Summary
Great collaboration is the secret sauce of successful development teams. At its core, collaboration comes from the culture of your company and the dynamics of your team. This entertaining session will demonstrate how the dynamics of jazz improvisation serve as a model for better teamwork with live music on stage. The lessons from jazz are particularly important for design, much of which involves collaborating with others: gathering requirements from stakeholders, ideating in project teams, and iterating with developers. Great design requires practitioners to be not only skilled craftsmen equipped with the right tools, but also expert collaborators and facilitators. Jazz gives us a model to help us move in that direction in a modern, agile way. Jim Kalbach will be joined by three special guests.
Key Insights
-
•
Jazz improvisation relies heavily on listening and responding to others.
-
•
Successful outcomes in jazz come from spontaneity within a structured framework.
-
•
The concept of 'the head' in jazz refers to both structure and improvisation.
-
•
Collaboration is key to both jazz and design processes.
-
•
Clear rules of engagement improve team dynamics and creativity.
-
•
Agile methodologies mirror jazz improvisation in breaking tasks into smaller units.
-
•
Feedback loops are essential in both music and design for refining ideas.
-
•
Ritualized practices in design can facilitate better collaboration.
-
•
Understanding each team member's role enhances group synergy in improvisation.
-
•
Design sprints provide a framework for effective collaboration, much like jazz forms.
Notable Quotes
"This is a lesson in a different kind of improvisation than what I usually do."
"Each first take was the only take, which got pressed on the album."
"The success of the album is because of that spontaneity."
"Not just making things up here on stage; there's actually an underlying structure."
"These same rules of engagement apply everywhere."
"What are our rules of engagement for design?"
"We have lots of chances to learn from each other as we iterate."
"There are guidelines that we rely on to help us stay together."
"We can improvise the rest on top of that."
"Let's think about the routines built into your design practice."
More Videos
"You don’t want to miss it, it’s super duper fun."
Bria AlexanderOpening Remarks
March 28, 2023
"What we learned from our users validated our design hypothesis."
Dawn ResselFull-Stack User Experiences: A Marriage of Design and Technology
June 9, 2016
"The Cheesecake Factory has cracked standardization at scale."
Candace MyersStandardizing Design at Scale
September 9, 2022
"In those days, the world was full of Eurocentrism while it was nowhere to be found."
Victor UdoewaResearch in the Pluriverse
March 29, 2023
"Having an MBA helped others see me as someone who could understand and navigate business challenges."
Dantley DavisLeadership & Diversity—A Fireside Chat with Dantley Davis
September 17, 2020
"The kind of research question determines the method."
Megan Blocker Amy Bucher Katie Hansen Ricardo Martins Nidhi Singh RathoreDay 2 Theme Panel
March 12, 2025
"Look for the overlap in definitions of inclusion rather than differences."
Saara Kamppari-MillerTheme Three Intro
September 9, 2022
"If you don’t have a research strategy, you shouldn’t feel bad; many don’t."
Chris GeisonWhat is Research Strategy?
March 11, 2021
"The research phase should be where you spend the most time."
Bob Baxley Sara Asche Anderson Sharon Bautista Frank Duran Jamie Kaspszak Abbey Smalley Sylas SouzaTheme 4: Discussion
January 8, 2024
