Sustainability Twisted Techniques
Bring Sustainability into the heart of your process!
Whatever part of the product lifecycle you operate in, you can bring sustainability into every and any step of your process. This series we call ‘Twisted Techniques’ where we will look at what changes you can make to processes and techniques you already use in order to build more sustainable products, in a more sustainable way.
To begin, let us look the overall Product Discovery Life Cycle.
What is it?
The double diamond is a well known design process model adapted by the British Design Council from the divergence-convergence model created in 1996 by Bela H. Banathy. It is the basis of most product development models in our current era. At Green PO, we have extended the double diamond to encapsulate/describe Sustainability twists to the model in order to provoke and enable sustainability to be brought into the heart of the product design and development process.
Which problem does it solve?
Often, Green product owners have an understanding of sustainability, circularity and what a sustainable product is, but they want to know how to build more sustainable products. The Green PO Sustainable PDLC offers help and new thinking patterns at each stage of the product development cycle, to enable sustainability to be brought into the heart of the process at each stage.
The model helps teams and individuals step away from the lofty Sustainability company or individual goals that have no influence or impact at the team level, bringing control of sustainability issues back to the product owner and the development team. If you work in a Product development team and want to make a positive impact on the sustainability of your product, the Green PO PDLC model is an excellent way to do this.
Who should be involved?
The model is for professionals who shape products. It can be used by individuals or by product teams, or by coaches to bring sustainability into the heart of the process.
How does it work?
In this section, Green PO will not define the double diamond model as this is well documented in multiple places (see the bottom for references). Instead, each section of the double diamond will be reexamined and extended with a sustainability lens, in order to enable more sustainable products to be developed in a more sustainable way.
DISCOVER /Research— insight into the problem (diverging)
The sustainability lens widens the problem and research area of any problem as it asks people to become holistic thinkers instead of simply focusing on the specific area on which the problem lies. The reasons for this are several, with the easiest way of describing it overall as the interconnectedness of all things, specifically wicked problems of the world creating unintended consequences when the lens used initially is too narrow. Especially at the start of you and your products sustainability journey when the knock on effects of specific solutions, materials and/or design patterns are unknown to you, your team and your company, we at Green PO ask that you take a little time in your research to seek a wider perspective.
Systemic Impact of the problem
Systems maps of the problem space and how the issue interacts with entities outside of its system are a good starting point.
In order to find the best solution, we need to really understand the problem, the problem space, the problem system and the interactions with other entities within systems external to the problem system.
Customer wants and desires
Using a standard non-human personna to represent nature or the planet ie the eco system in whoch the humans who will use the product operate is an excellent tool to have in your back pocket. Their needs and wants can be taken into consideration at this stage in design, ensuring indirect impacts and requirements are considered.
Systemic impact of solutions
Reflect points 1 and 2 in terms of solution space instead of the original problem space at this stage.
Sustainability goal and unit(s) of measurement
Having a high level focus beyond Discovery helps continue to steer the product design in the right direction. By this stage the areas of the eco system (both human and environmental) will be understood to some extent, therefore the major negative impacts will be known and aiming to create a solution with less of a negative impact is, for example, a good direction to have.
2. DEFINE /Synthesis — the area to focus upon (converging)
Things to remember when defining the area to focus on, the problem that you want to solve or the value you want to add:
Simplicity reduces cost
Generally, the simpler the design or solution, the less it costs, AND the more sustainable it is. For example, fewer steps in a digital user journey or the fewer parts in a physical product - the less emissions.
The more you can reuse physical parts or code for multiple purposes, the fewer parts or code is needed, therefore the cheaper it is to build and the less emmitive the production and use portion of the PDLC.
Funding and Competition
There are huge funding opportunities out there for sustainable products. Ensure this is a part of your product research. Green tech grants for example can be hugely helpful for new sustainable products and companies.
What are your competitors doing in this area? Can you innovate on already innovative ideas to take them to the next level with regards to sustainability and circularity?
