Every interface tells a story, not just through visuals but through how it makes people feel over time. Every color, animation, or layout tweak sends a signal to the brain. Sometimes that signal is deliberate, other times it’s subtle enough that users barely register it until something feels different. According to the Nielsen Norman Group, visual perception plays a key role in how users process these cues. Sometimes, the signal is deliberate; other times, it’s subtle enough that users barely register it until something feels different.
When users build habits around your product, those small changes can feel much larger than they are. That’s why great design is never only about how things work. It’s about how they evolve. And mastering that evolution means understanding a concept from psychology that quietly shapes the success or failure of digital products: the Just Noticeable Difference, or JND.
What the Just Noticeable Difference Really Means
In psychology, the Just Noticeable Difference is the smallest change in a stimulus that a person can detect about half the time. In design and product terms, it translates to a crucial question.
“How much can I change before users start to notice and possibly resist that change?”
Every product update lives somewhere along that threshold. Staying below it allows users to adapt naturally, while pushing beyond it risks triggering resistance before they see the value.
The goal isn’t to avoid change. It’s to orchestrate it, to make it feel intentional, consistent, and aligned with the user’s expectations.
Why perception matters: understanding thresholds helps introduce change without breaking user trust.
The Psychology of Perception and Why It Matters in UX
To manage this balance, it helps to understand how people perceive change. Psychologists describe three perception thresholds.
Absolute Threshold (Minimum): the faintest signal that can be detected, such as the dimmest glow of a screen.
Absolute Threshold (Maximum): the point where input becomes overwhelming, too bright, too fast, or too different.
Differential Threshold (JND): the smallest difference a person can perceive between two experiences, the moment something feels off even if it’s hard to explain why.
When a company rebrands, launches a new app, or redesigns an interface, it operates within these thresholds. The closer the change stays to the user’s comfort zone, the smoother the adoption. Ignore that balance, and what was meant to be evolutionary can suddenly feel disruptive.
BBVA: When Change Crosses the Line
A clear example of this balance can be found in the experience of BBVA, once recognized for having one of the most intuitive and trusted banking apps in Latin America and Spain.
For years, BBVA’s digital experience stood out for its clarity and consistency. Users built habits around it. They trusted it. Then came a complete redesign. Without gradual onboarding or clear communication, the update was introduced all at once, and that’s where things started to break.
The new interface was well-designed, modern, and aligned with BBVA’s global vision. But perception told a different story. Because everything changed simultaneously, users felt disoriented.
“Where did everything go?”
“Why does this feel harder?”
“Can I still do what I used to?”
The redesign crossed the JND, not visually but emotionally. BBVA didn’t just change the interface, it disrupted trust.
This isn’t a story about bad design. It’s a reminder that even good design fails if perception isn’t managed carefully.
Managing Change Without Losing Users
That brings us to a question every product and UX team eventually faces. How do you evolve without alienating your audience?
We often see how this balance determines whether users stay engaged or drift away. Successful teams understand that users don’t simply adapt to products, they adapt to routines. Breaking those routines takes care, timing, and strategy.
Here are five principles to guide that process.
Five Principles for Perception-Smart UX Changes
Test for perception, not just performance.
Beyond usability, measure how change feels. A product can work flawlessly and still feel unfamiliar.
Work below the threshold when possible.
Update microcopy, animations, or performance quietly. Small improvements can make the experience feel faster and smoother without causing friction.
When you cross the threshold, narrate it.
If a redesign or rebrand is visible, guide users through it. Tutorials, onboarding flows, and thoughtful messaging can turn disruption into engagement.
Design behavior, not just visuals.
Use progressive disclosure, behavioral cues, and clear anchors that help users feel oriented and in control.
Protect habit, it’s a form of loyalty.
When people use your product instinctively, that’s trust. Don’t reset that relationship without purpose.
Each of these principles builds on the same idea. Users don’t resist change because they dislike progress. They resist it because they lose familiarity.
Smart evolution: guide change gradually so it feels expected, not disruptive.
What Smart Brands Get Right
Some of the most recognizable brands have mastered this balance. Spotify, for instance, continuously refines its interface but never in a way that feels like starting over. Updates are gradual, guided, and framed by what’s familiar. Coca-Cola has modernized its image for more than a century, yet the essence, the red, the script, the curve, remains untouched.
These brands understand that perception is part of design. They evolve within the user’s comfort zone, introducing change so naturally that it feels expected rather than imposed.
Great Design Is Change You Don’t Notice
In the end, design isn’t only about what you see. It’s also about what you don’t.
The smooth transitions between versions, the subtle cues that preserve trust, and the way new features feel instantly intuitive, that’s the art of controlled evolution.
Real innovation isn’t about surprising users. It’s about earning the right to change their habits one detail at a time.
The best brands don’t just build better products. They build better transitions, guiding users from what’s familiar to what’s next without losing them along the way.
Let me know in the comments. I’d love to hear how your team manages change, perception, and trust.
FAQs: Perception and Change in UX Design
The JND refers to the smallest change a person can perceive between two experiences. In UX, it defines how much a product can evolve before users consciously notice the difference, and potentially resist it. Understanding this threshold helps designers introduce change gradually, keeping updates intuitive and aligned with user expectations.
