As with almost anything in life, planning is essential. Design Sprints are no exception. Design Sprints are a 5-Day process development by Jake Knapp who documented the process in his NYT bestselling book Sprint. With the Design Sprint method, Jake distilled Design Thinking into a simple and repeatable structure that anybody can follow. This simplicity is both helpful and problematic. Since Design Sprints present such great promise, the idea of doing one generates great excitement. This excitement, combined with an easy-to-follow structure, causes many people to dive in without the requisite thought and preparation. Don’t be one of them!

“By failing to prepare, you are preparing to fail.” ― Benjamin Franklin

This article is an extension of a prior post on Design Sprint planning tools and resources. In my previous post, I assembled some of my favorite links and assets so that you might more easily find them. In this post, I’ll provide a bit more structured guidance on the types of things you’ll want to consider as you embark on your Sprint. Whether it is your 1st Sprint or your 100th Sprint, you’ll want to keep these things in mind, so bookmark this page!

Figure Out Your “Why”

Just like the Sprint starts with the end in mind, so should your planning. While I don’t advocate that teams lock their goal in stone prior to the Sprint, it is helpful to explore the Goal and have a thoughtful perspective on where you’re generally pointed. The last thing you want is to begin the goal exercise on Day 1 with everyone staring at you like deers blinded by headlights. Start off your Sprint with a solid understanding of the purpose and how that fits into your company’s vision.

TOOLS TO CONSIDER

Liberating Structures is an effective set of methods that are great for planning and aligning stakeholders. If you are struggling with planning, Purpose to Practice (P2P) is a simple-and-rigorous method that you can use to layout the essential elements of your Sprint. This tool works well for both small groups and extremely large groups and is an excellent tool for building alignment early in your process. After using P2P for a few different projects, it will become an everyday method you can use to do anything from planning staff meetings to outlining key elements of your next product design process.

Within each element of P2P, you can use different methods to get at your answers — or you can simply invite your stakeholders to assist by asking core questions for each element. Below are a few things to consider for each element.

1. Purpose: For many teams, purpose is elusive or at least not a daily topic of conversation. There are a few Liberating Structures (LS) that are well suited for helping you articulate your purpose. 9 whys, TRIZ, 1–2–4-All, and 25/10 are great places to start.
2. Principles: If you find it challenging to define or agree on your principles, check out these LS activities: Appreciative Interviews, TRIZ, and Min Specs are effective tools for teasing the details from your team.
3. Participants: Select your facilitator, decider, and other key roles. Consider who is missing.
4. Structure: Think about how you will document the Sprint, prepare for your kickoff meeting, schedule a space, and order coffee/food.
5. Practices: Consider pre-work like: upfront research, unanswered questions, and lack of clarity.

“Who” Matters

I hear from folks all the time who are struggling with who to invite to their Design Sprint. Worst of all are those people who don’t even realize it is such a critical concern and simply invite their peers. If you do not include a diverse set of stakeholders across all the functions of your organization, then there is considerable risk that your project will falter.

Lucky Number Seven

You must limit the number of attendees in the Design Sprint to seven people. For every person you include above seven, you increase the risk of generating so much content that you can’t stay on time and devolving in to an uncontrolled conversation that is difficult to steer. Everyone won’t be heard and it’s difficult to break into small groups. More is not more.

The Sprint book recommends that you include someone who understands the customer, the financials, the messaging, the logistics, and prototyping. You should always remember to include someone who can ensure the project will have support post-Sprint. Within the Purpose to Practice framework, the key question one asks when looking at Participants is: “who must we include to meet our purpose?” Another question I find helpful, which I learned as part of my Liberating Structures learning, is deceptively simple: “who’s missing?”

Strike a Balance

Don’t forget to account for the mindset or attitude of the attendees. It is important to strike a balance. While you want to cultivate an environment conducive to collaboration, you don’t want to avoid the skeptics and cynics either. It is not about seniority or stroking egos, it’s about different points of view and people who will really be able to engage and bring an open mind.

For large organizations, consider tools within the Liberating Structures repertoire to determine who should be in the room. 25/10 Crowd Sourcing can be used to generate ideas from a large group and could be used with either “who must be included to meet our purpose” or “who’s missing” from the discussion thus far. Social Network Webbing, TRIZ, and Discovery and Action Dialogue all have the potential to generate great ideas for composing your sprint participants.

Invite Others In

An excellent way to involve more people in the process without going over the 7 person limit is to bring them in on Monday as an expert or invite them to a daily readout. I’m a big fan of the daily readout as it exposes more of the team to the process and the progress that is being made.

Figure Out Recruiting

You should also have a solid game plan for how you will recruit your testers and who will be in charge of running the interviews. Sometimes I recommend starting your recruit beforehand, but most of the time you can do it during the week. Make sure that your test moderator is skilled at interviewing, knows how to put together a discussion guide, and has an unbiased approach.

Prepping Participants

Always take the time to educate your participants. Most of them will not have heard of Sprints, much less read the book. Even ones who have read the book may have missed parts. It’s important to set expectations. I recommend having a 30-minute kick-off meeting about 1 week prior to the Sprint. This is an opportunity to set expectations with the team and agree on any last-minute items that need to be addressed before your Sprint.

