Critical Success Factors (CSF) are elements that are necessary for an organization or a project to attain its objectives. For example, Chief Executive support is a CSF for corporate sustainability programs.

Related to CSF's are Key Performance Indicators(KPI). KPI's are the fact-based measures of success for a CSF. KPI's are often quantitative but they can be qualitive as well. For example: Regular Chief Executive attendance at sustainability program project reviews might be one KPI for the level of Chief Executive support for a corporate sustainability program.

An engineer friend of mine is fond of saying "You can have it fast, cheap, or good. Pick two." She is, somewhat facetiously, pointing out the tension between schedule attainment, budget attainment, and output quality in any project.

Timeboxing is a project management technique that allocates a fixed and maximum unit of time to an activity, called a timebox, within which planned activity takes place. Timeboxing typically simplifies scope and risk management in a project. Timeboxing is often used in Design Thinking projects.

You have been assigned as the team lead for a timeboxed Design Thinking project with a fixed project team. This dramatically simplifies the management of schedule and budget attainment for the project. What is much more open-ended is the management of the quality of the output of the project. You understand that you need to focus on quality to avoid delivering - to use my friend's taxonomy - "fast and cheap but not good". You also understand that due to the nature of Design Thinking projects, the quality of the output of one phase directly impacts your ability to produce quality outputs in the following phases: "garbage out" for one phase is "garbage in" for the next phase.

Describe the CSF(s) and related KPI(s) that you would use to manage the quality of the output for each phase of your Design Thinking project. In doing so, a by-product of your answer should be a demonstration of your understanding of the Design Thinking method.

Caution: Your CSF's and KPI's should be useful for the management of the project during the projectso that you can take corrective action, if needed, based on your reading of your CSF(s) and KPI(s) during the project. AvoidCSF's or KPI's that can only be measured after the completion of the project, for example, customer satisfaction survey results with the final product.