Successful teams test for perception, not just performance. They implement small, below-threshold updates, such as improving load speed or copy, and narrate larger changes through onboarding or clear communication. This approach helps users feel guided instead of surprised, preserving familiarity and confidence in the product.
When changes exceed the user’s comfort zone, the interface may feel unfamiliar even if it is technically better. This can lead to confusion, frustration, and loss of trust. The BBVA redesign is a real-world example where a sudden visual overhaul caused users to feel disconnected from a product they once trusted.
Both brands show that effective design evolution is gradual and consistent. Spotify refines its interface continuously without making users relearn the experience, and Coca-Cola modernizes its brand without altering its recognizable core elements. The lesson is simple: design evolution should feel natural. Change that users barely notice is often the most successful kind.
Guillermo Tena
Head of Growth
Founder @ KHERO (clients: Continental, AMEX GBT, etc.)
Head of Growth @ SCIO
Consultant & Lecturer in Growth and Consumer Behavior
Our thoughts on this subject come from practical experience. Companies who come to Scio with their projects often come with a multi-megabyte PDF, UML diagrams, and a list of specifications. “Give us a firm, fixed price for getting this project done by June 2nd at 2pm Eastern,” they say. Their basic idea is:
Software projects have a much less than enviable record of finishing over budget and way over the estimated completion date – we’ll set those so they can’t creep.
Software outsourcing is risky so we’ll limit our risk by agreeing to a cost and timeframe we can live with and possibly tag onto some event. “Shoot for the June trade show so we have a shiny new product to sell,” Marketing begs.
We don’t have the resources to do the project in house, but we don’t trust any outsourcing group – so we’ll rope them in with a fixed fee and time and put all the risk on them.
We know perfectly well what our product needs to be. If we don’t nail this down, we won’t get what we need for the price we can afford.
The result of this thinking generally speaking is:
Flaming Disaster!
Why? Their basic instinct wasn’t wrong. Software projects do fail to meet their targets with astonishing regularity. They were just trying to limit their exposure. What is happening? There are five intrinsically linked factors in estimating software product development projects:
The Total Elapsed Time expected to produce the specified product.
The Effort required to produce the product.
The Cost the client expects to expend.
The Resources required for the project – their skills and availability.
The Specifications for the product; the features, functionality and user experience.
Comparative Table: Project Estimation Variables
Variable
Main Goal
Common Risk
Mitigation Strategy
Time
Deliver within expected deadlines.
Artificial dates and poor scope alignment.
Base timelines on real effort estimates.
Effort
Allocate realistic development hours.
Underestimating iteration workload.
Include contingency buffers and retrospectives.
Cost
Stay within budget without compromising quality.
Tight budgets ignoring real resource needs.
Use incremental milestones and ROI checkpoints.
Specifications
Deliver accurate functionality.
Scope creep or unclear requirements.
Refine continuously with client feedback loops.
Resources
Assign skilled talent at the right time.
Mismatch in skills or team availability.
Use flexible nearshore teams for scalability.
In general terms, what clients are trying to do is set a “target.” In project management, the general assumption is you can set any one of the five factors as a target for a project, but when you do, you need to let the other four float to where they need to go to reach the target. So if you set cost, you need to vary time, specifications, effort and/or resources to reach a mix that will achieve the project goals within the target cost. Instead, clients set two or more factors in an attempt to “hold the line” on all the other factors. They spent a lot of time on those specifications. They need them all! But in fact, setting more than one factor as fixed creates an almost impossible tension among the remaining factors that almost assures the project will fail to meet its goals. There are no levers left to control the project! It starts out with the best of intentions, but with two or more factors fixed, any change in circumstances during the project creates an imbalance that cannot be corrected with the remaining factors. Why does this happen? Stepping away from our example of setting time and cost as the fixed factors – think about each of the factors individually and the impact they have on the project:
Accurate time estimation helps avoid artificial pressure and aligns teams with achievable delivery goals.
Time: Managing Deadlines Without Artificial Pressure
The elapsed project time from start to finish is always different than the total effort applied. Time is measured by a calendar start to finish. Conversely, the effort is the sum of all the time expended on a project by the assigned resources. Total time is never equal to the total effort unless only one resource is assigned, full time. Software development projects rarely finish on time. Unplanned specification changes, unexpected risks, and resource changes always build up over time and eventually result in a project that is both over budget and beyond the allocated time. Time to completion can only be estimated and controlled well over short periods. As the time period considered in an estimate increases, the accuracy begins to degrade because of variations in the expected effort, the depth and complexity of the specifications involved, the skills and availability of the resources required and the limitations an assumed total cost puts on the project. It should also be understood that time to project completion is rarely scoped as a direct result of estimating the effort required. More often, “artificial completion dates” evolve from a point in a product marketing plan, the current product position, and/or customer demands. When this happens, there is usually some consideration of project scope but is rarely enough to address the situation that arises from not first doing a straight-forward evaluation of the effort required to complete the specified product.