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“What” You’ll Need

Do not wait till the last minute and buy whatever your local office supply store happens to have in stock. Jake carefully selected the supplies he recommends based on running hundreds of Sprints and they really do provide better results.

Don’t Skimp on Supplies

You can follow my supplies post to make sure you get all the correct items. Unfortunately, Amazon doesn’t have good support for a bill of materials, but I have put links on each of the supplies so you can make sure to get the correct items.

Two common mistakes to avoid are the pop-up Post-Its since the sticky side alternates from top to bottom and the Avery dots as they are difficult to remove from surfaces. If you do decide to get the Avery dots, you should also consider getting a putty knife.

I also like to include a pair of scissors, a Bluetooth speaker with a playlist, 3M flip charts, and a set of Tibetan chimes as sometimes the time timer alarm wears out its welcome.

Brain Food

Design Sprints are deep and intense work. This work requires that our body and mind are functioning at their best. Don’t short circuit your progress by bringing in unhealthy snacks and comfort food. This is tempting for some as they consider these treats a benefit or reward for this special event. Don’t fall prey to that trap. Bring in healthy food that’s high in protein and low in sugar. Nuts, fruit, protein bars, and vegetables are a great place to start.

Also, order delivery for lunch. Going out to lunch with a group this large always takes too long and disrupts your schedule. Also, the team will need time for bathroom breaks, checking email, etc.

“Where” is Critical

Space is critical. I’ve participated in enough Design Sprints in inadequate spaces that I make it a priority to discuss the venue in detail prior to starting the Sprint. There are some great pointers in this article on the pitfalls of facilitation.

You’ll want to have ample room to move around. Consider the fact that you’ll be hanging things on the wall and organizing them as a group. With all attendees in the room, can you comfortably cluster around the walls and still easily move from one side to the other?

Are the plenty of whiteboards? You will write up the goal, the questions, and the map, so you’ll need 2 large or 3 medium whiteboards. The smaller 2′ x 3′ whiteboards aren’t recommended.

Consider the location. Is there natural light and is the environment free of obnoxious sounds and odors? Ensure that there are minimal distractions. For some companies, working off-site might be helpful to get people out of their typical mindset. A change of scenery can be helpful for some companies, especially in environments entrenched in the status quo.

Have you also scheduled time to review? Did you schedule a room to conduct your interviews? Will they be in person? You may also need to consider how you will connect the two rooms for observation.

“How” to End Your Sprint

Reflecting on your Design Sprint after is important. If you are uncertain about how to best conduct your retrospective, consider the Liberating Structure, What, So What, Now What. WWW is well suited for synthesizing your Design Sprint insights because it supports you in building a discipline of reflection and action.

The more you and your team build a reflection-and-action habit, the more capable you become at adjusting in real-time, together. It also helps reduce unproductive conflict and makes space for people to get a sense of what others are oriented to before jumping to action, which is helpful when you are trying to make progress quickly and who don’t want to have to backtrack.

I hope that these tools are as effective for you as they are for me. If you have any questions or have found other approaches that work, I’d love to hear from you.

Want to find out more about planning a Design Sprint? Check out Design Sprint Resources & Planning Tools next!

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It was about six months ago when I first spoke to members of Apple’s IS&T team about their use of Design Sprints. I remember it sounded quite strange that they were using Design Sprints so frequently. I was intrigued and wanted to learn more. After speaking with them about their process, I started to believe that they were using Design Sprints as a method of requirements gathering. I was wrong.

Requirements Gathering is an activity for identifying and gathering requirements for an information system. While no perfect method suits all projects, a few standard methods are: User Interviews, Storyboarding, Use cases, Questionnaires, Brainstorming, and Prototyping.

Joint Requirements Definition is a method of requirements gathering defined by a group of stakeholders participating in discussions to elicit requirements, analyze their details and uncover cross-functional implications. Similar to Joint Requirements Definition, there is also Joint Application Design and Use Case Workshops. These cross-functional approaches resemble Design Sprints without the streamlined structure or the prototyping and testing.

Since forming my original opinion around Design Sprints for Requirements Gathering, I’ve had the opportunity to work with Fidelity Investments, multiple state agencies, and recently acquired startups that are similarly using Design Sprints. After getting a closer look, it is clear to me that instead of a tool for requirements analysis they are getting to what I am now calling requirements acceptance. The distinction to me was that they were already equipped with requirements. They had done their research and were seeking to validate this research and ensure that the rest of the organization was onboard.

It is not only critical to understand your customer’s needs and how your product aligns with those needs, but you must also understand how these changes or additional impact your organization. For smaller companies, these concerns may be minuscule or nonexistent. Larger companies must address these organization concerns in order to ensure success.

Requirements acceptance, as I’ve come to define it, is a process for socializing your product requirements and where you intend to drive the product. It is often a complicated and involved process to drive to complete alignment across all stakeholders in a larger organization. As I’ve witnessed first hand, Design Sprints offer an alternative path to the months-long typical process most companies engage in.

“Some were frustrated that they weren’t on the same page, but I was excited that we were discovering it now!” — SVP of Fortune 500

I believe there are five big reasons why Design Sprints are so effective at rapid alignment around product requirements and getting organizational requirements acceptance.

