands as their most latent pain.   

With that in mind, at Agile Consulting we talk about the organization’s entire workflow, from where ideas come up to actual delivery. “As we started to understand how the organization works, we started to exercise visibility and transparency practices to identify bottlenecks and pain”, explains Rodrigues.  

Throughout this process, we realized that sometimes people are so immersed in their problems that they cannot think holistically. For this, we work with improvement practices, and facilitate conversations between collaborators and senior management, always in search of value and significant changes.    

SoftDesign’s Agile Consulting service is led by an Agilist. Generally, when we address technology issues, and software engineering problems begin to arise, the participation of a Programmer becomes necessary, who suggests less costly practices that accelerate the delivery process.    

In other cases, we connect Designers to the client to show that we need to apply interviews to really understand the users of an application, for example. Recently, with the evolution of Product Marketing, we have also started to look at sales strategies and the positioning of corporates in their communication channels, which resulted in a specific consulting in this area. 

This is only possible because at SoftDesign we have a variety of professionals and skills, which allow us to see problems in a multidisciplinary way. In addition, we have been in business for 25 years, creating transformative digital solutions. 

Our way of consulting

As we have several profiles of collaborating people, we seek support in this knowledge to promote occasional collaborations throughout consulting. Depending on the problem identified, this participation can become a workforce, with greater dedication and more attention and intention from the customer.   

After the diagnosis, we present options to reduce the identified pain. So, we started a journey together with the company, showing through training how certain tasks and activities can be done quickly, with continuous feedback.   

We believe that it is not possible to manage changes in just one month, so we understand that three months is the ideal period to carry out this type of consulting. “We have a lot of respect for the client’s culture and investment. We bring our team and skills to solve problems, pains and impediments. We promote meetings with our specialists, and encourage critical thinking”, emphasizes the SoftDesign Agilist.

Accelerate the evolution of your business! 

If you’re a manager and looking for innovation, but can’t put the strategy into practice, or if you’re part of the organization’s decision-making team and find limitations to evolve projects, Agile Consulting is the solution to your problems.   

With the help of our team of specialists, we started the change process with lean management models and methods such as Lean Change Management (LCM) and  Kanban. From our delivery, we give more capacity to your company, which now has other challenges than operational ones.    

For Raphael Rodrigues, the company that undergoes Agile Consulting develops a better delivery capacity and strategic alignment. “Every company has knowledge management, and we effectively increase the knowledge an organization has. That is, it now has more earning potential, since people are more qualified. That’s a competitive advantage. Every company that wants to survive needs Business Agility“.  

Now that you know what the benefits of Business Agility are, and why it boosts your organization, contact us to put new strategies into practice!

O post Why Does Your Company Need Business Agility? apareceu primeiro em SoftDesign.

For Ash Maurya, author of the book Running Lean: Iterate from Plan A to a Plan That Works, before investing months or years of effort into creating a product, the first step should be to validate whether developing it really makes sense. That is, if the proposed solution to solve the problem meets the expectations of the stakeholders – in this case, customers and users. To achieve this, it is essential to raise questions about what the problem is.

Unraveling the Concept

The first objective of the validation phase of a digital solution is to achieve Problem Solution Fit. Product experimentation and the observation of metrics are key factors supporting this journey, as they can prove that the product hypothesis solves a relevant problem for a certain group of people. By reaching this point, it becomes easier to meet potential users, and analyze whether the digital product is technically and economically viable.

In the book “The Startup Owner’s Manual: The Step-By-Step Guide for Building a Great Company“, Steve Blank and Bob Dorf point out that the customer discovery process helps in finding Problem-Solution Fit. This is why questions like: “Did we find a problem that many people want to be solved?” and “Does our solution convincingly solve this problem?” are so important. They help determine whether the value proposition matches the target audience that the digital solution plans to reach.

For the authors, “Problem Solution Fit is only achieved when the revenue model, prices, and acquisition efforts match the needs of customers”. To achieve this, it is necessary to validate hypotheses through interviews, surveys, and tests with prototypes, among others.

It is important to emphasize that many of these strategies can be tested even before the development of a Minimum Viable Product (MVP). Remember that your main mission is to find out if the specific solution is capable of solving a problem to such an extent that the customer will be convinced that he will have to pay for it.

A Challenge for Startups and Companies

As we mentioned, one of the main uncertainties of a startup is validating the real existence of an opportunity, and whether the proposed solution is applicable to the identified problem. However, it is important to emphasize that internal systems of medium and large companies also need to achieve Problem Solution Fit.

Often, a person in a management position proposes a digital solution based on the belief that it will make work easier or increase profits. Developing this, without conducting research with internal users, or working on a validation step, can result in spending time and money. Remember: customers and users don’t behave according to your business plan.

