Service Projects and IBM Design Thinking

In the past four years, I have successfully delivered several large service projects using Agile and IBM Design Thinking methodologies. It is always surprising to hear the argument that Design Thinking is only for Software Development and has little applicability for service projects. 
Let me make the case that the opposite is true: Service Projects benefit even more from the core practices of IBM Design Thinking.

Hills
Service projects want to deliver business value to the user in a short time.

Credit IBM

Hills focus the architecture and creation of a service to what the user expected outcome is. A release allows no more than three major objective. This drives clear and containable scope, a great medicine against troubled projects. 
Three questions drive this focus:
Who is the User?
What is the Problem?
What is a sufficient Solution?


Look at this example from an actual project: "“Support recovery from a disaster with an RTO of less than 6 hours and near zero RPO”. Clearly, this will be very common hills for a service project.


Sponsor Users 

Credit IBM

Service projects on day one are exposed to the user. Sponsor Users help to identify the problems that a hill tries to solve. They validate the solution that is implemented in the service. That removes risk, as it pulls the feedback cycle to the left, before the service has been rolled out in production. The sponsor users can guide the envisioning during the design and implementation phase.



Playbacks
Service Projects need commitment, both from the client side, as well as from the service teams. 
IBM Design Thinking is a commitment to a new way of working, to be more adaptable. 

Playbacks puts client commitment center stages as it reduces the noise of nonspecific conversations, and improves the quality and consistency of feedback.

Credit IBM

For the team creating the service, Playbacks will check progress against the original goals, and thereby emphasize the commitment to the business and customer value defined in the Hills.

I would like to hear from you: have you used Design Thinking in Service Projects?