Scenario-Focused Engineering: A Toolbox for Innovation and Customer-Centricity

Blend the art of innovation with the rigor of 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

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.

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.