Surface Possible Conflict

A Design Sprint prototype provides a concrete view of the proposed solutions. Stakeholders aren’t relying on a memo, it’s real, and they can’t ignore it or convince themselves you mean something entirely different. 
Seeing the solution in real and absolute terms bubbles up questions about the offering. Stakeholders and leaders can get their arms around it and really understand it. They can have a concerted vs conceptual conversation.

Accelerate Conflict Resolution

When misunderstandings around requirements or solutions to address those requirements are surfaced early, companies then have the opportunity to stop or adapt. You might decide to proceed down a different path, cancel the project entirely, or adjust course slightly. Regardless of the decision, you can make it today without waiting six months and realizing that there is violent disagreement amongst stakeholders.

Circumvent the Pocket Veto

The Design Sprint prototype prompts a conversation around a proof of concept prototype and supplies proof of commitment. When commitment is recorded and confirmed you avoid the unexpected torpedos that can often stifle progress.

Fast Forward Customer Learning

Even if your prototype is just a landing page, the level of learning and understanding you garner from your customers is immeasurable. Gauging their reactions to your positioning of benefits and key value propositions provides deep insights into the viability your product. The best part is that you can get these insights before investing in building a product.

Building Strong Advocacy

The cross-functional team that you assemble for your Design Sprint walks away from the 5-day process having had one of their most memorial weeks in a long time. They not only have had a fun and engaging break from the doldrums of their typical week, but they’ve also been invited to co-create and participate in the shaping of the solution. They understand why trade-offs were made and can justify the current solution to their constituents. They become advocates for the solution to their part of the organization.

“This is how government should be working” — Richard Wade, Texas Water Development Board

Design Sprints are a powerful tool help large organizations drive rapid organizational alignment and get out of their own way. I would love talk with you about how to Design Sprints might help your organization.

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A common source of confusion around Design Sprints relates to the popularity of Agile development practices, specifically Scrum. When most people hear the word “sprint,” they think of the cell phone company, Scrum rituals, or “that stuff our dev team does.” Because of this, there have been several articles discussing the merits of Design Sprints versus Agile Sprints. One even suggested that Design Sprints may be a way to avoid the purgatory of Agile Sprints.

I’m here to argue that they can be harmonious, not antagonistic. Design Sprints and Agile Sprints work well together and even complement each other. Below are my thoughts on how using Design Sprints in front of an Agile development process can actually lead to better results.

Quick Intro to Agile & Scrum

First, I’d like to cover a few basics of Agile software development for those who are new to it. Agile first came onto the scene with the Agile manifesto, written in 2001. The manifesto consists of 4 values and 12 principles. I’ve listed the values here because I believe in them whole-heartedly.

• Individuals and Interactions over processes and tools
• Working Software over comprehensive documentation
• Customer Collaboration over contract negotiation
• Responding to Change over following a plan

“Agile Sprints” are part of a specific Agile development process called Scrum.

Scrum is an agile framework for managing work with an emphasis on software development. It is designed for teams of three to nine developers who break their work into actions that can be completed within time-boxed iterations, called Sprints (30 days or less) and track progress and re-plan in 15-minute stand-up meetings, called Daily Scrums. — Wikipedia

Agile Versus Sprints

Agile and Scrum are ways in which you build software. They define tools, practices, and rituals for conducting daily engineering tasks. A Design Sprint is a tool you use to dive deep into a problem, to understand if you should build something, and determine what exactly you should build. As you can see, Agile Sprints and Design Sprints share a few core principles in common. They both encourage cross-functional teams, seek to move quickly, and continually react to new information.

When Agile first emerged, organizations began to sit cross-functional team members close to each other so that they could become aware of issues more quickly. Unfortunately, designers were not always part of these teams. Often, the UX researchers and visual designers were part of another team or in an outside agency and their working style closely resembled waterfall development.

While Scrum defines a great methodology for how we should build our software, Design Sprints are a perfect method for determining what we should build.

Working in Sync

While Scrum defines a great methodology for how we should build our software, Design Sprints are a perfect method for determining what we should build. In Scrum, there is a Sprint backlog, which is fed by a product backlog. Design Sprints can help teams focus their product backlog and align the entire team on the features and projects with the highest business potential. They are also an effective tool for validating user requirements that are teed up in the Sprint backlog. In Design Sprints, you often iterate and test much like you would in Scrum; however, Sprints do this iteration through quick designs and light-weight prototypes, which are much less expensive and carry lower risk.

You Need Both

I’m sure you are familiar with the expression “garbage in, garbage out.” Scrum is a great process for developing code quickly, keeping projects moving, and adapting to new requirements. However, if you are building the wrong thing, it simply means you’ll have the wrong thing faster than with waterfall.

If you are building the wrong thing, it simply means you’ll have the wrong thing faster than with waterfall.

Some will argue that Scrum’s iterative nature will allow you to discover these issues and adjust course and that Design Sprints aren’t necessary. There are a couple of issues with this line of thinking:

1. If your focus is on pushing code and building features, it will take you a long time to discover the cracks in your foundation.
2. Once you have built the system, the sunk cost fallacy may make you inclined to continue investing in the project long after you realize it’s not a winner.
3. Technical debt is a measure of uncertainty, so the more you build from a point of ignorance, the more technical debt you accumulate.
4. Design Sprints leave you with a prototype that becomes a “visual spec,” which can help to decorate and improve on the Agile acceptance criteria.