Effort: Estimating Workload and Avoiding the Domino Effect
The accurate estimation of effort is key to successful software project costing and setting a realistic expected time to completion. In practice however, the amount of effort required to actually produce each bit of application functionality always varies from estimates. The more detailed and contingency bound the estimate becomes, the more likely it is to be wrong. Because of this, past experience and general effort assumptions are used across a project estimation, in the belief that in the final outcome everything will average out. Of course, the reverse is also true; averages can never address all risks in an individual project. So, while averages are a practical approach to project estimation, they cannot yield a project quote that can be fixed to a specific figure without risk. In this situation, risk buffers for variations in specifications and resources are recommended for effort estimation, especially in Agile development methodologies where development iterations are “timeboxed.” Timeboxing iterations means variations in the effort will generally cause functionality to be pushed ahead to the next iteration and a “snowball effect” can be produced where the amount of effort required for each iteration increases incrementally beyond estimates over time. If buffers were used, more projects would reach their estimates, but in the drive to reach a more competitive price, they are rarely employed when using assumed effort to arrive at a fixed cost. This results in a very narrow margin for error in effort estimation. In addition, the amount of time required to reach project completion is not directly related to the number of resources available concurrently. Determining effort depends on an experienced assessment of an efficient team size for the project and the methodologies used. Increasing the number of resources and concurrent tasks beyond a certain point increases coordination and communication overhead exponentially. Increased team size tends to increase errors, oversight, and testing cycles without a cost-effective increase in total output. Estimates of effort required tend to be assessed from a straightforward analysis of specifications. During projects, the actual effort required frequently increases beyond estimates because of “fixes” required to bridge the gap between specifications and the product as realized in development. In addition, the elapsed time required for QA by the client team is often underestimated and can result in either idling development or moving ahead with incorrect assumptions and subsequent rework.
According to the CHAOS Report summary by The Story, only 31% of software projects are considered successful—delivered on time, on budget, and with all required features. Around 50% are challenged, and 19% fail completely, highlighting why accurate effort estimation is one of the most critical aspects of project management.
Tight budgets often ignore resource realities. Smart estimation connects cost with quality and delivery.
Cost: When Budget Targets Clash with Project Reality
Software development projects almost never finish under their expected cost from the point of view of clients. A few finishes at the client’s target cost, but generally only at the expense of other project factors. As a result, when projects do cost what was originally expected, the product is often a failure from an end-user point of view. For clients, the target project cost is generally a function of:
Expected product price and the desired return on investment that could be produced by an estimated number of paying customers in a reasonable period of time. In other words, a string of dependencies that may have little basis in the final analysis.
Available funds and cash flow limitations.
Experience with “similar projects” – However, only rarely do estimates based this way actually works out to be similar in the effort required.
Target cost is never or only rarely based on:
The steps and effort actually required scope and develop a product that is a successful market fit.
Small, incremental steps that can be estimated with a reasonable chance of success.
Specifications: The Hidden Triggers Behind Scope Creep
Specifications are almost always assumed to be a known and set factor in fixed cost projects. They are used as the basis for effort estimation and effort estimation ultimately determines the quoted cost. Clients generally have a basic expectation that their specifications do not need to be varied from substantially to produce the desired product at the specified cost. Clients often expend great amounts of time producing specifications for bid to assure they will be complete and assumed to be fixed. But in fact, not assuming specifications will need to be varied as over the course of a project to meet fixed cost results in a continuous tension between the effort required, the scope remaining and the time remaining on the project clock. Most fixed cost projects have intentionally limited options to change scope. Instead, limiting scope change by not providing workable options increases the risk the project will not reach the desired goals when the actual product is assessed by end-users. Software development requirements can never be complete enough or communicated well enough to ensure understanding and success. Errors in interpretation, over-broad and over-complex specifications result in many “fixes” that are not related to actual code errors by the development team. These fixes are actually elaborations or “clarifications” of project specifications, but in most projects, they are assumed to be “bug fixes” in the process of development, testing and QA. In practice, this means the actual functionality works as specified but the implementation is not as desired by the client. Fixes of this type generally add to effort and resource allocations without the assumption they should impact specifications, time or cost. Software development project requirements are by their nature improved by the discovery on the part of both the development team and the client team during analysis and development. In the course of normal work, discovery exposes:
More depth than expected (scope creep).
Different aims and approaches from the client and end-user feedback or unexpected insight from seeing the product as it develops.
Technical limitations or alternative approaches that change requirements, the effort and time required.
In most software development projects, there are no assumptions or procedures to handle specification discovery and subsequent changes. This results in many variations from project estimates and is a significant factor in project overruns.
Smart resource allocation ensures the right skills are available at the right time for every sprint.
Resources: Balancing Talent, Skills, and Availability
Resource management is a function of having the right skills available when needed for a specific task in a project. With limited resources and funds, this is a difficult task for software development companies. Both internally and externally, software development companies have an ongoing need to balance new projects against support, maintenance, and enhancement of existing applications. Companies need to decide the level of investment they will put into new technology. Using time from existing work to move to new technology skills is a difficult and expensive proposition. Recruiting for internal resources is a long, expensive process that often fails to yield dependable, trained resources in the long run. These factors are the leading reasons clients consider outsourcing. But they are also a factor in outsourced projects themselves because, at some level, the client team becomes involved directly with the outsourced team and the results of team resource management. The management of new software development projects is difficult by itself. Because of the time and risks involved in recruiting resources with appropriate skills and knowledge, client project/product managers often don’t have a good understanding of the technology and limitations in the project they are managing. In this situation, outsourcing software development often leads to a confrontational relationship where the client team feels they have lost control and don’t understand the choices the outsourced development team has made or what effort is being applied to produce deliverables. They don’t understand that the estimation for time to completion was figured against assumed effort but the accuracy of that assumption varies according to specification clarity, resource skills, and availability. For technology leaders exploring smarter ways to manage skill gaps and scale engineering capacity, check out our blog Scaling Engineering Teams with a Hybrid Model: In-house + Outsourced. It explains how combining internal knowledge with nearshore talent can balance resources effectively and reduce project estimation risks.
