Multimodal Agile Development Cycles in the Digital Age

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Multimodal Agile Development Cycles:

Helping Product Development Teams & Clients

Move From Hunches To Launches

Dr. Todd J. Hostager © 2016

The material below outlines a series of three Agile Development Cycles operating through a generic

prescriptive loop, defined by two core dimensions impacting how learners and clients move through

opportunity space when engaged in new product development in general, and digital product

development in particular. Without guidance from this explicit framework, groups will invariably stray

off course when mapping and assessing optimal Information Value delivery points along customer and

stakeholder journeys.

While it does have its prescriptive implications for helping groups move forward to and through

successive stages in agile development cycles, the loop also serves a valuable role as a descriptive

template that facilitators can use to chart the sequences of modal progressions that groups naturally

enact, with strong implications for future research through identifying and confirming more and less

effective sequences of modal activity, tied to desired group goals and outcomes.

The first Agile Development Cycle (on Page #3) as a more recent incarnation of the Multimodal Data

Strategy Framework for guiding Information Journeys while groups explore digital product opportunity

space. The 2x2 matrix is defined by the same modal labels, but the column and row designators have

been updated to reflect a more inclusive naming schema, helping us incorporate additional cycles in the

Agile Development methodology, based on the same underlying generic loop.

Multiple improvements have been made to within-cell (quadrant) content, including the use of a more

inclusive approach recognizing the importance of specifying a methodology that helps us expand our

definition of Digital Products beyond Smart Products per se. Here it helps to instead focus on the

broader level of how we can help learners and clients to explore the larger opportunity space

concerning Digital Business Models, with two key defining features: (1) Value Creation (Physical Value,

Service Value, Information Value, Economic Value); and (2) Value Delivery Systems (Smart Products,

Subscription Services, Data Sales, etc.) These two sets of factors combine to provide us with a viable

working definition of our options for designing and deploying a Digital Business Model, including but no

longer restricted to considerations of Smart, Connected Products.

Cycle #1 depicts movement through the generic development loop, focused on Agile Development for

Digital Product Design Hypotheses and Measures, the key starting point in the whole enterprise. Cycle

#2 starts where Cycle #1 left off, moving once again through the same generic developmental loop, from

the refined Design Hypotheses resulting from Steps #1-4 in Cycle #1, to Prototyping and Field Test

design considerations.

Here we see how developing and deploying a simple yet powerful Field Test Feasibility Matrix (Steps #7-

8, Cycle #2) mirrors the same underlying cognitive and group dynamics that we used in conjunction with

the Data Strategy Matrix (Steps #3-4, Cycle #1.) Help learners/clients explore a broad set of design

possibilities first, then give them a set of rubrics/parameters helping them move to a convergent

modality, narrowing the list down to feasible design factors.

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In Cycle #1, this means helping them identify the more feasible (less challenging) Data Sources they

should target, restricting the range of Hypotheses to those which are actually measurable. In Cycle #2

this means helping them identify more feasible (less challenging) Field Testing options from a larger set

of theoretically-possible approaches.

In Cycle #3 this same link in the looping generic Agile Development approach applies, helping

learners/clients there to first explore a larger set of Digital Business Model and Product launch options,

using a Digital Business Launch Feasibility Matrix to narrow their choices down to more doable

DBM/Smart Product rollout options, setting them up for the next stage (Cycle #4, not yet depicted),

namely the critical DBM/Information Value Roadmapping effort….

The multiple 2x2 Agile Development Cycle tables can ultimately be combined into one master table

using a spiral or embedded approach, with arrows in place and with each successive cycle placed in the

middle of the prior cycle, like a spiraling, looping tunnel ultimately assisting learners/clients in reaching

the critical center core of the whole matter: A market launch with far greater odds of success, having

survived the multiple looping crucible of fiery scrutiny contained in our Agile Development Cycles.

The ADC methodology helps us more directly tap powerful natural forces coursing through the

emergent flow of thoughts and intuitive insights, as individuals and groups think about and tackle brave

new opportunity space, including shifts from convergent to divergent thinking, and movement between

deductive and inductive modes. One future addition to these tables is simple labels describing the

nature of the shift in thinking depicted by arrows in the tables, as individuals and groups move from one

quadrant to another in the generic Agile Development loop:

Convergence Divergence = OPPORTUNITY (expanding your range of options, from a smaller set)

Divergence Convergence = FEASIBILITY (restricting your range of options, from a larger set)

Deductive Inductive = CONFIRMABILITY (identifying what you can measure/test in the real world)

Inductive Deductive = VALIDITY (actually measuring/testing your options against the real world)

Tables depicting Agile Development Cycles #1-3 are provided below, on pages 3-5.

