The Loops Process

Loops - a Hybrid Agile/Waterfall Process

Agile is great for many ideation, design, and development activities. But you shouldn’t start building things before you have clarity and confidence in what you should build and how you should build it. 

Our overall process follows a Waterfall style approach with Agile activities inside each phase. This helps you (and us) make sure the project is moving the right direction and make any necessary adjustments along the way.

We've seen this process work so well and believe in it so much that we wrote a book about it.

1. Assessment

The first step in any new engagement is a short meeting to discuss your business, your goals, and what success looks like for the project.

This meeting usually takes about 90 minutes, can be done in-person or over video-conference, and typically includes:

• Team Introductions (yours and ours)
• Overview of your business challenges
• Discussion of your internal resources
• Outline of your desired outcomes
• Review of how we might help

If we all agree to move forward after this meeting, we will prepare a project proposal for your review and acceptance.

2. Research

Whether it's just one day talking with your team or an in-depth analysis of your market, deep-dive into your existing products, and detailed customer interviews - the Research Phase gets the project started in the right direction.

This phase typically includes:

• Kickoff Meeting with Your Team
• Stakeholder & Customer Interviews
• Customer Surveys
• Product Gap Analysis
• Executive Summary Report

The Executive Summary includes the results of our research and a detailed plan for the next steps of the engagement.

3. Prototyping

Now that Research has been done and we have clarity on your business goals and customers needs, it’s time to ask

“How might we...?”

This phase is an agile-style rapid iteration of divergent and convergent thinking, designed to create workflows, wireframes, and prototypes we can test with real users to validate what works and what doesn’t.

This validation builds confidence in the workflows, wireframes, and product roadmaps; and helps business and development teams all operate from the same page.

4. Design

Now that we have validated prototypes to guide our decisions, we move into creating UI Designs, Clickable Prototypes, and Design Systems to help your development teams move faster and with less risk.

We work with your in-house teams to communicate with stakeholders in other departments, plan development roadmaps, and align everyone’s expectations.

As your in-house teams build momentum we can stay engaged to help ensure the final outcome meets the business goals and users’ needs we outlined at the beginning, so everyone can celebrate a successful project.