By Duncan Troup on Monday, February 13th, 2017 in Customer-centric Thinking, Product Design, Transformation.

Sometimes a plan comes together and that’s what makes running a business like Tingle Tree so worthwhile. At the end of last year we had a major win at Vic Roads where we helped them with a retrospective tip to toe product definition. The project was well underway but there was a key missing piece of documentation. That being an outside in perspective on what was needed by the user and how this related to capability at Vic Roads.

Using an approach consistent with Ideo’s Design Thinking philosophy of Desirability, feasibility and viability we set out to document those needs in a single source. By coordinating a cross functional team across product owners, marketing, comms, service delivery and technology Tingle Tree were able to capture all the necessary lens for testing against the work done to date. The good news was that much of the work was fine – but we did uncover a few gems that significantly saved cost and reduced risk on the work to go.

The interesting thing that this successful project led me to reflect on was how a pause for breath, even if its part way through the project, can pay dividends. By casting a second set of eyes over the target customer outcome with no preconceptions Vic Roads were able to save significant sums (probably six figure sums) for a cost of well under $50k.