In Summary
Variations in the five factors during a software development project leads to:
Defensive reactions to clarifications and changes between the client and the development team.
Situations, where the actual effort in the given time varied depending on specification accuracy and resource skills and availability, lead to confrontations. When the time to completion is figured for a fixed cost, it is generally figured against the assumed effort. Without assumptions for what controls are available to deal with variation, the confrontation continues to simmer throughout the life of the project.
Lost opportunities for a partnership-like relationship of shared risk and reward.
The solution could be as simple as not setting more than one factor as fixed, but in practice that is hard to do for many projects. What is really needed is a consultive framework for communication and decision making that is informed by real-time reporting during the project and the collaborative resolution of issues to reach the client’s goals. It’s easy to say, but it takes understanding, planning, and agreement to accomplish. We’re constantly working on this paradigm every day – it’s challenging and rewarding. What’s your experience? How do you hold the line? What controls do you have realistically? Have you recognized the five factors in your project estimation process formally? I’d love to hear your thoughts…
FAQs: Project Estimation Essentials
Because multiple key variables—time, cost, and scope—are often fixed simultaneously at the start. This leaves no operational flexibility to adapt quickly when requirements inevitably evolve or technical complexities emerge.
By operating in real-time alignment with your internal team, they facilitate seamless sharing of performance metrics and velocity data. This minimal friction enables rapid adaptation to scope changes, making subsequent estimates far more accurate.
Effort estimation. It determines the cost, the duration, and the necessary team structure. Misjudging the effort required for a task is the primary cause of cascading overruns across all other project variables.
Agile manages estimation through **iterative timeboxing** (sprints), **backlog grooming**, and continuous feedback loops. These practices constantly reduce uncertainty by validating estimates against real work output, improving predictability over time.
Microsoft Excel has been the backbone of business operations for decades—affordable, accessible, and widely compatible. From startups in Austin to established enterprises in Dallas, companies rely on Excel to manage everything from financial tracking to operational planning.
But as organizations scale, Excel starts showing its cracks: limited collaboration, lack of security, version control nightmares, and the inability to handle the complexity of modern software projects. The question isn’t whether Excel is useful—it clearly is—but whether it’s enough to sustain growth in a competitive market. For most tech leaders, the answer is no.
So, when is Excel not enough, and what’s the smarter alternative?
A Brief History: Why Excel Became the Default
Since its launch in 1985, Excel has grown into the default data management tool for businesses worldwide. Its dominance is partly because:
It came bundled with Microsoft Office, which nearly every company adopted.
It works across industries: banking, healthcare, retail, tech, and beyond.
It offers familiarity—almost every professional has used Excel at some point.
In Dallas and Austin, Excel became the go-to for startups and mid-sized firms looking for a cheap and flexible option. But tools built for the 80s weren’t designed to support the speed, scalability, and security today’s software organizations need.
Excel supports basic data tracking but struggles with complex workflows as organizations scale.
What Actually Is Microsoft Excel?
At its core, Microsoft Excel is a spreadsheet application designed to organize, calculate, and format data. As part of the Microsoft Office suite, it has long been a universal business tool for financial modeling, data analysis, and inventory tracking. Its intuitive interface and wide compatibility explain why Excel remains so popular among professionals and organizations worldwide.
But here’s the catch: Excel was never built to manage the complexity of modern business operations—let alone the intricacies of software development. What begins as a practical solution for small datasets or quick calculations often turns into one of the most common sources of inefficiency and errors as companies scale.
As the tech developer Strappberry puts it,
“Excel is one of those tools every company starts off with. In the initial stages, it allows organizations to organize and manage many of their operations effectively. It may not be perfect, but it does the job. However, as business data grows, the limitations of this software begin to show.”
— Strappberry, Tech Developer
And in the context of software development, those limitations aren’t just inconvenient—they’re critical blockers:
Task Dependencies: Excel struggles to manage complex workflows, often turning project tracking into a tangled mess.
Lack of Visualization: It offers limited ways to see the project as a whole, making bottlenecks hard to detect.
Collaboration Gaps: Without real-time collaboration, teams are forced to send files back and forth, creating versioning issues.
Data Security: Weak protection mechanisms put sensitive information at unnecessary risk.
Data Fragility: A single corrupted file can result in complete data loss—something no development team can afford.
The truth is that while Excel remains a handy tool for administrative and financial tasks, it simply isn’t enough to manage software projects or enterprise workflows at scale. For growing organizations in Dallas, Austin, and other competitive tech hubs, relying solely on Excel eventually creates more problems than it solves.
