IBM

Blockchain Design Thinking_3

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Male: So, let’s look at the IBM and customer participant from Design Thinking
workshop and actually have a look at how they work together to make these
things a success. From the customer, the most vital, vital customer business role
are the people who understand how they currently do the business, the subject of a
use case that we’re considering. They should understand the business area. They
should be looking for improvements in the business. They should be saying, hey,
we know how this works right now, but we could see that it could actually be
transformed to make it much better, a much better experience for people involved.

These business people should be expected to commit to the workshop for full time
during the workshop and not be sort of like going, jumping up every couple of
hours and running off to do some work and coming back a couple of hours later.
We really need these guys pretty much full time for the workshop, and then about
20 percent for the development sprints. Because these are effectively guiding our
prioritization of the development activities as we go through the first project.

There are others who are not so critical, but obviously very welcome and it’s good
to get their perspective, particularly the innovation cells in organizations are often
involved in these projects, and so are the IT development, IT departments, either
from a development viewpoint or from a user interface development viewpoint.

Interestingly, if a customer wants to put people into a joint team, again, we very
much sponsor – we’d very much accept that and sort of like encourage the
customer to put development personnel into work together with our team. If
we’ve got a business network who are involved, and we’re seeing increasing
number of this happen during this year, we would invite other business people
from the other parts of the consortium, and actually then develop the use case in a
consortium, a cross-consortium approach, by bringing these different business
brains and business knowledge together.

Now who from IBM? I think the most obvious is the lead facilitator. We actually
have someone overall orchestrating the whole event. They would be supported by
a deputy from the local team to assist and actually help transfer skills to the local
team in actually executing subsequent workshops; and also there could be other
people who are around. I put apprentice to learn, but effectively someone, this
could be from any other part of IBM wanting to learn how to do the Design
Thinking process. So, again, they can actually deliver, facilitate subsequent
workshops themselves.

Now, again, from IBM we could also include a subject matter expert in the
particular use case that’s of interest here, which is optional. It’s by far better if the
business expertise comes from the customer, but clearly if we’ve got an IBMer in
there who can actually be devil’s advocate, challenge the customer’s business
knowledge in a very positive and constructive manner, this can actually help. And
as is a Blockchain expert, having people in there who really understand
Blockchain, who have done previous Blockchain First Projects are really, very

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key. Now just a word of warning on subject matter experts. If we do have subject
matter experts, whether they’re from the technology or the business side from
IBM, these guys must not jump in and fill vacuums and fill silences left by the
customer. It’s really important to allow – if we’re asking the customer to think,
it’s important to allow them time to properly think and articulate their answers,
explain their business challenges, explain how the business works right now. And
we must all, in every example, make sure that the IBMers in the room don’t jump
in and fill that silence and fill the vacuum by putting their experience and
knowledge in there. Because the business knowledge and business ownership
must be from the customer in the end.

Also, the development team. I mentioned in the previous presentation the delivery
centers or the Garages would be involved in developing the First Project after the
Design Thinking Workshop. It’s great if those people are available. If they can
take part in the Design Thinking Workshop, this gives brilliant continuity into the
project; and it also allows them to form those really important lasting
relationships with the customer to make sure the project’s a success.

This is the role of the facilitator. As I’ve mentioned, all the Design Thinking
Workshops that I’ve been involved in with Blockchain have had an IBMer as the
lead facilitator. I guess there’s no reason in practice why this couldn’t be a
customer, but I’ve never actually seen that happen and I’m not quite sure what the
dynamics would be if it did. Or I could imagine it could also be a third party; but
again, for the purposes of this workshop and workshop description, I’m assuming
it’s an IBMer.

And also, supporting the facilitator. We actually have, if you like, next level down
facilitator supporting each of the persona teams. Because as we go through, those
structure of the days - I will explain in a couple of slide’s time - we’re actually
breaking up to analyze different personas and we need someone leading those
groups. So ideally, the overall facilitator can actually help them and guide them
by going around the different groups and timesharing.

These are a few attributes of a good facilitator, clearly making sure being very
sensitive to the audience, keeping things on track, but at the same time, making
that very delicate balance between moving the discussion forward and allowing
people to have the appropriate time to converse and get clarity.

Also, as I’ve mentioned here – this is a point I mentioned earlier – allowing the
customer time to draw their own conclusions. We can actually be asking some
quite searching questions of the customer, so it’s actually important to give them
the space to really think about the answers. And the facilitator really should be
contributing when needed, not just talking all the time, like I’m doing this
afternoon. So the way I’m presenting would not be a good indication of a
facilitator, but slightly different role.

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Also, the facilitator must be constantly looking for gaps, constantly looking for
things that don’t quite make sense or don’t quite add up in testing and
summarizing and moving things forward. They should not be the spokesman for
the group. Hopefully someone from the customer side will start to emerge as the
product owner and spokesperson for the group. In all the Design Thinking
Workshops on Blockchain I’ve been involved in, that’s actually happened as
we’ve gone through the two days.

Where should we do this, good question? Ideal location is a design studio at IBM,
or optionally at a customer premises. We’ve actually worked with a number of
customers who have got their own design studios, which is great. We could use
those, but clearly we’ve got a number located in IBM facilities or, indeed, the
Garages often have a collocated design studio. If that’s not available, we need to
make sure that there’s enough wall space to stick things on, enough whiteboards
and flipcharts available to actually capture our work products as we go through
the two days. Enough room to move around. If you’ve got a great big table in the
room and you have to constantly be maneuvering your way around it, that’s not
an ideal Design Thinking space. You need plenty of space to move. And we also
need a set of facilities and equipment.

And one of the final things I put on here is, I’ve been asked many times, can we
have someone dialing in or videoconferencing into a Design Thinking Workshop?
The answer is very simply no. We can actually do remote playback. We can do
remote – yeah, we can actually feedback where we’ve got to, to a remote sponsor,
but it’s impossible to be involved in a virtual session. This needs to be collocated
certainly.

The equipment we need, we’ve got a list of equipment that’s, again, available on
the Community, and so it should be very clear to the local team who are
responsible for providing the set of equipment, what’s required. And really, I
can’t underestimate the importance of this. If you don’t have the equipment, if
you don’t have the flipcharts, the stickies, the Sharpies and things like that, you
can’t do the Design Thinking Workshop. You may as well stop, go out and buy it,
and start again. That would be my advice. Actually, my advice would be make
sure you’ve got it before you start.

END

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