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The back-bone of any successful DesignShop is iterative “design-build-use” cycles applied to different modes of work at the appropriate time. Each cycle has three phases:
Scan: The purpose of scanning mode is to identify “what is known” and “what needs
to be created.” This mode is about exploring to discover:
- Critical assumptions and constraints that will drive the solution
- Best of class examples of how other organizations have resolved similar challenges,
- The breadth of potential solutions [best through worst cases] to prevent pre-mature convergence,
- Why an incremental approach to fixing the current process will not work.
Focus: The purpose of Focus mode is to use critical thinking about the assumptions and constraints that must be resolved to create a valid solution and how this might be resolved. This can include:
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- Competing design challenges to generate more detail around possible solutions,
- Paper based simulations to test system integration and behavior assumptions,
- Scenario planning to test the impact of different strategies or concepts,
- Nominal voting techniques to determine which strategies or concepts the participants believe should be further evaluated
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 Act: The purpose of Act mode is to create an actionable solution design and roadmap
to results. This resolves critical path issues that result in “stalls” after traditional planning. This includes:
- Agreeing on major milestones,
- Agreeing on the paths that can be worked in parallel and sequencing deliverables according to pre-requisites and dependencies
- Agreeing on decisions that remain undecided and when they will become critical
- Agreeing on the resources needed for steps immediately following the DesignShop and what will be stopped to provide running room
- Drafting messages for presentation to stakeholder groups.
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