That’s why forward-looking companies are shifting towards tailored internal tools and platforms—solutions built for scalability, security, and seamless collaboration. Unlike spreadsheets, these systems are designed to grow with the business, enabling teams to stay aligned, productive, and competitive in fast-moving markets.
Table: Excel vs. Internal Tools for Growing Tech Teams
Criteria
Microsoft Excel
Custom Internal Tools
Scalability
Limited to small/medium datasets
Designed to scale with business growth
Collaboration
File-sharing only; risk of version errors
Real-time, multi-user collaboration
Security
Weak encryption; easily accessible files
Built-in compliance and secure access
Visualization
Basic charts only
Dashboards and advanced analytics
Cost Over Time
Low upfront; high long-term inefficiency
Higher upfront; long-term savings
Common Pain Points for Tech Companies in Texas
CTOs and VPs of Engineering across Texas are familiar with Excel’s hidden costs:
Human error: A single formula mistake can affect entire financial models.
Wasted time: Teams spend hours consolidating multiple versions of the same file.
Compliance risks: Spreadsheets don’t provide audit trails or version history.
Employee frustration: Highly skilled developers get bogged down doing data cleanup.
Security exposure: Files shared by email or cloud drives are vulnerable to leaks.
Example: A Dallas fintech faced weeks of delays during an audit because its compliance reports lived in dozens of Excel sheets. Another Austin startup wasted entire sprints reconciling product backlog data manually instead of building features.
Internal platforms provide scalability, security, and efficiency that Excel cannot deliver.
Taking Matters Into Your Own Hands
The reality is clear: Microsoft Excel is not enough to sustain a modern software organization. While it remains a convenient tool for basic data handling, companies in competitive markets like Austin and Dallas quickly realize that spreadsheets cannot keep up with the demands of large-scale software projects. The more teams rely on Excel for critical operations, the more they expose themselves to inefficiencies, security risks, and project delays. In today’s business landscape, where speed and reliability are directly tied to growth, building a stronger foundation with dedicated internal tools is not optional—it is a strategic necessity.
By developing custom platforms, an organization gains true control over its processes. Instead of forcing employees to adapt workflows around the rigid structure of Excel, teams can work with systems tailored to their specific challenges. This level of customization allows companies to eliminate redundant steps, automate repetitive tasks, and streamline collaboration across departments. The result is not only faster execution but also improved data integrity, as information flows through platforms designed with accuracy and scalability in mind. For tech leaders in Dallas and Austin, where the competition for talent and innovation is fierce, having internal tools that support long-term growth is a significant edge.
Beyond efficiency, the advantages of moving past Excel extend into areas of security and collaboration. Spreadsheets shared by email or stored on cloud drives can easily be compromised, exposing sensitive business or client data. Internal applications, by contrast, can be built with compliance and access control from the ground up, offering the kind of protection expected in industries like fintech, healthcare, and SaaS. Collaboration also shifts dramatically: instead of teams juggling multiple versions of the same file, employees can work together in real time, accessing dashboards, project updates, and analytics from a single, unified source of truth. This is particularly critical for distributed teams that need seamless communication across borders and time zones.
As Adolfo Cruz, PMO Director and Partner at Scio, explains:
“Excel is best suited for individual work, but for a larger organization, it’s better to have something more special.
The lack of version tracking, advanced analytics, and collaborative features makes it insufficient for modern teams.”
— Adolfo Cruz, PMO Director and Partner at Scio
Moving beyond Excel enables companies to build internal tools tailored for growth and efficiency.
Conclusion: Leaving Excel Behind
Excel will always have a place in business. But for tech leaders in Dallas, Austin, and across the U.S., it’s not enough to manage software development or scale operations. Developing custom internal tools with a trusted nearshore partner like Scio ensures your teams stay productive, secure, and future-ready. Explore how Scio helps companies build internal tools that scale.
Key Takeaways
Sometimes the tools we rely on the most are the ones that quietly hold us back. Excel is a perfect example—powerful in the beginning, but limited when it comes to supporting long-term growth and complex operations.
Excel remains a popular and accessible tool, but it comes with critical limitations.
While it can handle large datasets and is easy to obtain, it doesn’t scale well for complex projects like software development.
Extended use often leads to security gaps and workflow inefficiencies.
The smarter path is to develop custom internal tools designed to address an organization’s unique challenges.
In short: Excel may help you start, but tailored internal tools are what enable companies to grow securely, efficiently, and competitively.
FAQs About Excel and Internal Tools
Because Excel struggles with large projects, real-time collaboration, and secure data handling—requirements critical for growing software organizations.
Initially, yes. But the ROI is higher because internal tools reduce inefficiencies, improve productivity, and lower security risks.
Nearshore partners like Scio provide dedicated engineering teams that design, build, and maintain internal platforms—at a fraction of U.S. in-house costs, while ensuring cultural alignment and real-time collaboration.
Absolutely. Excel remains useful for quick calculations and small datasets, but internal tools handle the complexity of software development and enterprise growth.
Suggested Readings
If you found this article useful and want to explore more insights about scaling beyond Excel and building high-performing teams, we recommend the following resources:
Lean Product Development (or Design), or LPD, is quickly becoming a go-to methodology in modern software development—just like Agile, Scrum, or Lean once did. But as with most “standards,” claiming to follow LPD doesn’t always mean true alignment. And that becomes a real challenge when your internal product team works with LPD principles, but your outsourced development partner… doesn’t.
