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Building know-how from the ITX team blog

How To Convert Client Needs To Establish Clear Product Vision

In this second post in our series, Leading Product Innovation, we look at how ITX innovation leads help clients establish a clear Vision for their software product. In the series’ opening blog, we talked about how Discovery activities guide the product team to answer Why? What? For whom? Here, we explore their role in building stakeholder alignment around the product Vision and articulating that Vision in a way that rallies the team to confidently commit to its fulfillment.

Managing risk. It’s the unavoidable reality of software product leadership. Sometimes that risk comes from not knowing what to do first, or next. Other times it’s the risk of not staying current with technology. Ultimately, product leaders face the risk that any one of these will damage their company’s brand or bottom line.

ITX innovation leads help clients manage that risk – first by guiding the product team through Foundation Stage discovery activities, later transitioning into the Planning Stage of the product development process with a clear product vision.

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Discovery: Understanding the Problem Space

Leading Product Innovation, the ITX Way is a new blog series offering an inside look at how Product + Design come together to deliver innovative product solutions.

The product manager role at ITX has evolved throughout our 25-year history. Here, product managers are called innovation leads – more than nuance, the title emphasizes our belief that our clients manage the products we help them build; we are partners in that development.

To best understand the innovation lead’s impact, it’s helpful to drill into their involvement during key stages of the process – Foundation, Planning, Development, and Deployment. In this article, we’ll look at how innovation lead guides discovery activities to help their product team understand the problem space.

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Product + Design: Collaborative Best Practices That Deliver Transformative Results

Product manager and UX designer working together

A discussion of UX Design and Product Manager roles, best practices for working collaboratively, and the transformative outcomes to be realized

Not long ago, Jesse James Garrett shared his concern over persistent conversations around “the differences between design and product and the antagonisms they sometimes provoke.”In this post, we – 1. Explore the product and design roles, pointing out the differences and embracing the similarities; 2. Identify 5 best practices to exploit the tension and avoid the antagonism; 3. Realize the transformative outcomes that can result when UX + Product join forces.

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Product manager and UX designer working together

10 Reasons to Prioritize Flow Efficiency over Resource Efficiency

Overcoming the Resource Efficiency Paradox

“Transformation comes more from pursuing profound questions than seeking practical answers.”
– Peter Block, author of The Answer to How Is Yes

Many Scrum teams’ sprint burndowns look like a cliff, with numerous backlog items in progress at the same time, and most not marked ‘done’ until the end of the sprint.

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Why a Digital Content Strategy Is Your Website’s Superpower

Your business’ website projects the ultimate first impression, so it’s worth making it well-designed and responsive. But an effective website requires more than just wise aesthetic choices.   To create a site that generates leads and informs buying decisions, you need to make it influential. And, the bulk of your influence comes from content.  From strong …

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Understanding DevOps Practices

Illustration representing DevOps

What is DevOps? It’s a buzz word, to be sure. It’s a practice. It’s a process. It’s a culture. It’s a tool set. It’s all of those things, and more. Sometimes, its definition will change depending on who you ask and what problems their organization faces.

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Illustration representing DevOps

Accessible Design Inspires Innovation for All

In this final post of my 3-part series on Digital Accessibility, I close by contending that the future of accessibility is here – and it’s time to get on board. In Part 1, I asserted that digital access was a human right requiring our protection. I laid out a strong business case in Part 2 that studied the economic benefits of accessibility. Here, I conclude with one final argument and declare that the future of accessibility is now.

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