Prototypes Set You Up for Success

I think starting your Agile process with a focused Design Sprint sets you up for much greater success down the road. That’s because Sprints are predicated on quick user feedback from rapid prototyping. Prototypes are by nature disposable and can be easily updated without fear of technical debt or other hidden costs down the road. They allow you to test ideas and features quickly and increase your level of confidence prior to sending the project through an Agile Sprint. When you are done with a Design Sprint, you are ready to build.

When you are done with a Design Sprint, you are ready to build.

You’ll leave your Design Sprint with a functioning prototype that has been battle tested with users. This prototype becomes the “visual spec,” which helps improve on the Agile acceptance criteria. There will be less time needed to write the acceptance criteria because your visual prototype is highly specific, leading to much less ambiguity.

I encourage all Scrum teams to think about their Scrum cadence and on what frequency it makes sense for them to conduct a Design Sprint first. In fact, I’m noticing more and more companies using Design Sprints as a way to validate product requirements and align stakeholders prior to sending their project through an Agile development process.

I would love to hear your thoughts on how you use Design Sprints and the Agile process to inform each other. What’s your cadence?

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I’m passionate about alignment. Yup, alignment. It might not be the sexiest topic in the startup world, but it’s essential to success. (It’s the reason I fell in love with Design Sprints, as they are a fantastic way to build alignment with disparate stakeholders.) Lack of focus may be the #1 killer of startups, but I believe that lack of alignment is why many organizations fail to ever realize their mission.

So, if you’re ready to align your team, I’ve assembled ten of my favorite methods. Start applying some of these and please share back what you discover!

1. Define a Shared Vocabulary

Here’s where I suggest you start: make sure everyone in your company is speaking the same “language.” When individuals or teams use different terms or define things in contradictory ways, some (if not all) of your efforts will be thwarted. That’s why I recommend establishing a shared dictionary or lexicon.

The level of effort to create your dictionary will vary depending on the size and age of the company. Begin by meeting with each team and reviewing their standard reports, metrics, and assets. Identify terms that mean different things for different groups and look for groups that use a variety of words for the same concept. Document and socialize these differences. Work toward creating documentation of your organization’s official terms and definitions, whether through a PDF or internal website.

2. Use the “Note & Vote” Technique

The Note & Vote activity is my favorite take-away from the Google Design Sprint. It’s a great tool to drop into any workshop agenda, or even a staff meeting. What I love about this tool is that it combines focused individual work, as well as the power of collective wisdom.

Here’s how it works in a nutshell: start by having the team individually generate ideas, challenges, or solutions. Then, everyone shares their favorite ideas with the group. Once everyone has shared, each person votes for their top concepts or ideas. (Depending on the size of the team and your time constraints, adjust the amount of individual work time, the number of favorites shared, and the number of votes per person.) This method is a great way to avoid groupthink, give everyone a voice, and come up with new, “out of the box” ideas.

3. Leverage Tools for Visibility

Without visibility, teams with the best of intentions may think they’re aligned, only to realize that they have drifted apart. There are many tools for creating visibility. Kanban and metrics dashboards are my two go-to strategies for creating visibility. For Kanban, I typically recommend Trello or Jira. While Trello is simple and easy to get started, Jira has much better support for software projects. For metrics, there a gazillion options these days, but I’ve been enjoying Klipfolio, and Looker is also quite nice.

Regardless of which tool you have, create a culture of actually using the tool. For example, make sure your standups and status meetings revolve around the Kanban board. Whenever a status changes, update your Kanban immediately. Review and analyze your metrics dashboards daily, if not more frequently.

4. Schedule One-On-Ones

If you aren’t doing one-on-ones, I’ve got to break it to you: you must start. There is no excuse—not even a small team! Managers, and especially executives, have the luxury of seeing the forest for the trees. One-on-ones are one of the most important tools you have to identify problems, opportunities, and see across your team to create alignment. They allow you to understand what motivates your team, their fears and concerns, and their challenges. So, if someone reports to you, I suggest weekly one-on-ones. I know everyone is busy, but I don’t recommend doing them bi-weekly. Schedule them for every week and commit!

5. Spend Two Hours Defining Your Purpose

I’m a big fan of Liberating Structures, which is a set of 33 tools and techniques that can be used to align groups. I highly recommend checking out all of their activities, but I will outline two of my favorite LS techniques here and in the next recommendation.

Purpose-to-Practice (P2P) is designed to help your group “design the five essential elements for a resilient and enduring initiative” in just two hours. By following the ingredients and agenda for this structured working session, your group will ultimately answer five important questions: “What rules must we absolutely obey to succeed in achieving our purpose?”, “Who can contribute to achieving our purpose and must be included?”, “How must we organize (both macro- and microstructures) and distribute control to achieve our purpose?”, and “What are we going to do? What will we offer to our users/clients and how will we do it?”

This is a helpful activity at the start of a startup journey or when you need to get your team back on the same page about your mission, customers, and strategies.

6. Encouraging People to Ask for Help

Another Liberating Structures activity that I find very effective for alignment is called “What I Need From You” (WINFY). This method only takes about an hour and spurs people to ask their colleagues for the things they need to be successful. In this activity, individuals make a list of what they want from others, share it, and then receive an unambiguous response of: yes, no, I will try, or whatever. This activity creates a safe space where teams can find clarity about roles, needs, and expectations.