For U.S.-based product teams—especially in fast-moving tech hubs like Austin, Dallas, or the Bay Area—choosing the right development partner isn’t just about technical skills; it’s about process alignment and shared product thinking. LPD requires close collaboration, rapid feedback loops, and a deep understanding of how to build and validate digital products under uncertainty.
If you’ve already invested in a structured, repeatable approach to launching software, partnering with a vendor who lacks that same mindset can lead to unnecessary friction, slower sprints, and poor outcomes. This is especially critical for tech companies offering SaaS platforms or building custom applications, where full integration between in-house and outsourced teams is essential.
So how do you make sure your software development partner really understands Lean Product Development—and knows how to apply it to your context?
If you’re wondering how to choose a Lean Product Development partner that truly aligns with your process, these 5 questions will help you find the right fit.
What is Lean Product Development (in practice)?
Lean Product Development stems from Lean manufacturing but has been adapted to digital environments—particularly software. While sometimes used interchangeably with “Lean Product Design,” there are subtle differences:
Comparison between Lean Product Design and Lean Product Development
Focus Area
Lean Product Design
Lean Product Development
Core Objective
UI/UX clarity and user journey
Features that satisfy user needs
Approach
Visual, wireframes, interface-first
Iterative, feedback-driven development
Suitable For
Visual-heavy or ambiguous projects
Process-driven or informed stakeholders
Common Methodologies
Kanban, Design Thinking
Agile, Scrum, XP
Both approaches lean on Agile principles but differ in entry points. Choosing a dev partner who can flexibly adapt between the two is essential.
Feature planning on a Kanban board — a key step when working with a Lean Product Development partner.
A Little Level-Setting
While “Lean Product Development” and “Lean Product Design” are often used interchangeably, both draw from the same roots—Lean manufacturing principles popularized by Toyota—and are heavily influenced by the Lean Startup methodology. The key difference lies in focus: design leans into the UI and user experience, while development emphasizes iterative delivery of working features aligned to user needs and business value.
Today, LPD is widely used by enterprises and SaaS companies alike, especially in software environments where Agile, Scrum, and Kanban are integrated into the development workflow. A good partner should know how to flex across these methodologies depending on your team’s strengths, stakeholders, and product maturity.
So, What Does This Mean?
There are many software applications that embody process and principles from a software product management point of view. How will they work for you if you decide to use an outsourced software development partner to help bring your application to market? Is one or the other better for software applications or integrating with software development teams? Are there methodologies or points to emphasize with potential partners as you discuss how their product development approach and experience?
From a high level, if your potential vendor has good product development experience and understands the product development cycle fully, the software you use for product management and the implementation of agile they use within their software development process shouldn’t matter a great deal – because they should be able to be flexible and do what is necessary to integrate the teams. If they are using something out of a book or a seminar that they have actually practiced a few times with a client – and that client wasn’t themselves fully committed to formal product management – it will be a distracting challenge for both teams to work through a methodology implementation while developing your application.
5 Key Questions to Ask Your Lean Product Development Partner
Let’s start with a few questions to discuss. And a word about interviews: Don’t ask yes or no questions when you are investigating how a vendor operates and works with clients. Instead, ask open-ended questions that should be answered with more than a few words (if they actually have experience and formal services around the area they are discussing). If you don’t get what you feel is a strong answer, again, ask some open-ended questions that go down a level in detail.
1. Tell me about how you use agile in projects with clients practicing Lean Product Development?
The question here is not «do you use agile?» You need to know how agile informs their work with companies practicing LPD and what value they believe their implementation brings their customers. They should also include their practices within agile, such as scrum, extreme programming (XP), or kanban. If they don’t go into this level, ask another open-ended question for more detail.
In most cases, scrum will be the task management and basic development guideline, but it may be extended by XP practices. Some teams will be familiar with kanban and some will mention that they might start with scrum and transition to kanban if the project uses a DevOps implementation aimed at continuous development. At a high-level, the choice between scrum and kanban comes down to a philosophy about work and how to manage tasks. Scrum is generally considered to be more structured, using time-boxed iterations (sprints) and depending on the team to properly estimate tasks for each sprint and with specific planning and retrospective sessions for managing task backlog and priorities. Kanban tends to limit the number of tasks a team can have in work at the same time and new tasks are pulled down into development as soon as a slot opens up in the queue. Kanban is generally more flexible for the insertion of new features and less structured, requiring more feature management to avoid creep before the base application is completed.
It is only a guideline, but most teams find scrum to be a good system in application development and might use kanban or a variation after full release when the application is in maintenance or continuous development. Again, team familiarity and experience in adjusting their «standard» implementation to your team is more important than the particular flavor of the methodology they are using. Process mockups and walkthroughs of feature and feedback flow between the teams is an excellent way to evaluate how things might work and adjust to situations.
MVP — Minimum Viable Product — a core step in Lean Product Development to validate ideas quickly.
