Call for case studies – a chance to appear in new book from Harvard Business Publishing

Guest blog post from Business of Software Conference speaker Jeff Gothelf who is writing a book about changing the way companies can shift their operations to a collaborative, user-centric product design process.

Join Jeff and Josh today to discuss in a Google Hangout.

We need your help. We’re working on a new book and we need your stories. Let me explain.

In 2013 I was fortunate to present at the Business of Software Conference in Boston (video and transcript here). At that talk I discussed the organizational changes that had to take place to support a culture of continuous learning and innovation. The ideas in my talk were based on my personal experience and the work I had done for my first book, Lean UX. Written as a guide for designers struggling to work with agile software teams, the material found a broader audience with product managers, marketers, and  software engineers. Overwhelmingly, the feedback on that book took two forms:

1. We love this and need to be working this way.
2. My boss and company will never let me work this way.

Lean UX was very tactical. It described how to run a collaborative, user-centric product design team. It didn’t provide insight on how to shift your company to this way of working. That’s where the next book comes in.

Written with my Lean UX co-author Josh Seiden, Sense and Respond (as it’s tentatively called) is aimed at  management teams. It makes the case that, regardless of industry, your business is a software business. The book provides managers a framework they can use to shift their organizational culture towards one of continuous, technology-powered learning.

Josh and I have created this framework based on our consulting work with our clients, and we’ve gathered some terrific case studies from our work, and from the technology world at large – but we need more.

This is where you come in. We’d like to open a call for case studies for potential inclusion in our next book. The book will published in 2016 by Harvard Business Press Publishing.

Here’s what we’re looking for:

• Stories of technology changing the way your company does business
• Stories of traditional businesses adapting to a software-driven business world
• Stories of organizational transformation to take advantage of tech-provided insight
• Stories of failure – companies that missed the digital wave, tried forced culture shifts, etc…

Let us know if you have a good story. We’d love to include you.

Jeff Gothelf (@JBoogie on Twitter).

Join us in a Google Hangout to discuss, 6th August, 11.00 EST.

 

PS – Josh and Jeff will be at BoS 2015 to discuss this very topic in a roundtable workshop on September 21.