Scenario-Focused Engineering
Great technology alone is rarely sufficient to ensure a product’s success. Scenario-Focused Engineering is a customer-centric, iterative approach used to design and deliver the seamless experiences and emotional engagement customers demand in new products. In this book, you’ll discover the proven practices and lessons learned from real-world implementations of this approach, including why delight matters, what it means to be customer-focused, and how to iterate effectively using the Fast Feedback Cycle.
In an engineering environment traditionally rooted in strong analytics, the ideas and practices for Scenario-Focused Engineering may seem counter-intuitive. Learn how to change your team’s mindset from deciding what a product, service, or device will do and solving technical problems to discovering and building what customers actually want.
Improve the methods and mindsets you use to:
- Select a target customer to maximize carryover
- Discover your customer’s unarticulated needs
- Use storytelling to align your team and partners
- Mitigate tunnel vision to generate more innovative ideas
- Use experimentation to fail fast and learn
- Solicit early and ongoing feedback
- Iterate using a funnel-shaped approach
- Manage your projects around end-to-end experiences
- Build a team culture that puts the customer first
Editorial Reviews
About the Author
Austina De Bonte is a trainer, coach, consultant, and change agent. Austina conceived and founded the Scenario-Focused Engineering initiative in 2008 to help accelerate Microsoft’s shift towards dramatically more customer-focused, iterative design and product development approaches.
Drew Fletcher is a software design consultant in the Seattle area. Drew joined Microsoft’s Engineering Excellence team in 2008 as the Director of Program Management where he teamed up with Austina to develop and champion the Scenario-Focused Engineering effort.
Review
“Breakthroughs often result when diverse disciplines collaborate to solve old problems using new perspectives. Scenario-Focused Engineering is just such a breakthrough. I’ll never see software design the same.”
–Eric Brechner, Development Manager, Microsoft Xbox, author of I.M. Wright’s Hard Code
“If your team focus is dominated by what you want to make, without enough consideration of why or for whom, this book is for you. Revitalize your team and your product by using these rigorous techniques that put the customer at the center.”
–Chris Pratley, Director of Program Management, Microsoft Office, creator of OneNote and Sway
“De Bonte and Fletcher have astute insight into how engineering teams build products today. They expertly lay out a compelling approach to the creation of desirable products and services through the embrace of Scenario-Focused Engineering. Read it and you’ll want to start using Scenario-Focused Engineering in your development processes immediately.”
–Gayna Williams, founder, Swash Consulting
“If you are new to customer-centricity or an expert with decades of experience, this book is a great addition to your library. It demonstrates that customer-centricity is the responsibility of everybody in the organization and gives readers strategies and ideas to make this happen.”
–Charles Bennett, CEO, NextTen
“Microsoft has gradually shifted from a feature-focused approach to product engineering to a more user-centric, scenario-focused approach. The shift was both profound and difficult. The SFE training they drove was instrumental to Microsoft meeting these challenges. In this book you’ll get the distilled lessons of that enormous undertaking.”
–Charles Eliot, Head of Engineering Services, Skype
“In this impeccably organized book, Fletcher and De Bonte combine practical wisdom and highly refined techniques to produce a hands-on guide that will enrich the design room as well as the classroom. A smart, easy read.“
–William Storage, Visiting Scholar, Center for Science, Technology, and Society, UC Berkeley
“One of the toughest challenges designers face is promoting the value behind building end-to-end scenarios rather than hundreds of glitzy, yet disconnected features. SFE throws the old engineering processes out the window and replaces them with a common language, tools, and techniques that enable development, test, program management, marketing, and design to work together to deliver a cohesive, end-to-end experience. The program transformed our organization from the top down.”
–Bethany Kessen Doan, Principal User Experience Design Consultant
“The concepts of SFE are presented in a digestible and easily adopted way for people of all levels of experience. Having seen firsthand the impact the concepts can have on an engineering team, I am a big supporter of this way of thinking.“
–Sheri Panabaker, Principal User Research Manager, Microsoft Surface
“Three years ago, we decided to pilot the use of Scenario-Focused Engineering for our division. The improvements were almost immediate, and customers love the outcome. There’s no going back.”
–Jeff Comstock, General Manager, Microsoft Dynamics R&D
“With great examples and a proven approach, this book provides a great roadmap for really learning about your customers and how to build great products for them.”
–Mike Kelly, Managing Partner, Tech DNA
“Teams will greatly benefit from this book by shifting the primary focus from feature lists to ‘who would use this product’ (target customer) and ‘why/how’ (scenarios).”
–Raja Abburi, CEO, Navaraga Corporation
“I saw firsthand how engineers became more deeply involved with customers. SFE was a great step forward.”
–Mike Tholfsen, Principal Engineering Manager, Microsoft Project
“Chockfull of common sense, SFE was controversial because taken as a whole it pushed for a much-needed culture shift at the company. We used to dream up scenarios to match the features we wanted to build. SFE helped teach the company how to start first with real customer needs and then design for the right scenarios.”
–Kent Lowry, Principal Design Research Manager, Microsoft Office
“There are a handful of moments in life that make an indelible impression on one’s memory. One of those moments for me was when Austina wrote at the top of the whiteboard, ‘To help design a product customers crave.’ SFE helped Microsoft transform, and it can help you as well.”
–Michael Corning, Senior Data Scientist, Microsoft Skype
“This book will be a priceless asset in helping me apply SFE at my company.”
–Arne de Booij, UX Strategist, SDL
“For those of you trying out SFE for the first time, trust that this system works. Trust that getting your engineers involved in the design process helps them understand the problem they are trying to solve. Trust that iterating and getting feedback on these iterations from customers can be done quickly. Trust that you will have that ‘aha moment’ when you show a design to customers and they are ecstatic. It’s then that you realize that SFE works.”
–Kevin Honeyman, User Experience Lead, Microsoft Dynamics
"This book is a treasure-trove of insights into how individuals and teams can lock in on incomplete ideas, or free themselves to be much more flexiblle in coming around to designs that directly meet the customer's needs.:
–Richard Ells, Senior Webmaster, University of Washington