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AGILE DEVELOPMENT CYCLE #1:

DIGITAL PRODUCT DESIGN HYPOTHESES & MEASURES

AGILE DEVELOPMENT ANALYSIS MODE

AGILE DEVELOPMENT SCALING MODE

Deductive Mode

- Hunches, Hypotheses - Theorizing, Predicting

Inductive Mode

- Measures, Data, Patterns - Testing, Discovering

Convergent Mode

- Narrowing - Subtracting - Simplifying - Sub-Spaces

(AD Cycle #2)

1. What You Believe

- Your Hunches

- Literature Review

- Your Initial Hypotheses

4. What You WILL Measure - Data Challenges

-Horizontal dimension on the Data Strategy Matrix

Divergent Mode

- Expanding - Adding

- Complicating - Adjacent Spaces

2. Journey Mapping

- Stakeholder/Physical Journey

- Information Journey -Opportunities for Value

Creation & Delivery?

3. What You COULD Measure - Data Sources

- Vertical dimension on the Data Strategy Matrix

1. The starting point is what we believe, the Hunches we have, based on our learning/experience curves. See what

others have already learned about it (Literature Review), helps expand and flesh out our Initial Hypotheses.

2. Next, Stakeholder & Information Value Journey Mapping helps us unpack additional factors and relationships,

expanding the scale and scope of available problem/opportunity space in a Divergent and Deductive mode, adding

more Hypotheses in the process, unpacking previously overlooked opportunities for Value Creation & Delivery.

3. Shifting gears to the Inductive mode, the vertical dimension of the Data Strategy Matrix (DSM) helps us

consider different types of available Data Sources, further expanding the size of the problem/opportunity space.

4. Now the horizontal DSM dimension helps us target less challenging data sources, scaling the problem/

opportunity space down in a Convergent and Inductive mode, focusing our attention on a smaller set of Testable

Hypotheses (Deductive mode) and on datasets yielding empirically-validated insights in an Inductive mode.

5. Rinse and repeat, as necessary, leveraging valuable learning/informational forces available through tapping this

multimodal framework. Move to Cycle #2 (Steps #5-8) when marginal gains in Cycle #1 are low. Steps 1-4 can be

used in a prescriptive mode, to kick things off. Alternatively, the framework can be used in a descriptive mode,

mapping emergent patterns. Combining these approaches enables moderators to selectively move from passive

tracking to active steering, based on where the group has been, is going, and wants to end up….

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DIGITAL PRODUCT PROTOTYPING & FIELD-TESTING



Deductive Mode


Inductive Mode


Convergent Mode


(AD Cycle #3)

5. Digital Design Hypotheses - Information Value Solutions

- Digital Product Functions For Value Creation

& Delivery

8. How You WILL Test Your Hypotheses

- Field Test challenges/realities

-Horizontal dimension on the Field Test Feasibility Matrix

Divergent Mode



6. Prototyping - Digital Technologies for

Value Creation & Delivery - What combinations of design

elements can we build for testing?

7. How You COULD Test Your Hypotheses

- Field Test design options

- Vertical dimension on the Field Test Feasibility Matrix

(The Agile Development Cycle #3 table is provided on Page 5 below.)

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DIGITAL PRODUCT/BUSINESS MODEL LAUNCH DEVELOPMENT



Deductive Mode


Inductive Mode


Convergent Mode


(DBM/Product Roadmap)

9. Validated Design Hypotheses

- Physical Prototype Elements - Digital Prototype Elements

- Digital Business Model Value Delivery System

12. What You WILL Launch - DBM/Product Launch challenges

-Horizontal dimension- DBM Launch Feasibility Matrix

Divergent Mode



10. Launch Journey Mapping - Sourcing options for Value

Creation & Delivery - Digital Business Model Launch

Requirements Planning

11. What You COULD Launch - DBM/Product Launch options

- Vertical dimension- DBM Launch Feasibility Matrix

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Multimodal Agile Development Cycles in the Digital Age