2. How do you understand the MVP process in lean product development?
Iterative development of a minimum viable product (MVP) is critical in LPD and probably one of the least understood parts of the cycle by non-practitioners. It is also very hard to estimate effort and time for the development team because it involves an open-ended process with key stakeholders and users. The key issue is to understand what they expect and how they will help you towards viable iterations for validation.
If their understanding is more like the top example in this illustration than the second, it is going to require some real thought to ensure you arrive at validation releases that are fully-formed (loveable) but not feature-rich or too simplistic. This is an element of your work as a whole team where you can really assess the ability of your outsourced team to work fully as a partner in product development. Can they come up with creative ways to give a good representation of the core product to users with less effort and time? Can they see the evolution of ideas and pick out key elements in customer feedback? If you expect or have to micro-manage every iteration yourself, you’re not getting a fully-prepared software development team.
3. How will we capture and manage user feedback during validation and following initial release?
Now, of course – a developer could just say, «This is your problem, not mine.» To a degree, they would be right, but you are looking for partner-level answers that indicate a willingness to do whatever is needed to make the product development process work properly and to be in position for the long run if your product is likely to benefit from a continuous development/improvement, DevOps-type release. Possible answers can be all over the board from add-on services that support help desk and application feedback to in-app custom modules. At a minimum, developers should be «in the loop» during validation and early release to assure that application bugs are not being reported as feature requests or issues and a system should be available to allow users to see proposed changes and «vote up or down» features they would value.
Including the development team in the feedback loop has a cost, but it avoids a lot of thrash when a feature is not working as expected, allows the developers to be proactive with corrective actions and to understand needs directly from a user’s words, rather than summaries. Again, what you are looking for is not a specific answer but that your partner is willing and able to understand what you need from a product perspective and provide creative solutions.
4. What are our options for capturing user metrics?
This requirement is, of course, very similar to capturing user feedback, so solutions can range from custom reporting within the application to third-party services and application libraries. In this case, the richness of options is key so you can evaluate different aspects of customer acquisition, feature usage, time to complete a process, etc. These features don’t exist in «average» applications, but they can be added relatively easily during development, especially if you compare the effort required to add them at some later point. You will have to get into detail about the kinds of metrics you feel might be most useful for your application and situation, but a strong developer team should be able to give you a range of options for implementation and some sort of dashboard for generating reports.
Quality assurance and ISO standards are essential to avoid delays in Lean Product Development.
5. What do you do to assure that quality issues don’t get in the way?
It may seem a bit off point to discuss quality in an LPD focused question set, but the quality is far and away one of the biggest issues when it comes to unexpected project delays. You can’t expect stakeholders and users to be fully engaged in the product development process if planned releases are delayed or major features don’t appear fully formed as promised. A really good application that is unstable or has a poorly designed user interface is a big distraction from the goals of LPD project.
The best answers to this question include test-driven development, test automation, continuous integration and the tools that could eventually come into play if you choose to go into continuous development. The best case is to make this decision upfront, but things don’t always work out that way. Your primary aim should be to ensure you are in a position to move to that level when you need to without backtracking or having less than full test coverage and to leverage quality assurance tools and processes proactively from the beginning. Your team should be able to focus on feature execution and user experience as they do their acceptance and not buggy code or user interface inconsistencies.
The answers to this question should cover many of the issues of how teams will work and communicate. If they don’t, push follow-up questions in that direction specifically. If you have read anything about outsourcing, you already know that successful agile teams require strong open dialog and collaboration. Don’t let easy answers push you off this point. Understand fully how your project will deal with quality, communication, and ownership of the project goals.
There are a lot more questions you could ask, but these should get you started. The point is to have a conversation with your prospective vendor and come to an understanding of the methodologies they have utilized, the capabilities they bring to the table, and the customer experience you can expect. A conversation can clear up a lot more issues than a written response to an RFI or a proposal for work and give you a better idea if this is a group you can see your team working with. If you are actually looking for a long term partner and not just a team for a short engagement, it would be wise to have that conversation in person – in your offices or theirs. If it requires some travel, it is just part of the expense of finding a good match. It is much better to have your first face-to-face meetings in a positive, forward-looking atmosphere than when a project is underway and you’ve realized that a lot needs to be done to iron out issues.
Ready to Choose Your Lean Product Development Partner?
A true Lean Product Development partner doesn’t just code. They think like product people, adapt to your processes, and help accelerate value delivery without compromising quality.
At Scio, we’ve helped U.S.-based companies build, launch, and evolve products using Lean principles for over 20 years. Whether you’re in Austin, Dallas, or anywhere across North America—we can help your dev team scale smarter.
What’s the difference between Lean Product Design and Development?
Design focuses on UI/UX, while Development focuses on feature iteration aligned with business goals. Both follow Lean principles but differ in execution.
Is Agile the same as Lean?
Not exactly. Agile is a delivery method; Lean is a mindset. They’re often used together but serve different purposes.
Why choose a nearshore partner for LPD?
Timezone alignment, cultural fit, and communication ease make nearshore partners ideal for fast feedback loops and continuous delivery—key to Lean success.
If you search on the Internet for «agile project initiation» you are going to find a LOT of templates. People want structure and easy answers, so of course, these simple answers rise to the top of every search. Many (if not most) of the templates offered are pared-down formats from the Project Management Book of Knowledge (PMBOK) Project Initiation Documents (PID). There is nothing basically wrong with the idea of using templates or most of the templates offered, except – they tend to become prescriptive when they should be taken as guidance.
