PUTTING EMPLOYEE SATISFACTION FIRST
Shifting from a technology focus to an experience focus. Learn how a regional energy and public utilities company designed a consumer grade service and support experience to increase employee satisfaction in just three months.
IT Tool Replacement
What started out initially as a conversation to replace the Information Technology Service Management (ITSM) tool at a regional energy and public utilities service provider quickly turned into a conversation about strategically rethinking the entire IT experience with the goal of providing consumer-grade quality service and support capabilities.
“ Connecting with Diana and her team quickly convinced us that we needed to look at this challenge more from the user point of view and strategically - to rethink our experience vs start with finding the best technology fit.”
— IT Leader
The Bold Plan
We started with an initial four week "True North" (strategic and directional) Design Thinking project which consisted of one week of user research, a five day design thinking workshop, and two weeks of finalizing four prototypes coming out of the sprint.
The True North project aligned key leaders within IT. This included:
agreeing to leverage the design thinking and design sprint process for developing the ITSM product and experience strategy
securing funding for the long-term effort
four strategic IT solutions: new employee mobile on-boarding experience, leadership dashboard, a crowdsourced collaborative learning platform, and an integrated mobile services application
“I loved that Diana and her team were able to enable our IT leadership team to think more futuristically and out of the box…the fast value to market focus…(and) how they taught and facilitated our teams to create end user-centric, consumer grade, innovative solutions. ”
— CIO
The three month effort that followed defined a detailed Future State IT Experience that included, personas, journeys, process maps, product backlog, and hi-fidelity wireframes. These assets were included in the final functional specifications document and could be immediately used for technical development. Prior to this approach only high-level business requirements would have been completed within this time frame.
Air Cover => Focus => 3x Acceleration
The executive sponsor and program leader were integral to securing the right cross-functional team participation in each sprint. They also provided air cover for each participant so that everyone could focus during the sprint. This enabled the organization to define and align on the business requirements together across eight, two day design sprints and move into development six months faster than if they had used the standard process.
“ What has taken most (enterprise) companies over a year to compile, we were able to complete in 3 months with the details to accelerate implementation. ”
— IT Leader
Post-Sprint
The client following the design sprints has since gone out to RFP and is currently in the process of implementation.
150+
User interviews and tests
4
Personas
8
ITSM capabilities
17
Prototypes
INDUSTRY
Energy & Utilities
PROJECT DURATION
Part 1 - True North. 4 Weeks
Part 2 - Product Roadmap Strategy. 3 Months
DESIGN SPRINT DURATION
9 Sprints
5 Day/2 Day
PROJECT TEAM
Engagement Manager
Design Thinking Lead
Business Analyst/Facilitator
Business Analyst/Data and Insights
Solutions Architect
Designer
SERVICES
Process Re-engineering
Data Rationalization
User Research
Personas
Empathy Map
Customer Journey Map
Design Sprint Workshops
Prototype Development
User Testing
Functional Specification Document
Solution Architecture and Design
Hi-Fidelity Mockups
Prioritized Product Backlog
User Stories
Style Guide and Pattern Library
LESSON LEARNED
Enterprise design sprints can be both fun AND drive innovation at scale.