Problem Solution Fit X Product-Market Fit

The second objective of the validation phase of a digital solution is to find Product-Market Fit. After proving that the solution actually solves a real problem, we need to validate its acceptance and performance in the market.​ For this, it is necessary to have the Business Model defined and part of the MVP built, to collect feedback from the first users.

That is, Problem Solution Fit precedes Product-Market Fit and proposes to analyze and understand a problem that can affect the positioning and differentiators of a product in the market. Product-Market Fit is the process of finding a group of customers and a market that reacts positively to your product.

Problem-Solution Fit Canvas

Created by Daria Nepriakhina, the Problem-Solution Fit Canvas is based on Lean Startup principles. Its purpose is to help entrepreneurs, marketers, and innovation leaders to identify behavioral patterns. “This model helps to find solutions with greater chances of future adoption, in addition to reducing the time spent on tests”, Daria highlights.

The Problem Solution Fit Canvas is a tool that transforms a problem into a solution, taking into account the customer’s behavior and the surrounding context. According to Daria, with this model it is possible to analyze problem-solving in-depth, thus increasing the chances of finding Problem-Solution Fit and Product-Market Fit.

The structure of the canvas consists of four pillars:

• Customer State Fit: ensure that you understand who your target audience is, what their limitations are, and what solutions are already available in the market.
• Problem-Behavior Fit: helps filter information and identify the most urgent and frequent problems, understanding the reasons behind them. This is the right time to ask yourself: is this behavior a problem worth solving?
• Communication-Channel Fit: this helps improve your communication through more emotional messages that resonate with customers in the right channels.
• Solution Guess: translates and validates all collected data, solving a real problem by identifying a standard behavior among the target audience.

Solutions to Your Problems

Finding the Problem Solution Fit may not be an easy task. At SoftDesign, the Product Conception service helps in defining the target audience, the value proposition, and the strategic planning of new products.

While in the Product Experimentation service, our multidisciplinary team works on the development of MVPs, which allow for testing hypotheses and validating business ideas. Thus, you reduce risks and save financial resources before going into the development stage.

Need help finding solutions and creating products that meet user needs? Fill out the form below and chat with our team of experts.

O post Problem Solution Fit: how to achieve it? apareceu primeiro em SoftDesign.

The first article in this series explored the profiles, roles, and expertise needed in a product team. The second article delved into the Product Owner (PO) universe to understand his role in the development journey. To end the series, in the next article we will address the role of Developers and Testers.

Why do we need Designers?

A decade ago, it was rare to see designers working with technology teams to build software. So, what happened since then that made the role of the Designer become so fundamental?

The truth is that the reality in the IT universe has changed a lot in the last decade. Some of these changes are:

• Popularization of technologies;
• The exponential increase in the supply of digital products on the market, and in competition between them;
• Users easily switch from one product to another and reduced overall brand loyalty;
  The growth of social networks and communities of influence leads people to adopt and “cancel” products quickly.

These changes have made users more demanding: today they expect a better experience. People want quick responses, easy access to information, uncomplicated processes, consistency across a brand’s various channels, and a clear and inspirational value proposition.

In the past, in a market with few solutions, Design focused on UX (User Experience) emerged as a differentiator on which very innovative brands relied to seek growth. Today, in a market full of products and demanding customers, design has become essential for a successful product.

Is design’s purpose to make products more beautiful?

Actually, Design is much more than that. Since the discipline began to develop in the so-called Modern Design, from the Bauhaus period, there is a definition that design should be concerned with two inseparable issues: form and function.

Within the concept of form, there is indeed the aesthetic component, where beauty is part of the concerns. However, design is also concerned with function:

• How will the product be used?
• What is it for?
• Does it meet a real need?
• Is it convenient to use?
• Is it satisfying to use?

In other words, Design is not about beautifying a product, but about planning it so that it is both aesthetically and functionally pleasing. For Mira Hennemann, UX/UI Designer at SoftDesign, “design is understood as a project tool that enhances individual and social development, based on the identification and solution of problems; in the same way that it emancipates users from the use of these digital products on a daily basis”.

UI Designer or UX Designer: What do I need?

This very important question leads us to clarify the different areas of Design. The discipline is very broad and includes everything from designing industrial products to creating posts for Instagram, for example. Therefore, it is common not to know exactly what we need.

In a digital product, the subareas of Design that matter most are:

UI Design – is the part that is concerned with creating the interface. In the most common software, the interfaces are screens, but nowadays there are other types, such as voice interfaces. Within this area, we have:

• Colors, Typography and Composition – everything in the interface needs to be thought out in order to convey the message we want because the elements have meaning and impact! A well-known example is an increase in clicks on an e-commerce purchase button, depending on the color of that button.
• Information Architecture – how to organize the elements and the contents in the interface, with hierarchy, structure, etc., so that the user understands what he sees and finds what he needs.
• Interaction Design – focused on user interaction, including issues such as success and error feedback, the possibility to undo actions, etc.
• UI Guidelines – are guides to be followed so that the user can use the product in a specific environment. For example, iPhone and Android users have very different guidelines!

