The Main Thing: Processes should work despite the people

This week we've gone with the "bad" theme. We have articles on all the ways that people are doing processes wrong. But, like user error, this is actually a problem with the process and not with the people.

"Agile works - you're just not doing it right".

I've heard this so many times, usually followed up with "It's a mindset really", or "You just need to empower the teams". The problem is that a lot of these experts are not very customer-centric because managers are the customers of these processes and they aren't making things easy for them.

Without a clear, and easy, way for managers to adopt the new practices, which includes how funding, governance, planning and more should change to accommodate the new ways of working then we can't blame the implementation.

If only someone released a way of working that focused on helping managers to implement changes across the organisation... Stay tuned for an announcement from us at UXDX USA!

This Weeks Updates

Enabling the Team

The Missing Link Between Strategy and Innovation by David L. Rogers
Skunkworks delivers disappointing results. To succeed, corporate innovation needs to be bounded by a clear set of strategic priorities.

Closing Open Loops for Better Personal OKRs by Christina Wodtke
“Open loops” are those nagging, unfinished tasks that linger in our minds. Understanding your capacity, prioritising and regular review can help to close them.

Product Direction

Avoid the 5 Deadly Sins of Product Strategy by Adam Thomas
Is your strategy hidden, ambiguous, untrustworthy, selfish or stale? Adam shares how to fix it to get better results.

Your Strategy (probably) Sucks by Martin Eriksson
Discussing strategy quickly descends into a “right” way and a “wrong” way to do it but like most things in business and product the reality is more nuanced.

Continuous Discovery

Decoding Behavioral Interviewing by Alexis and Adrienne
While this is more positioned about how you can answer behavioral job interviews I think it is a great insight into how to run your customer interviews.

Measuring Users’ Mental Models by Lawton Pybus
Mental models are beliefs about how something works. Lawson shares tips on how to tease out how customers think about your product.

Continuous Design

Please, Please Don’t A/B Test That by Tal Raviv
A/B testing is not an insurance policy for critical thinking or knowing your users. Testing is easy but not almost appropriate.

Product Validation Testing by UserTesting
Discover the role of product validation testing. Ensure success by learning actionable strategies and best practices for validating your product.

Continuous Delivery

BFF: A design pattern helping teams gain ownership by Raphaël Tahar
Raphaël shares a four-part series on how teams can use the Backend-for-frontend design pattern to enable more autonomy for teams.

The Wrong Way to Use DORA Metrics by Nočnica Mellifera
Process metrics are a means to an end - the business metrics are what you should care about.

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New Video Released This Week

Fahad highlights the pivotal role of user feedback in transforming enterprise software design, detailing the integration of user research, overcoming challenges, and the positive impacts of user-centric methods, with practical examples from Splunk. 👇👇

Job of the Week

UX Researcher/Designer
🏬 Genesys
📌 Durham, NC, USA

About Genesys
Genesys is a global company that provides AI-powered customer experience and contact center solutions. Genesys Cloud's platform helps organizations enhance customer service and improve business outcomes in over 100 countries.

See role details here

The Results of Last Week’s Poll

The question was: How can we bridge the gap between design and development?

We have a clear winner for the poll: improve cross-functional skills across the team.

There were a few mixed reactions though in the comments. On the plus side, miscommunication can be reduced because people have a shared language and understanding of what can and can't be done. But on the cautionary side, we have the saying "A jack of all trades is a master of none".

When it comes to innovation though it tends to be the polyglots who can think outside the box. So I recommend learning from different fields wherever you can.