Methodology Spotlight: Lead by Design

At Hive One, we have advanced proven methodologies that we apply to all aspects of complex transformation projects. In this spotlight we summarize our highly successful 'Lead by Design' framework.

Why Lead By Design?

“If you don’t know where you are going, you might wind up someplace else” – Yogi Berra

Our 'lead-by-design' methodology is founded in 20+ years of diverse experience designing, developing, and implementing highly successful transformational technology solutions. It is based on a highly visual 'show-don't-tell' approach similar to mature industries that design innovative buildings and vehicles.

Our framework eliminates common failure points in complex technology projects like:

Requirements difficulties, endless meetings, scope creep
Reactive management of budgets, performance, scope and risks
Unmet user expectations for usability and access
Missed opportunities of new technologies
Lost innovation from status quo thinking and team bias
Insufficient stakeholder engagement and contribution
Unexpected problems from missed gaps in solutions
Ongoing rework and bug fixes due to low system quality
Bad decisions due to weak validation and approval cycles
Unnecessary change resistance and low user adoption

1. Comprehensive Exploration and Elaboration

“If I asked people what they wanted, they would have said a faster horse” – Henry Ford

Our exploration and elaboration phase ensures that end user, organizational and technology opportunities are explored. It maximizes innovation by seeking adjacent possibilities and enforcing broader initial discussions. A critical success factor here is the skill and experience levels of the teams.

Successful strategies arise out of complex intersections; of the possible and practical, of process, profits and people, of what is known and can only learned through experience, of flexible action and unwavering dedication, and of a far-reaching and powerful ‘why’ and a credible and executable ‘how’.

In the final phase of this analysis, the end user, organizational and technology opportunities are amalgamated, evaluated and integrated into cohesive high-level service and solution designs.

This is a critical stage of design as it ensures a shared initial understanding of a viable solution including the core features, options decisions, validated benefits, mitigated risks, and the expected returns on core investments.

2. Strong Initial Solution Clarity

“Often people don't know what they want, until you show it to them” – Milton Hershey

When a new vehicle or building is being proposed its initial conceptual designs are crucial to its success. You simply can't understand a new car or building design with text-based 'ability to' statements, and this applies to modern technology systems too.

In this phase we take the high-level service and systems designs from exploration and elaboration and create cohesive visual designs, stories and use cases through facilitated sessions and focus groups.

As this is a critical phase to explore ideas and new opportunities, we apply a systematic approach to uncover new possibilities, refine and quantify options, and maximize innovation.

The key deliverables is a conceptual design of your future state. Our visual approach to these designs creates greater solution clarity and understanding across leadership, stakeholders and team members. It includes high-fidelity solution mock-ups, architectural diagrams, processes and service designs, and decision-supporting quantifications. With this in hand, you can create confident project estimates, road maps, and resource plans and promote your exciting well-defined future with confidence.

The time and effort applied in this stage depends on the complexity of the project and what it takes to achieve innovation and clarity. For simpler projects we create lower fidelity deliverables, and for complex projects we create higher fidelity deliverables.

3. Streamlined Design and Development

“Quality is determined by the design of the product, not by quality control in the production process – Hideo Sugiura

All projects have finite time and money and infinite possible scope. In this phase of the process, prioritized project scope is pulled into iterative releases that ensure the highest priority project work is completed first. Scope is broken down into discreet deliverables including their conceptual designs, directional requirements and acceptance criteria.

Each deliverable is then moved into 'show-don't-tell' detailed designs that are validated by a select team of subject matter experts. These are done through facilitated sessions where we evaluate designs for errors or omissions, validate key design opportunities and define the best mitigations for design risks.

With each design validated and approved, dependent project work is determined using a custom definition of done. These definitions of done include work items like use case documentation, process documentation, training, communications, user acceptance, stakeholder engagement, and business intelligence.

Each release is then effectively managed and controlled against its clearly defined project tasks, deliverables, and timelines.

As a final step in the process, all deliverables are use case, functional, user experience, and compatibility tested to ensure the highest quality. The entire release is then made fully available in test environments for pre-release training, preparing communications and finalizing organizational release planning.

4. Seamless Problem-Free Releases

“Designers shooting for usable is like a chef shooting for edible – Aarron Walter

The critical goal with all transformation projects is getting new systems and services into the world.

Our future state clarity allows us to divide complex projects into smaller, frequent releases to reduce the risk and complexity associated with major system changes. This increases project flexibility, simplifies troubleshooting, and allows greater adaptability to new requirements and changes.

Our comprehensive design and delivery processes eliminate delays, scope creep, unexpected problems and cost overruns common to project releases as dependent work is completed in parallel to systems development This creates a stable stream of high-quality releases that minimize risk and change impacts.

Our design excellence creates solutions that are easy to use and immediately beneficial, leading to faster widespread adoption.

Results from a recent complex enterprise project:

18-24 seamless production releases per year for 3 years
- 20-50 new capabilities per release
98% implemented as designed (correct initial requirements)
Majority of features quickly adopted (high usability and value)
All stated client goals achieved or exceeded
- Extensive industry-leading capabilities delivered
Project on time and on budget
System fully open-source (no licensing, unlimited usage)
Sector-leading initial systems quality
- Very low user-reported issues (1/40,000 users)
- Very low client issues, problems and incidents
- Very high up-time (99.9%)