When you are in the process of optimizing (or completely reinventing) the way you work. Or you want to fight an obstacle you’re experiencing in your company. There are a lot of approaches possible. At prototyping.work we’re collecting best practices for prototypes you can use in your company. A way to implement these practices in your organization is by applying the Agile way of working to your organizational change initiative.
The Agile way of working is used in software development for years (or even decades). The success of Agile in promoting faster, more customer-focused and cost-effective software development has brought it to the attention of virtually every other industry. In recent years, disciplines, as varied as marketing, accounting, manufacturing, and more, have been successfully reframed in Agile terms. Now use it to speed up your organizational change initiative.
The easiest way to start is by using a so-called Kanban board. You can use the practices from this site or create your own. For this example, we’ve used some example practices. In this example, we’ve used 3 columns.
- To do – What prototypes are still to be done.
- In Progress – What prototypes are currently In progress
- Done – What experiments did you finish
TO DO
IN PROGRESS
DONE
Extra: Democratize the input
This board is a great way to be transparent, keep everyone up-to-date and makes sure the prototypes are tangible for actual results. But you can make it extra interesting, by democratizing the input for this board. The easiest way is by letting employees vote on the initiatives, which they think have the most positive impact. Or can even combine the voting with letting everyone formulate ideas/initiatives.
Now create your own
1 Step one is to create a board for this. You can use digital tools like Trello/Jira/Asana. Or u can reuse a whiteboard. Make sure to place it in a very public place in the office, so that everyone can see it. That gives you an extra incentive to really make progress on the initiatives on the board.
2 Step two is to collect initiatives to prototype with. Use this site as an inspiration source, or generate ideas for yourself. But make sure that you all agree on the initiatives that come on the board. Either with your leadership team or the whole department/organization.
3 Step three is to start and make progress and move the cards over the board. By moving the cards, you make the actual change visible on the board as well.
4 Step four is to create a rhythm. Also inspired by the Agile way of working. Make sprints of let say 2/4 weeks. Make sure to agree on the number of prototypes you want to finish in that period of time. And at the end of that period, you evaluate the results and decide on the prototypes of the next iteration.
