The Promise of Upstream, Client-Centric Thinking
How Strategy, Design, and Product Management create more successful outcomes than a narrow focus on "execution"
“Strategy, UX, and Product Management are all client-centric activities focused upstream on collaboratively influencing something that’s inherently outside of the organization’s control — client behavior.
While most people in the Enterprise focus downstream on accelerating the pace of execution, this over-obsession on “doing” ignores the power of upstream thinking to positively impact user experiences”
Welcome back to the latest edition of the Upstream Full-Stack Journal, helping you get the most value from the full end-to-end Value Delivery stack, from Strategy through OKRs, Product Management, and Agile Systems of Delivery.
Hope everyone’s Summer is going well!
In this edition:
Why people question the ROI of Design and upstream thinking
Understanding UX Strategy with Jared Spool
Let’s go!
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Two Reasons Enterprise Software Design Sucks, And How To Fix Them
The challenges to upstream thinking in large legacy organizations
Over more than 20 years in tech consulting, I’ve consistently seen the value user-centric design has brought across every engagement I’ve worked on.
I’ve been fortunate to work alongside some great Design people, and by bringing Product and Tech perspectives into the mix, we’ve collaborated to successfully solve some incredibly tricky design challenges for clients:
Complex mobile prescription refills for one of the largest pharmacy chains in the country
Mobile checkout for a premier global luxury brand
An end-to-end thought leadership management solution for a renowned international strategy consultancy
And many, many more
The focus on UX went away after nearly every engagement
Over time, I found it curious that after we’d delivered the product and moved on to our next engagement, it seemed many larger organizations couldn’t sustain the high level of user experiences we’d given them.
Increasingly accustomed to a higher bar for software usability, users will actually leave for better-designed experiences elsewhere. What was it that Enterprise software decision-makers were missing when it came to UX?
This bothered me for years, but since spending more time in the Enterprise, I’ve come to recognize two fundamental reasons preventing larger legacy organizations from getting and sustaining the value of design:
Reason #1: They tend to focus predominantly internally & analytically on planning & execution
Reason #2: They’re not organized for client-centric value delivery
I’ll follow up these two reasons with a path for fixing them.
Reason #1: They tend to focus predominantly internally & analytically on planning & execution
Enterprise software decision-makers are evaluated on one thing:
How quickly their teams can get as many features as possible in front of their users.
Code it fast, get it out there fast, and make sure it has all the functionality it could possibly ever need. The main focus is on all-out “productivity,” keeping developers coding with “hands on keyboards” as fast as possible.
How it looks is seen as secondary to how it works.
Quick, design this…
When design is needed, a developer goes to the design team and asks for any designer to quickly create an interface.
The designer is at a disadvantage in this dynamic, as all functionality and element placement decisions have already been made.
And there’s no incentive to improve the situation.
For many software decision-makers, when you’re being judged on the quantity of features and functionality your teams can get out the door, design is seen as something that gets in the way, slowing down feature delivery.
“The Business” leads
Much of this comes from a fundamental split that exists in most Enterprises between a dominant group, known as “The Business,” who “theoretically” represent the needs of “all stakeholders.”
It’s a challenging role for business people to juggle different stakeholder needs, but there’s a deep-seated focus on emphasizing shareholder value above all else through revenue and profit maximization. It’s also easy to fall into a perspective where the business comes to see themselves as the customer, confusing their own Business Impact needs with actual user needs.
There’s no better example of this than the ongoing obsession with chatbots. Regardless of their underlying technology, these efforts end up offering sparse customer value, as their main focus is clearly cost reduction.
What customer would voluntarily choose to interact with a bot instead of a human?
IT is responsible for Execution
Typically subservient to The Business is the IT group.
They’re tasked with the grunt-work “execution” of taking fuzzy business specifications, and “manufacturing” the software.
But because of this split, “IT” is viewed as a “Cost Center,” and everything they do is viewed as “overhead,” subject to efficiency and cost-saving measures.
This extends to the point where I’ve heard people on the business side openly question what the Return on Investment (“ROI”) of good User Experience design (UX) is.
But it might be as relevant to ask what’s the ROI of Strategy, or Product Management.
Read the complete article at this subscriber only link here.
Jared Spool on UX Strategy
Jared Spool, one of the premiere thought leaders in the UX design space, has published an exceptional piece on Medium entitled “Strategic UX Research is the next big thing.”
Spool lays out the differences between Strategic UX Research, which gives enormous insight into how your product impacts the daily lives of target users.
Strategic UX Research answers the question:
“Are we building the right thing?”
Tactical UX Research, in contrast, is focused on answering the question:
“Are we building the thing right?”
Both perspectives are essential, but in keeping with the theme of upstream thinking, Spool highlights the power of Strategic UX Research as a force multiplier requiring the right mindset:
“Strategic UX Research is the next big thing in UX leadership and how executives and senior stakeholders make their organization’s most significant decisions. Is your team ready for this shift? Have you started the transformation within your organization to build a deep, shared understanding of users and their experiences at the most senior levels?”
Read Jared Spool’s full article here on Medium.
That’s it for this edition!
Join me next time as we continue to go Up- and Downstream to explore the Full Value Delivery Stack.
Cheers!
Mike