The Collective Process Framework DTScrum for Integrating Design Thinking into Scrum

The rapid progression of technological capabilities and fast-changing customer demand forces today’s firms to adapt to a volatile environment and react quickly to change. Thus, the agile software development framework Scrum has already become a generally accepted framework for delivering work in small but consumable increments at a fast pace. One facet often neglected is that approaches such as like Scrum are not yet able to cope with ill-defined problems. That is to say, while software development approaches aim at developing software products iteratively and incrementally, we often still need to shift our attention first on framing the actual problem. In this context, one design discipline can help to unveil the real problem, define it, and put it into a clear customer requirement. This discipline is more known as Design Thinking and originates from the search to complement the arts and sciences. Design Thinking is utilizing knowledge from both professions alike, but in ways that are peculiarly adapted to the problems of the digital age. During the last years, it is also receiving much attention in the Software Engineering community. Despite showing obvious similarities with agile software development, little is yet known how to make effective use of Design Thinking in the context of agile approaches. In this contribution, it will be depicted how the basic principles and concepts of Design Thinking and Scrum cohere on a conceptual level while addressing the various, and to some extent, competing views and needs emerging from the professional environment. Important here are the synergies between problem understanding, reflected by Design Thinking, and problem-solving, reflected by Scrum.