What I like about WINFY is that it breaks down our assumptions about each other. We find out what people on the team are wanting, but not getting, or, conversely, when someone is making incorrect assumptions about what others want from them. This framework encourages collaboration among peers and is especially effective for executives who are often downward-focused, when they need to be horizontally-focused.

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7. Ensure Your Meetings are Inclusive
If you want to have an aligned team, you can’t have meetings where only a few people speak and share. Follow some simple rules to make sure that your meetings are inclusive spaces where everyone feels empowered to contribute. First, prepare by having a clear goal and agenda; this will keep everyone on track. If you have people that tend to monopolize discussions, you might want to initiate the “Note & Vote” activity mentioned above; it’s a good way to get more people involved in conversation and decision-making.

Another thing to be aware of, especially as a leader, is the tone of your meetings. Ask yourself: How is criticism and disagreement handled? Do individuals say “Yes, and…” or just shut each other down? Are ideas attributed and recognized or ignored? Take note of the tenor of your meetings and work to correct any bad habits before they become too ingrained in the culture.

8. Repetition. Repetition.

In almost everything in life, consistency is key. I think management needs to be particularly aware of this in terms of communicating with your team. You can’t assume that stating your strategy in one standup will be enough to institute new thinking and drive lasting change.

I once heard a CEO explain the same thing five times in one day to different groups. It didn’t matter if he was addressing the execs, the entire company, an intern, or the board. He patiently and consistently explained the same thing, with the same language. The message stayed the same. This kind of redundancy is monotonous and annoying, but it is crucial if you want to keep your team aligned. As an organization grows, the challenge is insuring consistency as you scale beyond your ability to do it in person.

9. Schedule a “Roles & Coffee” Meeting

Roles & Coffee is a more surgical tool that is useful when you have two employees who are having trouble working together. Often, when two team members are struggling to get along, it is due to weak assumptions about roles, responsibilities, and capabilities.

Ask them to find time to have a coffee together. When they sit down, they should take turns describing the role and responsibilities of the other person. By simply asking each other, “What do you think I do?”, they’ll be able to clarify the misconceptions that are standing in their way. While there are times when behavioral issues are at play, I’ve found this activity can clear the air for most situations.

10. Don’t Forget Postmortems

When major projects or initiatives end, teams are often ready to move on and forget all about what they just launched. They are onto the next thing or just plain exhausted. But, it’s crucial to schedule postmortems after important projects to reflect and talk through lessons learned.

During your retrospective, let team members share what worked well so it can be celebrated and repeated next time. Also, find out what didn’t go well and try to get to the root cause. I find that the classic trick of asking WHY? five times helps you dig into what went wrong. Work to foster a culture where it is ok to mess up, fail, and ultimately grow from hiccups and mistakes.

I hope you are able achieve more alignment by applying a few of these methods. With more alignment, your team will be happier, you’ll get more done, and you will increase the odds that you are doing the right things. All of this naturally adds up to a healthier, more resilient organization.

The post 10 Practical Ways to Align Your Team appeared first on Voltage Control.

If you are an ice skater, you’ll remember that the first time you skated, you had to hold on to the railing to avoid falling. This is true of almost any activity that is worth pursuing, including Design Sprints. With the Design Sprint book and all the other great resources out there, it is easy to quickly dive in. However, first-time facilitators are many sprints from hitting their flow.

A few weeks ago, I was chatting with a designer who had just finished the book and was interested in adopting Sprints at his company. Mainly concerned about how to convince his leadership team to invest the time in this process, he peppered me with all the typical questions. As I answered his questions, I kept thinking about how vital the first Sprint is for companies new to the process.

If you are successful in getting buy-in from skeptical leadership, it is critical that you deliver a successful outcome. Successful Sprints can come in several flavors, a flawed win and a failure. Keep in mind that a failed prototype is still a successful sprint. An unsuccessful sprint is when you fail to produce any actionable learnings, or you test a solution that the rest of the company rejects.

After the hard work of convincing skeptical leadership to clear their schedules for a week, your work is not done, you must make sure to deliver a successful Sprint.

Solution rejection is almost always the result of poor planning and not inviting the correct participants to the Sprint. For larger companies, solutions can be torpedoed post-sprint, as it is difficult to get all the stakeholders in the room. In these scenarios, I conduct pre-Sprint workshops using Liberating Structures and include other stakeholders in end-of-day retrospectives.

A lack of actionable learnings or insights is symptomatic of poor planning, facilitation, recruiting, or interviewing. To ensure the best results, I recommend practicing before the critical day. Below are some examples of ways to prepare for your first day.

Meetups & Free Workshops

The Austin Design Sprint Meetup is a great way to get up to speed on Design Sprint facilitation. We have a monthly meeting where we share stories about Sprints and related topics. We also host a quarterly Design Sprint essentials workshop, focused on a quick overview of the must-know facilitation tactics.

Practice Individual Exercises
I’ve found the Design Sprint tools and exercises useful outside of the 5-day framework. Consider using them during design sessions and staff meetings. You’ll start to understand the essence of each activity and become comfortable leading others through them.

