How Agile and Design Thinking is a steroid for Lean Six Sigma

“Be stubborn on the vision, but flexible on the details.”

—Jeff Bezos

Lately there’s been some buzz about Agile, Lean, and design thinking in the corporate industry. There are three different philosophies and disciplines, but they all share at least one commonality: responding to change. 

‘Agile’ is a term for software methodologies that emphasize responding to higher uncertainty by creating software that can adapt. ‘Lean’ applies the same principle to products by avoiding waste; and ‘design thinking’ brings both of them together by encouraging responsiveness before you even start, when you think through your goals and who you want to reach.

Agile thinking, Design Thinking and Lean Six Sigma – three ingredients for success. However, you can only find the best cake recipes in books. But with practice, you will find yourself cooking right through the night. And this article will help you get started on the right foot.

Design Thinking and Agile

So, what is agile methodology and design thinking?

Design Thinking methodology is a way of tackling problems. It’s a process, and a mindset: you’re constantly testing new ideas and making sure they work with the end user in mind. Instead of relying on assumptions and guesswork, it uses research and real data to build strong systems that address real human needs. Design Thinking is a human-centered approach which makes it very different from problem-solving techniques like Lean Six Sigma which are solution-based. This makes it non-linear and collaborative in nature as compared to traditional approaches like Lean Six Sigma, which uses logic based on data for finding solutions.

Whereas, Agile is a mindset that goes beyond software development techniques. Agile can be observed in everything from running to software development, business processes, and product development. Agile works because it is flexible. You go through your decision-making process in the most humble way possible, respecting different perspectives and working to build support for whatever decision you eventually come to.

Related article: Customer service improvement through Lean Six Sigma

How does Agile and Design Thinking help in Lean Six Sigma?

Agile thinking helps you with the following:

• Dealing with ambiguity
• Doing things fast
• Learning from failure and improving by iterating quickly
• Being flexible and adaptable to change as it happens, rather than fighting it.

It is a well-known fact that customers are the lifeblood of any business. Therefore, it is only logical that if you want to improve your business and create value for your stakeholders, you should keep your buyer’s persona in mind.

Design Thinking does precisely that by keeping the user or customer experience in mind and making sure all processes are done with their needs and requirements at the forefront. This allows Lean Six Sigma teams to solve problems better because they have a clear understanding of what those are, from their interactions with actual users or customers who will be using their products or services daily.

Related article: 5 Ways to Become More Creative

To summarize: Agile helps create project plans that are more manageable because they are broken down into small chunks of work called sprints— and Design Thinking helps you craft those sprints based on how customers feel about your product or service. These approaches also enable companies to fail fast without incurring large costs upfront while still learning valuable lessons from their mistakes!

How should organizations use these approaches?

You can’t lose sight of the bigger picture. Agile and Design Thinking both works as a steroid for Lean Six Sigma. Focusing on the customer and new ways to deliver value to them but they can sometimes fall into a trap where they only focus on their immediate work. 

This can keep teams from getting stuck in an endless loop of “let’s just tweak this for another three months.”

• You need the plan to manage risks as you execute your strategy. Neither Lean nor Six Sigma have robust risk management disciplines or tools that help organizations manage risks that occur during projects. As agile and design thinking approaches take hold across an organization, it’s important to have tools and processes that enable teams to understand the impact of their decisions and how those decisions will affect other areas of the business.

• You need to change management disciplines so you aren’t blindsided by resistance or misunderstandings about what your efforts mean for different departments or functions in your organization.

• You need communication roles so someone is working across all these efforts to maintain alignment and consistency in messaging while avoiding duplication of effort and avoiding conflicting messages either internally or externally with partners or customers (especially if there are multiple brands involved).

Final Thoughts

The best approach to using these techniques is to understand how each technique works. Understanding Design Thinking, Lean and Agile thinking is not just a simple story of one-upmanship among the three movements, but it shows how these philosophies can be used together for greater impact.

The concepts overlap, the pace of change is accelerated, and the challenges are real. Are you ready for it?