Rosenverse

This video is only accessible to Gold members. Log in or register for a free Gold Trial Account to watch.

Log in Register

Most conference talks are accessible to Gold members, while community videos are generally available to all logged-in members.

Jazz Improvisation as a Model for Team Collaboration

Gold
Tuesday, June 4, 2019 • Enterprise Experience 2019
Share the love for this talk
Jazz Improvisation as a Model for Team Collaboration
Speakers: Jim Kalbach
Link:

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

  • Miles Davis’s 'Kind of Blue' album was mostly recorded in one take without rehearsals, demonstrating the power of spontaneous collaboration within a structured framework.

  • Jazz improvisation is governed by an underlying invisible structure, such as a fixed melody (head), harmonies, and form, which enables creative freedom without chaos.

  • Jazz musicians follow established rules of engagement, like alternating solos and returning to the head, which parallels agile methodologies in software development.

  • Improvisation in teamwork works best when the team agrees on clear frameworks or rituals, such as design sprints or regular critiques.

  • Planning for uncertainty is essential in improvisation; teams prepare themselves to respond spontaneously within known boundaries.

  • Breakdowns of complex work into smaller cycles (like jazz measures or agile sprints) allow teams to build, measure, and learn iteratively.

  • Collaboration and respectful interaction are fundamental principles supporting successful improvisation and team creativity.

  • Design systems require substantive collaboration and dialogue to function effectively, just as jazz requires listening and interaction.

  • Team rituals and patterned engagement reduce the cognitive load on how to work together, allowing more energy for innovation.

  • Jazz improvisation’s universal conventions enable musicians worldwide to play together from minimal cues, illustrating the power of shared frameworks.

Notable Quotes

"Within improv, it’s a combination of listening and not trying to be funny."

"Miles gave them the music as they entered the studio; they didn’t know what they were going to be playing."

"Each first take was the only take, which got pressed on the album."

"We’re focused on the outcome; as soon as we count off the song, it’s going."

"Jazz has those rules of engagement."

"The head means the melody of a song."

"Instead of playing the melody Miles Davis wrote, the soloist creates a melody spontaneously."

"That unit there is kind of like a sprint."

"Design sprints are popular because they give us a format; we don’t have to improvise how we’re collaborating."

"Collaboration is your secret sauce in the end."

Ask the Rosenbot
Michelle Bejian Lotia
Rolling Out a Repository: How Zapier Centralizes Insights from Across their Organization
2023 • Advancing Research 2023
Gold
Bria Alexander
Opening Remarks
2023 • DesignOps Summit 2023
Gold
Ashley Sewall
Exit Interview #5: Designing My Life After Tech
2026 • Rosenfeld Community
Sean McKay
Coexisting with non-researchers: Practical strategies for a democratized research future
2025 • Advancing Research 2025
Gold
Raven Veal
Dark Metrics: Illuminating the Negative Impact of Digital Health Design
2021 • Advancing Research 2021
Gold
Noel Lamb
Cultivating Business Partnerships to Grow Research Ops
2022 • Advancing Research Community
Gabriela Barneva
Operationalizing Inclusive Design in Service Design
2025 • Advancing Service Design 2025
Gold
Saara Kamppari-Miller
Theme Three Intro
2023 • DesignOps Summit 2023
Gold
Matt Bernius
Trauma-informed Research: A Panel Discussion
2021 • Advancing Research Community
Amy Marquez
INVEST: Discussion
2018 • Enterprise Experience 2018
Gold
Anna Avrekh
Expert Panel: Leading in and with Research
2022 • Advancing Research 2022
Gold
John Mortimer
Panel Discussion
2024 • Advancing Service Design 2024
Gold
Ariel Kennan
Civic Design in 2022
2022 • Civic Design Community
Cheryl Platz
Embrace Your Fun Factor: Game Development Best Practices for Product Design
2026 • Rosenfeld Community
Jennifer Strickland
Adopting a "Design By" Method
2021 • Civic Design 2021
Gold
Roberta Dombrowski
5 Reasons to Bring your Recruiting in House
2021 • DesignOps Summit 2021
Gold

More Videos

Alberto Ferreira

"We aim to keep the reporting simple for stakeholders while incorporating multiple data points in the background."

Alberto Ferreira

Making it Count: Developing a custom digital metric framework that works

October 15, 2021

Lisa Spitz

"Since March 2020, we’ve actually conducted all of our interviews remotely, which generally makes scheduling with diverse groups easier."

Lisa Spitz Nikki Brand

Building Trust Through Equitable Research Practices

November 18, 2022

Ren Pope

"The chatbot method is very transactional: user asks, system responds, and that is pretty much it."

Ren Pope

Building Experiences for Knowledge Systems

June 6, 2023

Rebecca Topps

"There’s no fully accessible scheduling tool for recruiting participants with access needs; much manual effort is involved."

Rebecca Topps

Planning and conducting remote usability studies for accessibility

September 10, 2020

Chris Engledowl

"Qualitative research in a mixed methods setting needs to think about validity to support the bigger validity argument."

Chris Engledowl

A Mixed Method Approach to Validity to Help Build Trust

April 28, 2023

Dave Hoffer

"Your resume, your portfolio, your body of work should reflect you as a human being."

Dave Hoffer Joanne Weaver

UX Job Search AMA #2 with Joanne Weaver and Dave Hoffer

May 21, 2025

Jemma Ahmed

"Each stage of growth brings different challenges for UX to overcome."

Jemma Ahmed

Theme 2 Intro

January 8, 2024

Daniela Magaña Flores

"Mobile users gave Amazon a higher Net Promoter Score than desktop users, indicating a better mobile experience."

Daniela Magaña Flores Ariane Rahn Jeff Ephraim Bander

Ahead of Competition: Learn What UX Benchmarking Can Do for Your Business Today

March 10, 2022

Amy Paris

"If you don’t collect data on somebody, they become invisible and nobody should be invisible."

Amy Paris Danielle Thierry

Delivering Equity: Government Services for All Ages, Languages, Sexual Orientations, and Gender Identities

December 9, 2021