Study the Format
Print out the checklist and memorize the agenda for each day. As you reflect on the structure, skim back through the book for any exercise you don’t remember well. The checklist has page references which makes it easy to jump back in and refresh. Make sure you’ve got a good understanding of the voting mechanics and the decider role.

Sprint Test Drives

Before running the official Sprint, run a mini sprint with your team or with some of your friends. You could even run a Sprint to solve a problem you are facing on a side project.

Facilitation Buddies

There are likely other facilitators in our network. Reach out and see who you know. Ask them tons of questions, especially about facilitator tips. What have they found difficult? What has helped them manage the process? Email me if you are interested in joining the Austin Design Sprint slack group. There are a bunch of Facilitation Buddies there.

Paid Workshops

There are several paid workshops available. Jake does these workshops about every 6–8 weeks and I hosted him in Austin last November. We will likely do another one sometime in 2018. In addition to the public workshops, there are private workshops for internal audiences. The workshops are typically 1-day or 2-day format. The 1-day workshops use an example problem while the 2-day workshop allows you to work on a custom problem and you have more time for each exercise. If you would like to attend a workshop, let us know.

Facilitation Coach

Consider finding a local facilitator and paying them to train you. I often run dedicated train-the-trainer sessions and private workshops for companies. If you are only looking for a confidence boost and some pointers, then a few hours of consulting may be all you need. Also, you could ask your coach to attend a few critical times during the Sprint or touching base at the end of each day for a retrospective.

Professional Facilitators

A Professional facilitator will undoubtedly remove the burden of perfecting facilitating as they will bring knowledge from prior experiences. If your goal is to to run a Sprint on your own, consider shadowing the facilitator much like a restaurant on-boards new wait staff. You can observe the facilitator or lead the exercises with their guidance.

Especially with today’s busy lifestyle, leadership teams rarely have any free time on their schedule much less a full week. This is fundamental to why Design Sprints work. They are a forcing function to get leadership focused on the right thing, or as Jake would say, “the elbow.” Once you’ve done the hard work of convincing your stakeholders to go against their instincts and clear their calendars, you must ensure that your Sprint has massive success. Hopefully, the tips above have provided you some ideas for how to “hold the rail” and de-risk your first production Sprint.

Voltage Control specializes in Design Sprints, and we facilitate Sprints in Austin, Houston, San Antonio, and Dallas. Please email Douglas at douglas@voltagecontrol.co if you are interested in having us facilitate your Sprint, coach your team on how to run an effective Sprint, or are curious to learn more about how a Sprint might help your company or product.

If you are in or near Austin, visit us at the Austin Design Sprint meetup. Each month we have a guest speaker share their experience participating in a Design Sprint. If you would like to be a future speaker, please email me.

The post Your First Sprint is Practice appeared first on Voltage Control.

All successful Design Sprints have one thing in common: solid planning. Design Sprints are fun and exciting, so it’s easy to get intoxicated by this excitement and jump in too quickly. I’m consistently hearing from teams that have tried Design Sprints and admitted that things could have gone more smoothly. I’m sharing the resources and tools that I use with my clients in an effort to ensure more successful Design Sprints.

Sprint Planner

The Google Ventures(GV) team put together this awesome Sprint planner to help you answer the important questions. If you are unsure why they are asking some of these questions, I suggest that you dust off the Sprint book and re-read that section.

Download the GV Sprint Planner here.

The Book

Now that you have the basics out of the way, it’s important to ensure that the team knows what they are about to embark on. I encourage my clients to buy the book for the entire team. Reading the book is the best way for team members to full get up to speed on the process.

Buy the book here.

Sprint Intro Video

If having the entire team read the book is not an option or if they need some convincing, the 90 Second Intro video by GV is great. They do a fantastic job of distilling down the process such that folks can quickly grasp how the process works at a high level and the types of outcomes that might be possible.

Sprint Team Email Template

I use the following email template to invite the Sprint attendees. This is when I share the 90 Second Intro and start to set expectations. Typically this email is followed up with in-person conversations, planning meetings, and an official kick-off the week prior to a Sprint.

We are conducting a “Google Ventures Design Sprint” to get clarity around {{YOUR PROBLEM HERE}}. The workshop will run from 10am-5pm Monday to Thursday and 9am–5pm on Friday. The process is both collaborative and participatory, so come prepared to engage and contribute. Please send me confirmation that you’ll be able to attend (accepting the calendar invite is sufficient) and if you have any questions feel free to reach out as well.

In the meantime, here are a few resources that may provide more perspective:

A 90-Second Intro Video explaining the process
– https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K2vSQPh6MCE

A story I wrote about Twyla’s journey into Design Sprints
– https://sprintstories.com/twylas-design-sprint-journey-e5404d9c426b

The official website for the Sprint book
– http://www.thesprintbook.com/

Supplies

Don’t forget to order all the recommended supplies. You can check out my Sprint Supplies post where you’ll find a detailed overview of all supplies and saved Amazon lists so you can quickly purchase all the necessary items.

Facilitator Checklists

Jake and the GV team put together a checklist pdf, that is a really handy reference when facilitating a Sprint. They’ve organized the document by Day and provide all relevant details and timings. I personally like the Key Ideas and Facilitator notes that they provide after each daily checklist. Don’t forget to write the checklist/schedule on the whiteboard at the beginning of each day.