2/3 DEFINE & DESIGN stages
Factors to consider for both Define and Design stages of the PDLC:
Sustainability as a differentiator
A huge part of product definition and design is coming up with a differentiator to ensure the product stands out in a loaded market place. Multiple different worldwide polls show that customers are now looking for sustainable products, and are willing to pay more for them. They are looking for transparency and clear labelling of emission reductions and impact, and what a better way to differentiate from your competitors? Better for your customers, your company and the planet.
Planet or Nature as a Stakeholder and/or persona in your techniques
As outlined above, but with greater detail into your non-human personas needs and wants and a greater understanding into the negative impacts they face …
Depending on the physical location of your suppliers, cloud servers and/or end of life waste of your product design, consider using human personas based in those locations in order to explore the full impact of unintended consequences at the beginning and end of your product lifecycle.
3. DESIGN /Ideation— potential solutions (diverging)
Sustainability via accessibility
As a general rule, the more accessible the product, the more sustainable it is. Accessible products are built so the ‘Job to be done’ is achieved in as few steps as possible, without added (unnecessary) complexity, parts or colours. By streamlining your product, you make it accessible AND more sustainable. On top of that, the ‘Purple Pound’ as it is called in the UK, has a much larger market share than most realise.
Environmental & Social Impact Scoring
Prioritisation techniques differ hugely from company to company and team to team. When deciding on which version of a product, or which feature to build, adding an environmental and impact score to your prioritisation techniques will enable the team and/or company to add a sustainability layer onto your product decision making process, ensuring transparency of known positive and negative holistic costs.
Using a scoring method that also takes into account end of life will enable the team to think beyond getting the product or feature to the customer. Much of sustainable product design comes from ensuring products last longer, and that their materials can be reused in some form or another at end of life. Adding this factor into your prioritisation scoring will help the team think of end of life and circularity.
4. DELIVER /Implementation— solutions that work (converging)
Low energy prototypes
Paper prototypes are excellent, especially at early stages of design implementation and feedback.
Embed sustainability into Delivery and Ways of working
Continuously measure the reductions or impact being made by the product throughout the product development lifecycle. To set and forget will not enable the impact desired.
Measure to improve first, and then report
The accuracy, or inaccuracy, of your initial measurements can lead down a rabbit hole that can waste a lot of time and energy, making sustainability seem expensive. Accept that as experiments are run, metrics will improve as will confidence in the accuracy.
Initially, metrics should be used to show improvements, not specific emissions/energy etc.
Once confident measurements are relatively accurate, the metrics can be used to report beyond your team.
Transparency for customers
As highlighted above, customers want true, clear information on the impact of the products that they use in order to make informed choices. Why not share your metrics, and what you are using them for in order to help cusomters help themselves and their planet.
What to be cautious about?
In an existing team, suddenly starting all these new ‘twists’ to your process will feel overwhelming, and, the ways outlined in the model for bringing sustainability into your product development lifecycle may not fit your current process. Therefore, its a good idea to remember a few overarching points:
Start small, change happens 1 step at a time via continuous improvement to enable the changes to become routine rather than done once and thrown away.
The list of twists above are just ideas that we have tried. If you find other ways to bring sustainability into your product development lifecycle we would love to hear them! The twists act as a starting point to expand your mindset and bring sustainability into the heart of what you do.
If you meet with resistance to applying changes such as these, try running an experiment, setting out your hypothesis and measures of success to determine if it is worth doing or not.
Where to find out more about it?
Please contact us at Green PO for more information, and look for the forthcoming article on Sustainability in Scrum - how to bring Sustainability into your Delivery Team.
Who contributed to its creation & development?
The creative process is mostly a collective cultural process of creation, inspiration, copy & remix. Therefore, the following entries shall be understood as markers of significant milestones of this concept, not as an exclusive and exhaustive list of all people involved.
The Green PO Sustainable PDLC was created by the team of Green PO.