Recently, IBM has embarked on a massive transformation focused on integrating design and user experience practice back into the core of everything the company does. This is the largest such transformation ever attempted and the very scale of IBM as an organization means that it can't help but have major impact in the world of design. The session will give a brief background on the IBM Design initiative as a whole then cover the specifics around our new Product Management practice as well as the strategy we've taken to roll it out across all of IBM. We'll share our early successes as well as some lessons learned. You should leave with a lot of ideas about concrete steps you could take in your organization to embed UX and Design in your strategic activities.

1. IBM Design
Todd Wilkens, Design Principal
UX STRAT, Boulder, September 2014
IBM Design
Putting UX and Strategy at the heart of the Product Team

2. IBM Design :: ©2014 IBM Corporation
But on further thought…

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Todd Wilkens, Design Principal
UX STRAT, Boulder, September 2014
IBM Design
Killing UX Strategy to save UX and Strategy

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Challenge:
How do we create a sustainable culture
of experience-focused product
development that delivers great product
and solution outcomes at IBM's scale?

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A small digression about large scale.

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IBM is B-I-G
6

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— John Doe
“This is a quote that makes
a great point”
400,000+employees

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— John Doe
“This is a quote that makes
a great point”
product teams
3,000

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— John Doe
“This is a quote that makes
a great point”
product teams
3,000

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100+years old

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Everything we do at IBM Design
requires equal parts
Audacity + Humility
12

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Core Beliefs
Agile/Lean/DevOps is also key because of the need
for speed, flexibility, and quality.
Experience-focused decision making and planning is
the key to delivering real value to market.
Whole organizations (not just designers) deliver great
experiences to market.
Creating great experiences requires a strong design
competency.

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Experience-focused decision
making and planning is the key to
delivering real value to market.
Core Belief

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Experience-focused decision
making and planning is the key to
delivering real value to market.
Core Belief

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Corollary #1:
There is no such thing as enterprise
software anymore. There is just good
software and bad software.

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Corollary #1:
There is no such thing as enterprise
software anymore. There is just good
software and bad software.

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Corollary #1:
There is no such thing as enterprise
software anymore. There is just good
software and bad software.

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Corollary #2:
Focus on good experience and
design need to be in the DNA of your
company culture.

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Corollary #2:
Focus on good experience and
design need to be in the DNA of your
company culture.

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Good design is good business.
—Thomas Watson Jr.
Chief Executive Officer, 1973
“Good design is good business.”

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Studio Opening
“I believe, if I could be so bold, that the work done here will change the world. This
is a re-commitment to a heritage of innovation that has transcended IBM.”
– Ginni Rometty, CEO

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An Historic Legacy

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An Historic Legacy

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An Historic Legacy

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An Historic Legacy

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An Historic Legacy

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An Historic Legacy

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Creating great experiences
requires a strong design
competency.
Core Belief

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overall UX
staff by

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Recruiting hundreds of talented designers
more than 200 since January 2013

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60designers started
the same day
(July 8, 2013)

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Whole organizations (not just
designers) deliver great
products to market.
Core Belief

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Whole organizations (not just
designers) deliver great
products to market.
Core Belief

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Corollary #1:
There is no such thing as UX Strategy
or Design Strategy. There is only
Product Strategy.

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Corollary #1:
There is no such thing as UX Strategy
or Design Strategy. There is only
Product Strategy.

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Corollary #1:
There is no such thing as UX Strategy
or Design Strategy. There is only
Product Strategy.

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Corollary #2:
Product Strategy is driven by product
management but only works when UX
is in the hearts, minds, and hands of
everyone on the team.

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Corollary #2:
Product Strategy is driven by product
management but only works when UX
is in the hearts, minds, and hands of
everyone on the team.

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IBM Design is now responsible
for the product management
practice for IBM as a whole.

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IBM Design is now responsible
for the product management
practice for IBM as a whole.

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But this isn’t about simply
about teaching PM’s
Design Thinking.

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But this isn’t about simply
about teaching PM’s
Design Thinking.

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We need Design Thinking++.

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We need Design Thinking++.

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We need Design Thinking++.

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“Design thinking” is a way of solving
problems that is especially helpful for
creating product and service experiences.

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“Design thinking” is a way of solving
problems that is especially helpful for
creating product and service experiences.

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“Design thinking” is a way of solving
problems that is especially helpful for
creating product and service experiences.

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But it isn’t necessarily an approach for
delivering products to market.

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But it isn’t necessarily an approach for
delivering products to market.

