Rosenverse
Jazz Improvisation as a Model for Team Collaboration

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
Prayag Narula
HCI 2.0: Humanity Deserves the Attention that UX Research has to Offer
2023 • Advancing Research 2023
Gold
Kristin Skinner
Theme 1 Intro
2021 • DesignOps Summit 2021
Gold
Sarah Auslander
Insights Panel
2022 • Civic Design 2022
Gold
Maria Skaaden
Continuous Design: One eye on the horizon and the other on the next wave
2018 • DesignOps Summit 2018
Gold
David Sternberg
Uncovering the hidden forces shaping user behavior
2025 • Rosenfeld Community
Changying (Z) Zheng
Practical DesignOps: From Ideas to Tools That Teams Actually Use
2025 • Rosenfeld Community
Sam Proulx
Mobile Accessibility and You
2022 • Design at Scale 2022
Gold
Louis Rosenfeld
Coffee with Lou
2024 • Rosenfeld Community
Christopher Geison
Theme 1 Intro
2024 • Advancing Research 2024
Gold
Crystal Yan
Building a Customer-Centric Culture
2020 • Advancing Research 2020
Gold
Raven Veal
Dark Metrics: Illuminating the Negative Impact of Digital Health Design
2021 • Advancing Research 2021
Gold
Samuel Proulx
Inclusive Research: Debunking Myths and Getting Started
2025 • Advancing Research 2025
Gold
Soma Ghosh
What emerging methods are advancing UX research [Advancing Research Community Workshop Series]
2023 • Advancing Research Community
Ariel Kennan
Civic Design in 2022
2022 • Civic Design Community
Mansi Gupta
Women-Centric Research: What, Why, How
2023 • Advancing Research 2023
Gold
Alla Weinberg
Design Teams Need Psychological Safety: Here’s How to Create It
2022 • DesignOps Summit 2022
Gold

More Videos

Alexia Cohen

"We decided with the COP to view our budget as a moral document."

Alexia Cohen Adriane Ackerman

Increasing Health Equity and Improving the Service Experience for Under-Served Latine Communities in Arizona

December 4, 2024

Marc Majers

"You want to let participants know it’s a bit non-typical and they are not being tricked or evaluated."

Marc Majers Tony Turner

Interrupted UX - Add A Dose of Reality To Usability Testing

March 11, 2022

Jorge Arango

"The challenge for us is how might we act more skillfully under conditions of VUCA."

Jorge Arango

Design as an Antidote to VUCA

May 9, 2019

Brenna Fallon

"If you forget the individual, you cut out psychological safety, which is the foundation for dependability and structure."

Brenna Fallon

Learning Over Outcomes

October 24, 2019

Daniel Gloyd

"The Shakers patented clever affordances like chair buttons that let you rock without damaging wooden floors."

Daniel Gloyd

Warming the User Experience: Lessons from America's first and most radical human-centered designers

May 9, 2024

Sam Proulx

"Accessibility is a journey and a conversation—thanks for starting yours by being here today."

Sam Proulx

Online Shopping: Designing an Accessible Experience

October 3, 2023

Kristin Skinner

"Data is not just numbers; it tells us the story of student learning."

Kristin Skinner

Five Years of DesignOps

September 29, 2021

Denise Jacobs

"When we start changing our behavior, we start changing the voices and behavior around us."

Denise Jacobs Nancy Douyon Renee Reid Lisa Welchman

Interactive Keynote: Social Change by Design

January 8, 2024

Roberta Dombrowski

"Fraud detection automatically refunds you if a participant is found to be fraudulent and helps find a replacement."

Roberta Dombrowski Lianna Aduana

5 Reasons to Bring your Recruiting in House

September 30, 2021