Conversations with a former coworker re-introduced archived content (in Muse where methods and techniques were used to establish an artifact called DesignOps (design operations). Besides having a delicious trip down memory lane for the use of Miro, there was also a delightful retracing of steps where I had to o serve content that moved from being difficult to understand, to being immensely more complex and powerful than many logical models. Part of that board had a sensemaking framework mapped to quadrants.

screenshot of four quadrant maps noting management design, business design, scenarios design, and stakeholder design; with questions under the quadrants for contemplation and analysis

These quadrants were four distinct, yet equally carried, parts of work (an org change project leveraging human-centered design and agile project management methods). From these four parts, questions were designed in order to better focus the expectations of the customer, with the capabilities of the project team, and the outcomes gained by the project company.

If memory serves, some or much of this came from The Invincible Company. In my case, this was necessary to anchor the gaps/challenges into verified language, while being adaptable enough to work with the level of maturity which spanned the client, project team, and project company. This graphic took the better part of an afternoon to create. It came about because of several months of synthesis, testing, and arguments.

Clarity is like that though. You can have genuine insight and paths forward. But, if it isn’t in a form receivable to the client. Then nothing moves. If the project team doesn’t find themselves capable of using whatever skills they have to address the problem space, then nothing moves. If the attending business doesn’t have clarity in measuring outcomes, the crosshairs become a target on you versus a map to market-addressing capacities.

That Miro board is full of solid bits. It might be worth pulling on it for future pieces here as conversations continue.