Working software over comprehensive documentation,»
With that in mind, we should ask – why do we document agile projects? Often, the answer is – because it is required (by someone) when in reality the answer should be – to communicate. But again, that simple answer fails to guide us to the necessary outcome:
Documentation should be a natural part of agile project initiation, but not the goal. It should proceed from on-going discussions between stakeholders, the product owner and the development team that is developed in Sprint 0, but it must not end there. The conversations and the documentation of outcomes must continue through the lifecycle of the project and the product.
Initial documentation is just a strawman
Documents gathered from product owners and key stakeholders are starting points, not final documents. Documents developed by a designated team member to fill out a template are strawmen to be examined, discussed, questioned, and used as a base for the ongoing development of understanding within the entire project team.
Living documentation formats should be preferred over static. In smaller projects, it may not be necessary to manage documentation formally, but in most cases using the same concepts as those used for source code management is a valid guideline. Properly maintained, living documentation answers the questions, «when was this decision made? by whom?» and gives a revision history that tells the story when necessary, but only makes it apparent when needed. It needs to include simple artifacts of these discussions – photographs of whiteboards, screenshots of modified mockups, etc. – in preference to notes developed after the fact and out of the sight of the team.
During Sprint 0, the aim must be to develop enough trust among the project team members to allow questions and dialog to form the base for a common understanding of those items that are included in most PID templates. If initial documentation is «handed down from on high» to team members without open, trusting discussion – it cannot be internalized by the team and it will not respond to the inevitable changes that will come as discovery and learning continue throughout the project. Agile software development embraces change by allowing the project team to recognize the inconsistencies and discoveries that will come out during development, surface them and deal with their impact through discussion and collaborative negotiation.
And before we get too far away from it – there are some really strong ideas in the Agile Modeling page on Agile/Lean Documentation. Honestly, though, there is a lot of information in that reference that should really be digested as a part of understanding agile, not as a guideline for a new project. For that purpose, this short piece is a better resource. But, if the outcome of project initiation is not a bunch of filled out PID templates that we can all take back to our cubicles and file away – What is it?
Agile Project Initiation is All About Communication
With the ideas we have mentioned in mind, we have to acknowledge that open, trusting, collaborative communication does not happen automatically in an agile project team. There are natural stages that every group will go through before they can have the kind open discussion needed without fearing it will harm relationships and respect. Discussions need to be wider than the project infrastructure, technology, and user stories, without the feeling an individual is stepping over the boundaries by asking about non-functional issues. We might need to know:
Does the culture and background of key user profiles matter to the software development team?
Does the role of key subject matter experts (SMEs) in product development for an organization make a difference to who needs to be included in discussions?
Are we using a Lean Product Development model with the inclusion of stakeholder users as part of Minimum Viable Product (MVP) development?
If we are working in a DevOps implementation, how does that change our standard production procedures?
There are all sorts of questions that are not (and cannot be) included in standard PID templates but could be critical to a specific project. If we don’t discuss our viewpoints and ask questions, we run the risk of assuming we have a common understanding and making decisions based on those assumptions. Every project, every team, every organization is different. In the best case, we can open ourselves up to collaborative discussion by getting the team together, face-to-face during project initiation, for dialog and team building using team games and facilitation with a bias to being productive, explorative, and fun. Using these techniques, we can strengthen the bonds and shared risks necessary to maintain a successful project throughout its lifecycle.
In cases where face-to-face project initiation is not possible (hopefully more rare than the rule), much can be accomplished with video/voice meetings if they are relatively short and like agile documentation, structured just enough to ensure the meetings reach necessary outcomes and allow for continued direct discussions among stakeholders in the team when needed. There is nothing much worse than sitting in a meeting where a long, passionate discussion between two team members seems to be sucking all the air out of the room – and the meeting outcomes are lost.
This piece is relatively short and again, more of a guideline than a prescription for agile project initiation, as it should be if we are to «eat our own dog food.» Bottom line:
Don’t be afraid to pull out a template when you start your next project, or when you look at it – crumple it up and throw it away so you can start your own list based on what you know and don’t know.
What you think you know or don’t know are assumptions and should be treated as such both during project initiation and throughout the project. Only a discussion with open questions between team members can validate ideas and give us a basis for moving forward. And the assumption that is understood as valid today may not be completely correct at another time.
Documentation must be limited to what is necessary when it is necessary and maintained throughout the project as living knowledge. Agile documentation should not be the domain of one person or one role. It must be available and dynamic – allowing everyone on the team to contribute when necessary – in a wiki-style rather than as a bunch of locked Word documents.
Agile project initiation should focus on both the productive side – bringing together the information needed to organize the project, initialize environments, and the functional user stories needed, as well as the people/team side – developing the understanding, trust, and communication necessary to work collaboratively throughout the project. Ignoring either side is perilous. Assuming the job is done at the end of Sprint 0 is fatal.
Scio is a vendor of agile, nearshore services for software development projects with our customer base in North America. We can provide project-based or dedicated teams as required for each situation. We would be glad to discuss how our broad base of experience and skills could help you be successful with your next project. Contact us for more information.
