Improving the Definition of Software Development Projects Through Design Thinking Led Collaboration Workshops

Software development projects need clear agreed goals, a provable value proposition and key stakeholder commitment. Employing Design Thinking methods to focus the expertise of workshop participants can uncover and support these needs. The Data61 User Experience and Design team lead Design Thinking collaboration workshops as professional practice during engagements with clients. These workshops are run with cross-functional teams working on data/digital platforms before going to market. This talk will present findings from a total 54 Design Thinking workshops and 5x5 day co-design sprints run from Sept 2016 - Oct 2017. The talk will cover how the workshops were designed, using initial trials of a proposed workshop approach and ongoing review of workshops and design sprints. The use of our approach will be illustrated using 3 short case studies from different application domains: e-science for materials and manufacturing, infrastructure sustainability, and agricultural intelligence. Key learnings from our approach include getting internal stakeholder support for workshops, characteristics of a good format and how to balance domain expertise with user centred design practises.