UX Design – is the part concerned about the user’s experience with the product, including:

• Value Proposition – does the product we are going to build solve a real problem for the customer? Does the customer see enough value in this product to use it?
• User – who is our user and how does the product fit into their routine?
• Journey – what is the customer’s path when using the product, from the moment he discovers the product? What touchpoints does he have with the product on this journey and how do those touchpoints affect his satisfaction?
• Onboarding – how are we going to help customers in their first experience with the product?
• Retention – what mechanisms do we need for the customer to continue using our product?
• UX Writing – is concerned with writing explanatory texts and messages displayed to the user.

User Research – is the area dealing with research and data collection, including but not limited to:

• Interviews – a technique for collecting data through a structured conversation with users.
• Observation – a technique for collecting data by observing users in their real environment.
• Usability Testing – a technique for testing and collecting feedback on the product.

It is worth noting that these areas are not completely independent; they interact and influence each other. For example, UI is a part of UX, and UX is not defined without Research. The separation is more for instructive purposes, to help organize all topics of interest.

In addition to these areas, there are still other areas of Design that can be important for a digital product, but that is not part of the product team. For example:

Brand Design – if you are creating a product, you may also need a branding effort, which includes designing the brand’s symbols or logo.

Design of material for product marketing – if you are going to promote your product in the market, you will also need a designer to create advertising material, campaigns, and sales or product presentation materials.

How does a designer affect the product?

The expected result of the Design work is to improve the following product factors:

• Usefulness: Is the product useful and connected to the real needs of users?
• Value: Does the product offer something of value to the customer?
• Findability: Can the user understand the product proposal and find its usefulness?
• Usability: Can the user use the product to achieve his/her purposes?
• Accessibility: Can users with permanent or temporary limitations also access the product’s utilities?
• Reliability: Do people believe in the product, and trust that it will deliver what it promises?
• Desirability: what emotions does the product evoke in those who use it? Do users have positive emotions that make them want the product?

Can the designer work only on the definition of the product?

This is a question we’ve been asked a few times. Why does the Design person need to be part of the team? Why can’t the Design person act just at the beginning, “create the UX”, with the product team then following the definitions throughout the development?

Well, actually, the design doesn’t “create” the UX. What the Design person initially does is propose a solution that he or she believes is adequate. Experience, however, is what the user actually experiences when using the product.

This is where the iterative nature of product development comes into play: a first version is put to use or tested with a small group of users; feedback is collected, and the product is tweaked to improve the experience.

Therefore, the Design person has a continuous role, iterating and continuously evolving the user experience proposition, in addition to creating the UI of new functionalities. According to Pricila Sales, UX Designer at SoftDesign, among the principles and practices of a designer we have strategic performance, which goes far beyond the initial stage of definition. “We continually seek to identify opportunities, as well as to promote the construction of products that allow a good consumer experience and that provide prominence, generating value for the business”, she emphasizes.

How is the daily life of the Design person in the product team?

The Design person works very closely with the Product Management person. This duo works together all the time in activities such as:

• User research and testing;
• Analysis and proposition of solutions;
• Meetings with the team to refine and debate the proposed solutions;
• Testing of solutions, creating prototypes, improving them through validation, and testing with stakeholders and users.

Each planned solution then needs to be detailed, which requires some solitary work in which the Design person will structure:

• Flows, to analyze and propose the interaction;
• High-fidelity prototypes, which represent the UI, with all the details, such as sizes, spacing, colors, messages, etc.

In addition, Designers work closely with the team during the development sprint, actively participating in day-to-day activities to clear up doubts and, mainly, to reconcile the proposed Design with the restrictions and possibilities of technology.

One designer or multiple designers?

To conclude, the last question that we will answer is about the number and specialty of Designers that should compose your product team. In an early-stage product, when only one team is working and you have up to five engineers involved, one design person is likely able to meet the demand. This number is a proportion that is accepted in the market, according to the NN Group’s survey. Also, at this stage the Design person will probably be a generalist, accumulating UI, UX, and Research tasks.

However, as the product evolves, the team will grow and complexity will increase. Therefore, it is normal not only to increase the number of designers but also to start working with people specialized in each area.

Designers at SoftDesign

In our work process, designers participate in the Conception of new products and throughout the life cycle of Development, performing activities focused on UX, UI, and Research. At SoftDesign, our main mission is to deliver products that will be used, loved and that generate value and in order to achieve this, design work is essential.

If you need help creating useful and desirable products, proposing user experiences, and developing successful products, please contact us using the form below. Together, we will connect technology, design, and strategy!

O post The Designer´s Role in The Product Team apareceu primeiro em SoftDesign.