Business Agility at Kingsmen Software
“I’m amazed at what we accomplished in two weeks under Wily’s guidance and facilitation. Rounding out our team perfectly, the Wily team adopted our innovation challenge as their own, and put the design sprint process to work on our behalf. With strategic insight, relentless customer focus and stacks of sticky notes, they put our thought leaders and our bright ideas through the ringer—driving us through the hard work of new product development.
—Ibrahim Nasmyth, Director of Business Advisory Services, Kingsmen Software
The Challenge
Leaders for most organizations are trying to transform the way they do software solution delivery. Unfortunately, they are unable to visualize and understand the way their operating model currently works or develop a practical roadmap for improvement. As a result, they often invest their transformation dollars & energy in the wrong places and struggle to realize sustainable & measurable changes.
The Approach
Wily led a Design Sprint and Iteration Sprint with a multi-disciplinary team from Kingsmen Software's Business Agility Team and its UX Design Team to map the existing challenge, focus on a key area of improvement, and prototype and test solutions aimed at providing both clarity and utility about Kingsmen's lean agile methodology and approach.
“Being ‘The Decider’ was tough work. Ideas would be coming at you rapidly and you had to make quick judgement calls to keep things moving. Our time was well-spent. Several ideas emerged that weren’t on our radar which resulted in some significant directional changes for our product. We also managed to have a little fun at the same time. High five!”
—Kelley Horton, Chief Agility Officer, Kingsmen Software
The Outcome
The outcome of the Design Sprint was two prototypes, organized customer feedback, evidence for validating our key Sprint questions, and a set of prioritized next steps, which has given the Kingsmen team what it needs to move forward with confidence.
Improving Customer Retention at AvidXchange
"The Wily team came to AvidXchange to run a Design Sprint on a thorny, time-sensitive operational problem. Our group had reservations on how much progress we could make on such a complicated issue in so little time, but the Design Sprint allowed everyone in the group to share their best ideas, understand why we made the decisions we made, and make tremendous progress towards mapping our plan of attack. Going through the Design Sprint saved our group weeks’ worth of meeting time. We walked away excited and aligned on what we needed to do to be successful moving forward. The session was a great experience for our whole team."
—Austin Shrum, Sr. Business Planning Manager, AvidXchange
The Challenge
Work with a cross-functional team to clarify the challenge of improving customer retention and develop solutions that can be prototyped and tested with their target customers.
The Approach
Wily led a Design Sprint with a multi-disciplinary team from AvidXchange to map the existing challenge, focus on a key area of improvement, and develop solution sketches aimed at improving customer (buyer) retention.
The Outcome
The outcome of the Design Sprint was greater clarity of their retention challenge, team alignment on what part of the challenge to focus on, and detailed, competing solutions for tackling the challenge at hand.
Improving Equity with the Knight Foundation + the City of Charlotte
"Exceptional work yesterday, Eric. I was impressed. Thank you for starting us on this bold, exciting journey! We should find more ways to utilize your skillsets. I spoke to a couple of the attendees who really enjoyed your approach. That’s a delicate subject and l totally enjoyed the process."
—Taiwo Jaiyeoba, Director of Planning, City of Charlotte
The Challenge
Work with community leaders to figure out the best way to reach and engage under represented populations across Charlotte in shaping the 2040 Comprehensive Plan, which will guide growth and investment in the City of Charlotte for decades to come.
The Approach
Working closely with the City of Charlotte and with support from the Knight Foundation, Wily designed and facilitated a Strategy Sprint—a fast paced, hands on, structured workshop using human-centered design and behavior change tools. We led community stakeholders who defined equity, identified what was already working, and created personas to build empathy for under represented groups. A behavior change framework was leveraged to form and refine strategies for eliciting the needs and desires of under represented community groups, and make it easy for them to do so.
The Outcome
The outcome was a set of prioritized and refined strategies for how to engage under represented populations across Charlotte in the shaping of the future 2040 Comprehensive Plan. The strategies included activities and events that are already working, and ways to build on these successes by motivating and making it easy for members of the community to get involved. These strategies were included in the City’s 2040 Comprehensive Plan.
Building Strategy at the Hurt Hub for Innovation + Entrepreneurship
The Challenge
Refine the vision and create an actionable growth strategy for The Hurt Hub for Innovation and Entrepreneurship at Davidson College.
The Approach
Wily designed and led a Strategy Sprint to engage The Hurt Hub’s Advisory Board in the ownership and development of three key strategic priorities: vision, messaging and metrics. We led the Advisory Board and staff through mapping their existing landscape and developing personas to ensure everyone was focused on the key stakeholders The Hurt Hub is designed to serve: students, faculty, and business partners. Next we gathered and shared outside inspiration before generating ideas and prototypes for each of the three strategic priorities.
The Outcome
The outcome was a set of prototypes that mapped to each strategic priority, including a magazine cover for the vision, an elevator pitch for the messaging, and a spreadsheet dashboard for the metrics.
