I am passionate about design; if it were not for the boom-bust cycles in architecture, I would have followed that education/career path.  As a result of that passion, I got really excited when I saw HiveLive four years ago.  So excited in fact, that Rally jumped in as key first customer and based Agile Commons on HiveLive’s platform.  I even personally invested in the effort led by three Kembel brothers: John, Jeremy and Geoff.  Last year, HiveLive’s  journey took another turn as they sold to RightNow. After meeting RightNow’s David Vap and speaking with a good part of their technical team,  I would say John, the VP of Social Solutions, is right that they made a great move.

John’s design-thinking approach was front and center to HiveLive.  It came from his background at Standford’s design school and a stint at IDEO.  As I got to know John, he mentioned all the great things going on with his other brother and twin George.  George was busy creating a new version of the design school, called the Stanford d.school.   The new d.school has broadened beyond just a partnership of art and mechanical engineering to become a interdisciplinary school that brings design thinking to all majors.   As I learned more about this, I started pulling on John’s shirt to get me out there so I could go see the place and meet George.  Well last week, I participated in the first ever d.social summit for two days with 15 folks focused on the intersection of design thinking and social thinking.  Twins John and George Kembel actually facilitate in stereo.  To watch and be a part of their combined effort was like drinking from a fire hose.

The event and the people were great fun to work with and pushed my limits on the overlap of design thinking and social thinking.  Working there really made me feel strong and I found myself in a flow most of the time.  It caused me to notice that I really love the expansion of design to design thinking. But for you and your agile teams, the innovations in team room furniture was really important. Creating a culture of innovation relies on creating the right environment.  If you have read Takeuechi and Nonaka’s book on Knowledge Management, you will recognize the concept of “Ba.” Ba is the shared space that creates context for the knowledge-creating company.  (See figure 4.3 on page 102 of their book for a cool illustration of the whole concept)

The d.school is full of flexible, collaborative space of all kinds, shapes and sizes.  They are constantly trying new things there.  Built for running multiple, parallel design projects in 15 week cycles, it is empathetic to extreme users.  The space is in its sixth iteration of the space.  Scott Doorley and Dave Baggeroer worked with George over the last five years to really make this place something special.   As a result of working at the extreme of rapid collaboration, they have come up with some fantastic furniture designs that you should consider copying for your team and meeting rooms.  Unfortunately, you can’t buy this stuff – you have to build it locally.

Here is a set of stackable and highly portable white boards.

Notice the Z-shaped foot that allows them to stack and move around corners.  These ideas came from retail stores.  Also notice the red peg in the whiteboard.  This is designed to hang portable whiteboards that you can take back to your own space.   It could also hold a pad of flip-chart paper.

This line is where they store the student efforts.  Notice how the hanging whiteboards are stored.  It is easy to imagine collaborating in another person’s office and then bringing the whiteboard back to your office without using tons of flip chart pads.

Below is a portable wall system built with spring-loaded feet to allow you to make semi-transparent or opaque walls by lightly snapping them into place.  You can see them used above to make the line where student’s store their work.

These cool pommel horses, pictured below, make great furniture for a team collaboration space.  You can sit, stand or work at the structures and they force you to not think in hierarchies:)

Finally, don’t miss the d.school’s blog and the coverage of their sugar cubes.

I hope some of these pieces of furniture compel you to try some new furniture in your space.  If you are not quite sold, you might read Tim Brown’s new book “Change by Design.” It is a great living example of the approaches that IDEO and the d.school use to create empathy, insight and desirable design in physical, virtual and social systems.

Do you have any experience applying design thinking in your agile teams?  Jared Spool’s talk at Agile 2009 was a great example of applying design thinking to software.

Ryan Martens is a tomato grower, founding board member of the Entrepreneurs Foundation of Colorado, and CTO at Rally Software Development.

I’ve been thinking about leaning a lot lately, and not of the pressed-wood bookshelf nuisance variety. I talk about Lean with my colleague and President of Rally, Ryan Martens. So when I talk about a leaning bookshelf, I’m referring to my interest in Lean in all its forms. I am talking about the books I’ve been reading  that pertain to Lean. And, more specifically, how can I turn my “Leaning bookshelf” into a continuous “learning bookshelf”?  How can I think about my evolution of thought and practice with regard to Agile as influenced by Lean? What could be a good, rewarding goal?

And so, through discussions with Ryan and some of my own quiet thought, I came up with a goal of improving my notion of learning. Yes, for me, that seems to be what I am discovering more and more about Lean:

• How to learn
• How to teach others to learn
• How to encourage organizational learning
• How to avoid/eliminate re-learning

And so in this post, I thought I would share what I am reading, have read, or am about to read, and ask you for your comments and recommendations with regard to my leaning—>learning path. Some of the books may not look directly associated with Lean. I just know that they have been part of my lean learning journey.

The Contents of My Leaning Bookshelf:

1. Getting the Right Thing Done – Pascal Dennis
2. Hitotsubashi on Knowledge Management – Hirotaka Takeuchi and Ikujiro Nonaka
3. Implementing Lean Software Development: from Concept to Cash – Mary and Tom Poppendieck
4. Lean Software Development: An Agile Toolkit – Mary Poppendieck and Tom Poppendieck
5. Lean Thinking – James P. Womack amd Daniel T. Jones
6. Lean Transformation: How to Change Your Business into a Lean Enterprise – Bruce A. Henderson and Jorge L.Larco
7. Learning to See – Mike Rother and John Shook
8. Managing to Learn – John Shook
9. Product Development for the Lean Enterprise – Michael N. Kennedy
10. Ready, Set, Dominate – Michael Kennedy, Kent Harmon, Ed Minnock
11. Scaling Lean and Agile Development – Craig Larman, Bas Vodde
12. Scrumban – Corey Ladas
13. The Knowledge-Creating Company – Ikujiro Nonaka and Hirotaka Takeuchi
14. The Elegant Solution – Matthew E. May
15. The Toyota Way – Jeffrey Liker
16. Thinking Beyond Lean – Michael A. Cusumano and Kentaro Nobeoka
17. The Art of Lean Software Development – Curt Hibbs, Steve Jewett, & Mike Sullivan
18. The Goal – Eliyahu M. Goldratt

Looking at my leaning bookshelf and thinking of my focus on learning, I realize I haven’t included any Senge books or others about organizational learning. That will have to wait for another post.

What books are important to you on your leaning/learning path?