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Monday Morning Slide Deck

The Monday Morning Slide Deck is another handy way to set expectations and remind all Sprinters what they are about to do for the next 5 days. I like to use this during kick-off sessions a week prior to the Sprint as well. This is a great time to answer any last-minute questions and ensure the team is all set for the big week! Sometimes I’ll return to the deck at the beginning of each day as well if I feel that the team needs a bit of grounding.

Prototyping Tools

These are the usual prototyping suspects: Marvel, InVision, Keynote, and Keynotopi. If you want to use a different tool, then knock yourself out! In fact, please email me and tell me how well it worked. I’m always interested in non-standard Sprints, in fact, I’m actively looking for new ways to apply Sprint and that typically requires new prototyping techniques.

Research

Day 5 is always the most exciting day for me and aside from storyboarding, it is the subject that the book spends the least amount of time on. There are several crucial elements you need to consider, for example, you need to identify who will recruit your users and get them started recruiting Tuesday morning. Here are five tools, provided by GV, to help you better understand how to recruit and prepare for you interviews.

1. The Five-Act Interview: Michael Margolis, GV Research Partner, demonstrates how to conduct a customer interview.
2. GV Research Sprint Guide: Instructions for running your own customer test.
3. Customer Screening Worksheet: Fill this out to start creating your recruiting screener survey.
4. Example Customer Screener: Sample of the form you’ll create to screen potential customer participants for Friday’s test.
5. Example Craigslist Ad: We often use Craigslist to recruit customers. Here’s a sample ad you can post on Craigslist in your city.

Conclusion

I hope these tools and resources help you stay organized and align your Design Sprints for success. If you have other tools or ideas to share please let me know and I’ll update this list. Happy Sprinting!

The post Design Sprint Resources & Planning Tools appeared first on Voltage Control.

I first learned about the Google SPRINT framework in early 2017 from Matt Randall, the founder of Twyla. Google Ventures (GV) funded Twyla’s series A and GV worked directly with Twyla’s management team to implement the framework to find solutions for some of their most critical challenges. The results were impressive, and I immediately decided I wanted to apply the framework at my company Boundless.

I quickly realized that it could be challenging to do it for the first time without any experience or guidance from GV. Fortunately, Matt introduced me to his CTO at Twyla, Douglas Ferguson, who had been responsible for running several of their SPRINTs. Douglas was just breaking out on his own to start a consulting practice Voltage Control focused on helping companies apply the framework, so the timing was perfect. We scheduled our first SPRINT in July of 2017.

In short, the process requires 7 people with a wide array of skill sets to be locked in a room for 5 full days to find an answer to an important challenge. Douglas helped me identify the right combination of people internally and I asked six people on our team to clear their schedule for a week. They all asked “What problem are we trying to solve?”, and my answer was: “I don’t exactly know yet. That’s what the first day is all about”. Here’s an overview of the the very structured schedule for a SPRINT:

Day 1 — Map out how you conduct business today. Interview experts in your industry and identify one critical area of pain or opportunity.

Day 2 — Team members individually (no group think allowed!) identify potential solutions to the problem, and everyone votes on the best solutions.

Day 3 — Create a detailed solution sketch for the selected solution.

Day 4 — Build a prototype of the selected solution (yes you can do it in one day!)

Day 5 — Test the solution with real customers and record their feedback.

Douglas helped us prep for the week (it’s important to have all the right tools and supplies in place), and we kicked off the week with a lot of excitement. The morning of Day 1 made it clear that we has several potential areas we could focus on, and after talking to several industry experts that first afternoon, one area emerged as the clear leader.

One surprising side benefit to the process was that the expert interviews lead to several other insights that we did not have time to cover in the SPRINT, but that were still really beneficial to our business. One insight helped us improve our sales process to enterprise accounts, which lead to us kicking off a separate strategic initiative after the week was over.

The issue we decided to focus on was around buyer self-service, and how we could use our data insights and intelligent search to make smart suggestions and help buyers do more things on their own.

The entire team were pumped up about the concept. During Day 2 we came up with a bunch of great ideas on how to help buyers find the perfect product for what they were trying to accomplish. We selected one, and during Day 3 we sketched out a compelling vision of how an intelligent platform could help simplify life for our buyers. Day 4 was a frenetic race to the finish line trying to create a compelling prototype in just one day. In parallel to the prototype building we recruited actual customers from different companies, and were able to find a nice selection of folks with buyer responsibilities in different size companies and industries.

So by the end of Day 4 we had created a clickable mock-up of a new exciting solution. To give our test customers a fair frame of reference we decided to test the new prototype compared to our existing platform. To make it an apples-to-apples comparison, we created a clickable prototype our our current platform too, so that one would not feel more robust and complete than the other.

Finally it was time to share our vision with actual buyers! We were excited, feeling confident that buyers would love our new ideas. I was doing the customer interviews, and the whole team were watching from another room, video taping the whole thing, including screen capture of the interaction with our prototypes.

The first interview went okay. The buyer liked the look-and-feel of the new solution, but did not quite engage with the new functionality the way we had hoped. We hoped it was an anomaly. The rest of them would probably love it. They did not. The next buyer really did not like what we had created. She said she would never use it. She would not trust the recommendations the system made. She wanted to search on her own, and not answer a bunch of questions. Buyer 3 felt the same way. We started to feel deflated. Then buyer 4 and 5 had similar opinions. Nobody really liked what we created.

