Assemble the Design Thinking Team

In design thinking projects, a team has between five and nine members, gathered together in one place. A smaller group will lack the required amount of experience and the work capacity to master the tasks in a design thinking project. A team that has more than nine team members results in coordination problems that prevent fast and efficient action.

For the number of team members, note the “two-pizza rule:” Never have more team members than you can feed with two large pizzas. Keep in mind, though, that the number of people isn’t truly decisive. Pay more attention to the composition of (and the distribution of responsibilities within) the team.

Relying on variety in team makeup

The variety in the team composition — the team's diversity, in other words —is an essential principle in design thinking. Thanks to the various perspectives, levels of knowledge, skills, experiences, attitudes and values a truly diverse team provides, you’ll be in a positon to solve the tasks you’re facing. My advice to you: Ensure diversity in the team as you assemble it.

Don’t just consider characteristics such as age, gender, or ethnic affiliation in your efforts to make your team more diverse. Also look at the professional and personal experiences and values. These characteristics may not be so obvious, but they are central to effective teamwork.

A requirement profile that can help you select the proper team members involves the search for T-shaped individuals, where the T stands for the combination of a generalist (the horizontal bar of the T) and a specialist (the vertical bar of the T). The figure shows the skill components and necessary areas of overlap for collaboration in the team. In T-shaped individuals, the breadth of the competence overlaps to make a successful collaboration possible. At the same time, they have a depth of competence that design thinking requires in order to complete a task. Always look for T-shaped persons to handle your design thinking tasks.

In the letter T, the horizontal bar stands for the breadth of competence, which can be divided into general professional competencies or mindsets and interdisciplinary competencies or mindsets. The horizontal bar represents the generalist, who can collaborate beyond the boundaries of the discipline and function. When it comes to collaborative work, that person must have the general professional competencies necessary in order to understand the technical language, methods, and approaches of other disciplines. That person also needs to exhibit capacities such as leadership, communication, and cooperation skills, along with a mindset that promotes cooperation. Such a cooperation-friendly mindset reveals itself through curiosity, openness, and empathy toward other areas. Empathy — the ability to relate to another person — is a foundational principle for success in design thinking.

The vertical bar in the T describes the special knowledge and skills in a functional area that can be divided into theoretical and application competencies. Individuals who have only a specialized technical competence are described as I-shaped persons. In online marketing, this person might be the data analyst who has no other specific skills or experiences in the marketing area.

Defining roles on the team

The responsibilities for the individual work packages can be distributed according to the technical skills of team members. Each work package includes the work processes that relate to each other, and each has a person in charge. Divide the work packages if they become too complex. One person can work on a maximum of four work packages at a time; otherwise, the scope of the work is too large.

Determine the roles for the following management tasks:

• A decision-maker for the distribution of resources within the project
• A person in charge of the overall success of the project
• A contact person for the steering committee, client, customers, and other external business partners (consultants, authorities, colleges, research institutes, or suppliers)
• A contact person for reporting conflicts and problems confronting the team
• An organizer and a moderator of team meetings

The individuals handling these various management tasks should have a good grasp of the company, motivate the team, be empowered to make decisions, and be capable of making said decisions. The individuals taking on these roles are representatives from a customer- or market-oriented area who have basic technical knowledge. Since these individuals work with the project team, steering committee, client, customer, and other business partners, they have to strike a balance between what is economically reasonable and technically feasible. They’re responsible for the efficient use of resources.

Creating a matrix of responsibility

The best way to settle responsibilities within the project team as well as with internal organizational units and external partners is with the aid of a matrix of responsibility, the RACI matrix. The word RACI is an acronym:

• R: Responsible
• A: Active (performs the activity)
• C: Consulted (has to be coordinated with)
• I: Informed (must be informed about whatever task is being worked on)

The table shows the RACI matrix and offers an overview of the responsibilities associated with the design thinking project:

It wouldn't hurt to create a team directory with contact details, such as first and last name, email address, phone number, and information about availability and responsibilities in the team. Make the team directory available to everyone involved in the project.

Applying the principle of self-organization

You want to distribute the individual work packages for fulfilling the design thinking task in the team according to the members’ skills and competencies. Rather than have a project manager assign the work packages to the individual team members, they are discussed and distributed independently within the team. The team members themselves select their tasks — as many as they can work on.

If any work packages remain open after the distribution, you and the team have to discuss who can handle the work package and whether you need additional team members or external cooperative partners, such as consultants, colleges, or research institutes. Make sure that individual team members don’t take on too much.

The principle of self-organization motivates the team. That is how the team members can successfully achieve their results.