Agile vs Lean vs Design Thinking

The method you choose may be based more on your experience and skills than anything else.

Photo by David Clode on Unsplash

The choice between Agile, Lean and Design Thinking can be confusing. There are many articles that dive deep into the weeds of each, describing them in painstaking detail, but not giving much practical advice about which one to choose and when. This is not one of those articles. Instead, I want to look at the bigger picture to help you make a call on this common dilemma. To that end, I will not describe any of the three processes in great depth, but rather direct you to any of the many existing articles freely available.

With that said, let’s get stuck into the comparison.

Common Steps in the Process

At their core, Agile, Lean, and Design Thinking are all variants of a familiar process:

1. Identify a problem.
2. Understand the problem.
3. Propose a solution.
4. Build something* to test the solution (using minimal investment).
5. Test whatever you built in the preceding step.
6. Analyze the results.
7. Repeat until you either (a) fully solve the problem, or (b) terminate the exercise.