Engineer's Personal Workflow: a Process to Problem Finding and Problem Solving

The COVID-19 has impacted businesses around the world with massive job and revenue losses. In the collaboration phase of SAP Academy for Engineering's Multi-Dimensional Engineering program, 56 engineers had the unique opportunity to improve neighbourhood businesses in these pandemic times. Being one of the coaches, I had the pleasure to work with five brilliant engineers helping the customer Patrick Amar from Israel Executive Touring Center, to overcome his challenge.

Patrick is a travel specialist and licensed tourist guide in Israel. For the last 15 years, he is responsible for planning and leading the trips for his customers. Lately, all his tours have been cancelled due to the coronavirus pandemic. It has given a chance for Patrick to rethink his business operations. Patrick wants to scale his business and looking for an effective way to deal with his customers.

During five weeks of collaboration phase, the team applied a version of design thinking process we call "Personal Workflow". To begin, the team interview Patrick to understand his business. The diagram below summarises what the team has learned.

Mapping the business workflow helps the team to communicate in the customer's language and gain greater insights into the business processes. As a result, struggling points surfaced (marked with red dots), creating opportunities for engineers to introduce software intervention.

"It was very helpful to see a workflow. When the team showed me the first workflow, it was like steps after steps after steps. And to see it now the workflow has reduced to two to three steps, it was amazing. That was the whole process here, trying to eliminate redundant and unnecessary steps." - Patrick

Here's the end-user baseline behaviour that the team wanted to intervene with software and the consequences that it might bring.

Develop a bet, or a hypothesis is always the most challenging part in the problem-finding space. Start small, set constraint and iterate through trial and error provides one with a better chance in placing the right bet.

With Patrick agreed to the workflow that needs to be changed, the team crafted a storyline to define the future scenario of the solution.

The snippet of the golden path above represents the journey that customers wish to take through with the experience, starts with the intent (want) and ends with the outcome (desire). 

The team then created a low fidelity mockup focusing on the functions they recognised while crafting the golden path. Instead of paper and pen, the team used Balsamiq as they find it's the easiest way for them to collaborate and exchange ideas virtually.

Without access to the real end-user? You might want to consider your friends and family as a tester. The team tested the prototype with their parents and siblings, and they adopted those feedbacks to produce an incredible high-fidelity mockup for Patrick.

"I love the solution, and I can't wait to share it with my friends and implement it." - Patrick

It was a great five weeks spent with the cohort. The customer loves the solution, the team had a great time working together, and I had an excellent knowledge and experience exchange with other coaches.

(All images by Felix Meissner, Hadeel Behiry, Laura Tozzo, Otilia Marinescu, and Peter Wichers)