The Evolution and Iteration Stage: Escaping the To Do List

Co-authored with Christopher Medellin

I admit it. I am ruled by my “to do” list. I am one of those people who has been known to add recently completed tasks to my list for the sheer pleasure of crossing them off. I like things to be finished.

This prejudice toward completion made the final stage of the design thinking process challenging. First, came acceptance that if the project were truly a success, it would not be finished for a long time. In fact, the bigger our success, the longer the project will live, which means the more we will learn, and the longer it will remain a work in progress. Second, it was necessary to embrace the idea that it would iterate, improve, and transform constantly. No matter how clever or hard-working out team was, it wasn't going to emerge in perfect finished form.

Once we made those adjustments in attitude and definitions of success, we realized that to truly embrace the design thinking process, we needed to adjust project plans, tools, and techniques to ensure a powerful evolution and iteration stage of the project. Some of these adjustments include:

• Create a project plan. An earlier post explored this, but it bears repeating. The project plan will both guide you and help you make decisions about how to address the unexpected.
• Define your MVP. Address deviation from the project plan by asking what the “minimum viable product” is. Minimal Viable Product (MVP) is a concept from software development in which the initial product is enough to satisfy early adopters. Since you have used the design process to ensure collaboration and shared ownership with your early adopters, they will understand that you are going to quickly iterate over time.
• Design to collect data. Especially with curricula and learning design, know what your technology will allow and make decisions that will allow you to use the data that emerge from your users to answer questions, perform research, and iterate based on what you learn.
• Create a business plan that allows for growth and reinvestment into revision and iteration. When you make the long term financial plan for the project, make sure that resources will be available for V2, V3, etc.
• Document, document, document! To help with review and retrospective study, as well as to empower participants to share the story of the project professionally and to onboard new participants, be sure to document each stage of the process. Documentation can be as simple as archiving the deliverables you have created along the way, or you can do something more elaborate such as create a presentation or a glossy brochure highlighting the results and learnings from each stage.
• Remember that learning is key. Sometimes we found that we were becoming so enamored with the process that we had to remind ourselves of the human rule of design thinking and to put learners and learning at the center of the process.

Project Lifecycle Planning.

Whether or not these adjustments apply to your project, in order to have the resources that you need for this stage, you will need to plan carefully for this final and ongoing stage of your project. We like to think of large projects in terms of the 3-year or 5-year plan, with launch occurring around year two. A simplified outline of the 5-year plan for one of our projects follows.

Once you have a high-level view of a sensible lifecycle for your project, consider taking each of the following steps:

• Determine whether you will distinguish between and plan for refresh, revision, and redesign and how you will define each in terms of effort. We often think of each as a percentage of the initial effort. For example, refresh might equal 15% as much effort as the initial, revision could require 30%, and redesign might require anywhere from 50% to 100% of the initial effort depending on the goals and the resources available.
• Set cycles and communication plans: How often will a particular learning experience be reviewed and considered for updating? Who will help to make that determination? How will the work be initiated and managed?
• Make a plan for gathering, analyzing, and using feedback. Will you build in routine feedback questionnaires? Ask instructors or others to keep “user diaries?” Perform user acceptance testing with your own team before launching? Open the project for outside review? Use checklists and rubrics to evaluate? You may want to explore the many evaluation tools which are available before take the time to make your own measurement instruments.
• Consider implications of curriculum, technology, and vendors. Is there an emergent technology that you would like to integrate in the future? Does the department have an accreditation or budgeting rhythm which must be considered? Does the field of study have a governing body that is planning an update to a set of standards? Should your courses be reviewed on the same revision cycle as the textbooks which they use?

The above steps are about planning for the long-term growth, iteration, and improvement of your innovation. But make sure to plan for its success immediately after launch, too. Establish a short-term triage & response plan. Things will go wrong and you will need to know who will respond to issues. It's also best to establish which categories of issues will be handled immediately and which will be saved to be addressed in the next cycle.

The goal is to create a healthy, living project that grows and develops over time to improve the learning experience and outcomes for all of the participants: the instructors and administrators as well as the learners and the professions, industries, and human endeavors to which they will ultimately contribute. Just as your innovation project evolves over time, your approach to handling that evolution is also likely to iterate. Considering the steps outlined above will help you to ensure that you have the plan, the resources, the tools, the team, and the information that is required to keep the innovation coming.