In the software development world, it’s become almost a given that you’ll use some form of an agile process. It is unclear whether or not your team should take a ‘design thinking’ approach to their work. Some advocate for a combined approach of Design Thinking and Agile, while others believe mixing two methodologies only creates confusion and makes each more difficult to implement. Let’s see if we can shed some light on this debate by exploring both methods in greater depth.

In order to understand the difference between design thinking and agile, it helps to first understand what Design Thinking is. It can be defined as a human-centered, collaborative approach to innovation that draws from the designer’s toolkit to integrate the needs of people, the possibilities of technology, and the requirements for business success. It takes a different approach than traditional problem-solving methods by focusing on creating prototypes quickly to fail early and learn quickly. A core element of design-based thinking is a structured process called Human-Centered Design (HCD). HCD provides five phases: Define, Research, Ideate, Prototype, and Validate; each designed around testing assumptions (often using paper prototype testing) and allowing you to validate your key hypotheses before making further investments.

Most design-thinking processes are relatively new and have their roots in design firms, not traditional software engineering organizations. This means that, while there are always talented engineers who can be successful designers, most engineering teams will struggle to adopt a full-fledged thinking process without assistance from other experienced designers. Design Thinking also works best when you’re designing something for which the customer is willing to provide feedback. In contrast, Agile processes work better when the customer is unavailable or willing to provide constant feedback. Given these challenges, it’s understandable that many agile purists might scoff at the idea of integrating thinking into their existing agile process.

Integrating Design Thinking into your Agile Process

To many people outside the agile community, it might seem that being agile is all about working from a prioritized backlog and getting as close to continuous deployment as possible. To them, it probably seems obvious that ‘being agile’ means using Scrum or Kanban for your workflow and doing your best to release code every week. In reality, there are countless ways you can combine thinking with an existing agile process, but only you will know which one fits best for your team. The nice thing about having a more fluid approach is that if things aren’t going well on a project, you’re free to try something different without throwing away your existing backlog.

In conclusion, design thinking can be a great compliment to your existing agile process if it’s approached with an open mind and willingness to experiment. That said, it shouldn’t be seen as a silver bullet – you’ll still want to carefully consider how thinking fits into your existing workflow.