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A framework for whole teams to deliver great
experiences to market
IBM Design Thinking

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Prototype
Evaluate
Understand
Explore
Design Thinking

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Prototype
Evaluate
Understand
Explore
IBM Design Thinking

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Core Principles and Practices of IBM Design Thinking
Playbacks align your team, stakeholders,
and clients around the user value you will
deliver, rather than project line items
Sponsor Users help you design
experiences for real target users,
rather than imagined needs
Hills focus your project on big
problems and outcomes for users,
not just a list of feature requests

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Hills

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COMMANDER’S INTENT
39

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“a framework for freedom to act”
40

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Hills
Hills frame your releases and planning periods around user-centric
market outcomes, not feature requests.
Example from an internal project

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Hills
Hills frame your releases and planning periods around user-centric
market outcomes, not feature requests.
Deliver a custom wiki community
template to allow agile teams to
collaborate on client projects
Example from an internal project

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Hills
Hills frame your releases and planning periods around user-centric
market outcomes, not feature requests.
Deliver a custom wiki community
template to allow agile teams to
collaborate on client projects
A GMU-based sales leader can
assemble an agile response team
from across IBM in 24 hours
without management involvement
(Deliver by November 2014)
Example from an internal project

63. IBM Design :: ©2014 IBM Corporation
Hills
Hills frame your releases and planning periods around user-centric
market outcomes, not feature requests.
Deliver a custom wiki community
template to allow agile teams to
collaborate on client projects
A GMU-based sales leader can
assemble an agile response team
from across IBM in 24 hours
without management involvement
(Deliver by November 2013)
Example from an internal project
Who What Wow

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Hills fill the gap between a
vision statement and a backlog.

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The “teeth” in Hills
Invest resources across three Hills + a Technical
Foundation to combat arbitrary features and reallocation
Hill
Hill
Hill
Technical Foundation
Hill 3
20%
Tech
15%
Hill 1
20%
Hill 2
45%

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Sponsor Users

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Sponsor Users
A set of real users recruited to “join” the product team
for a period and do participatory design.
Sponsor Users

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Playbacks

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A picture is worth a thousand words.

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A prototype is worth a thousand meetings.

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The greatest value of a prototype is often how it
tells a story of user value.

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What is a Playback?
In a Playback, the user experience for a defined
scenario is “played back” to stakeholders to foster
collaboration, feedback, and alignment.
!
All conversation and alignment is around the user value
that the team will deliver, rather than project line items.

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Playbacks
<This space intentionally left blank.>

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A culture of showing versus telling

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Educating and activating teams
IBM Designcamp

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— John Doe
“This is a quote that makes
a great point”
IBM Designcamp
Accelerating projects through experiential, multi-
disciplinary learning & IBM Design mentoring

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Designcamp for Product Teams

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Designcamp for Product Managers

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Designcamp for IBM Executives

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Designcamp for New Hires

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380780791526451751322215548156318121779308932615517690180367291298220696233426103111864758787052014558663426687826083379872745704728
543722459530690452807339757157557855312261486638894554999021994630915218892566159193904789656190968399518575513807807915264517513222
155481563181217793089326155176901803672912982206962334261031118647587870520145586634266878260833798727457047285437224595306904528073
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261551769018036729129822069623342610311186475878705201455866342668782608337987274570472854372245953069045280733975715755785531226148
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155481563181217793089326155176901803672912982206962334261031118647587870520145586634266878260833798727457047285437224595306904528073
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298493142
263
75
78751
36092
3587
5305
711
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113
01
Designcamp
by the numbers

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Designcamps held
35+

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Project Teams
75+

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feet2 butcher’s paper
64,000

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post-it notes
336,100

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singing gorilla
1

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Agile/Lean/DevOps is also key
because of the need for speed,
flexibility, and quality.
Core Belief

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IBM Design Thinking is a
framework for
collaboration that helps
us create innovative
experiences with real

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DevOps is a framework
for collaboration that
delivers experiences to
market, evolving them
quickly and
responsively, and

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IBM Design Thinking +
DevOps
makes a truly modern,
iterative approach to
creating, delivering, and
evolving quality
experiences with market
69

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IBM Design Thinking and DevOps
Three shared values
Outcomes
for users
Continuous
learning
Radical
collaboration

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Continuous alignment
IBM teams take shared
ownership of user outcomes
Design
Code Product
Management
Ops
Test
Marketing
Inside Sales
Support

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Outcomes

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68+project teams have
participated in
Designcamp
IBM Design Thinking is now in wide use
500leaders participated in
two Leadership Summits
in 2014
70+software projects using
IBM Design Thinking
today

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Two examples of success

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IBM Mail Next

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#IBMConnect
IBM Mail Next

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#IBMConnect
IBM Mail Next

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IBM BlueMix is a single
solution environment with
the instant resources and
infrastructure to develop
and deploy apps across
multiple domains. It offers
instant services, runtimes,
and infrastructure and a
catalog containing
everything you need from
IBM provided services to
third-party offerings like
Twillio.

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DESIGN
THAT MATTERS
FOR THE WORLD
@ibmdesign
ibm.com/design
toddwilkens@us.ibm.com