CTO Straight Talk - Issue 3 - 17

CTO STRAIGHT TALK | ISSUE 3

IT'S MORE A
CULTURAL
AND VALUES
SHIFT THAN A
TECHNOLOGY
SHIFT.
structures," Jamensky adds. "You need
to adopt a process that works for the set
of individuals you have, the technology
that you have, and the market that you're
addressing. We only deliver new releases
once a quarter. If you've got a next-gen
app with constant DevOps, you'll need
different processes. If you're building
an aircraft, it will be something
completely different."
Llamasoft had the advantage-and the
disadvantage-of having its CEO-CTO
as product designer number one. "It was
great for moving fast in the beginning,
because I'm a hugely disruptive force with
budget authority," Hicks says. Long term,
however, the charismatic-leader approach
to product development isn't sustainable.
The design-thinking approach must be
built on "getting large groups of people to
institutionalize that which good designers
do intuitively. It's easy enough for me as
a product designer to make a product to
fix something that annoys me, but that
doesn't always scale," says Hicks. "It's
about getting teams of other people for
whom that isn't their first instinct, to make
it their first instinct." At Llamasoft, that's
meant building practices into the culture

to remind people-even those with
Ph.D.s after their names-that they don't
know everything.
Similarly, Oppenheimer has made it a point
to hire product-development professionals
who are either already steeped in a usercentric approach or attracted to it. Bostic,
of The Difference Engine, agrees: "One of
the things I've discovered in working with
companies that are trying to adopt more
design thinking is that they talk an awful lot
about tools. But it's really more a cultural
and values shift than a technology shift."
For organizations with legacy productdevelopment teams and processes, it can
be a difficult swing. "But it's getting easier,"
says Waters. "For one thing, many Fortune
500 companies now want to be more agile
and lean." Companies can embark on small
design-thinking experiments. "You don't
have to build an entire new production
line to get to that next-gen product," says
Waters. "It's amazing what a team of five
or six can accomplish."
Ultimately, the shift to a customer-centric
approach has to be fully endorsed and
embodied at the top. "It has to happen at
the leadership level," says Oppenheimer.
And not just with lip service. "You can't
just say you want to create easy-to-use
products and not know what that means.
You need people who can articulate the
value of this, can model the behaviors
that are required, and deeply understand
the benefits."

Stephanie Overby, an award-winning
business and technology writer, is a
Contributing Writer of CTO Straight Talk.

17
CTO Straight Talk - Issue 3

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of CTO Straight Talk - Issue 3
