Member-only story
Ex-Principal Engineer’s Guide to Design Thinking and Continuous Delivery
How do the big tech companies and unicorn startups succeed in agile product development while maintaining code quality?
TL;DR
- We’ll discuss what design thinking is.
- We’ll discuss what continuous delivery is.
- We’ll uncover how to utilize design thinking and continuous delivery to build products with agility and quality.
- Tons of learning materials!
Design thinking and continuous delivery are amazing approaches to product innovation. They are not widely discussed in the agile context, but their synergy is crucial to building products that people love.
What is Design Thinking
Design thinking is about problem solving. Companies like Airbnb, Netflix, and Uber used design thinking to form a deep understanding of their users and built features to address their needs.
“Design thinking is a human-centered 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.” — Tim Brown, Executive Chair of Ideo
I like it a lot because it’s inclusive in the innovation process. It starts with understanding the users. The goal is to solve a problem with a desirable, technically feasible solution from the human point of view while capturing market opportunities.
How to Practice Design Thinking
Design thinking follows the flow of understanding, exploring, and materializing. There are six phases:
- Empathize: Conduct research and develop an understanding of your users.
- Define: Combine the research and identify where problems exist.
- Ideate: Brainstorm wild and creative ideas to address the problems and the business goals.
- Prototype: Build lean solutions from a…