There was a sinking feeling in the team room. We had just spent a week of our valuable time creating something that our customers universally did not like.

We had planned a happy hour on Friday to celebrate the completion of the SPRINT, but nobody felt like celebrating. We were tired, spent, disappointed. Time to go home for the weekend.

However, over that weekend, I started to realize that another consistent theme had emerged: all the buyers actually liked our existing solution. So while we didn’t get the answer we were expecting and hoping for, we got a potentially even better one: the solution that we already have actually does a really good job addressing the buyers real needs.

It’s okay if customers don’t like what you created. Don’t take it as a failure. Celebrate the negative feedback as much as the positive

As we debriefed with Douglas and the entire team that following Monday, we realized that we actually had (at least) three big wins coming out of the week:

1. We realized that we should not build what we prototyped. If we had not done the SPRINT we may have prioritized this development effort, and spent a ton of time and money building something that nobody wanted.
2. Our existing solution is good. Buyers like it. It provides what they need. We identified several smaller usability issues that we can address quickly to make it even better.
3. We got a bunch of other insights from both the experts on Monday and the Customers on Friday. Several of them have resulted in smaller platform changes or process improvements already, and we are going to use these type of customer interviews consistently going forward.

We also learned a few valuable lessons to apply in the next SPRINT.

1. When you select customers for the interview, try to find customers as similar to each other as possible. You will get statistically significant results with only 5 customers (with 87% accuracy), but only if the customers you talk to are similar in nature. We deliberately selected different types of customers with different needs, thinking that would provide more diversity, and thus ended up with too few data points for each customer type. Focus on your most important customer segment for your SPRINT. You can always test on other segments later.
2. It’s okay if customers don’t like what you created. Don’t take it as a failure. Celebrate the negative feedback as much as the positive. Now you can move on to building something they really like!

When all was said and done, the SPRINT was a very valuable exercise. I recommend it to any company. I also recommend bringing in an expert like Douglas to help. He helped make sure that we stayed on track, that we didn’t get stuck, or went down into rat holes and lose momentum.

If you have questions about the process, please don’t hesitate to contact me or Douglas.

The post Surprising insights from our first SPRINT: the value of negative feedback appeared first on Voltage Control.

Last week was not only Austin City Limits Music Festival but also Startup Week here in Austin. Barton Springs was full of festival equipment, the roads active with out-of-town festival guests and Capital Factory was a buzz of activity from all sorts of events. It also happened to be the week of our monthly Design Sprint meetup and in honor of Startup Week, I decided to host a 2-hour Design Sprint Essentials Workshop in addition to our regularly scheduled programming with JC Glancy sharing the Zen Business sprint story.

I was pleased that the workshop was standing room only and the audience was highly engaged with lots of questions. One of the attendees asked me the question “What makes a good facilitator? What should I consider when selecting a facilitator?”. As a Sprint facilitator, I was excited to answer this question and decided to capture my thoughts here in a Medium story.

Objective

An effective facilitator provides a pair of fresh eyes as they are impartial and unbiased. For this reason, I always recommend using an external facilitator to guarantee that they are truly neutral and open-minded. This unprejudiced perspective will ensure that they will allow the process to guide outcomes rather than pushing their own agenda.

Organized

Your facilitator is responsible for keeping you on track, always knowing what’s next, and capturing every detail in your sprint. If your facilitator has poor organizational skills, then you risk your Sprint going off the topic, losing focus, or running out of time to properly conduct each exercise. Lack of adequate organization and attention to detail can also result in a poorly documented Sprint. Capturing critical moments and decisions in the Sprint ensures that you have access to all the Sprint assets for reference after the Sprint and for use in future Sprints.

Compassionate

The ideal facilitator is friendly and understanding. A successful Sprint requires a sympathetic and understanding environment and the facilitator’s job is to foster these conditions. The Sprint team is engaged in difficult and critical work which has the potential of drastically reshaping the future of the business. An empathetic and solicitous facilitator is the linchpin of healthy debate and positive progress.

Assertive

A facilitator must also be assertive and not a submissive pushover or you won’t make real progress. Instead, you need someone who will exercise good judgement and know when to lean in and when to back off. They are confident and decisive when it matters. If you need to a make a quick decision, they quickly command the room and direct the decider to make a decision so you can move on. With an excellent facilitator, this happens while still imbuing a sense of calm and empathy.

Business Experience

Business experience will allow your facilitator to nudge and steer you away from potential pitfalls and push you to move on quickly when the conversation has derailed and has little business merit. If the facilitator also has technical or logistics experience, they can also bridge conversations between business and logistical concerns.

Product Experience

Facilitators with product experience are able to draw from their experiences designing and building products to offer more analogous inspiration which will help to further unlock the creativity of the team. This comes in handy if the team needs pointers around scope and technical viability during solution sketching or prototyping.

I often find that my product experience benefits my facilitation when deciding on a rumble versus an MVP and guiding the generation of the storyboard.

Design Experience

Unless you are prototyping a physical experience or hardware, you’ll need skilled visual designers who are master pixel manipulators to produce one or more prototypes. However, when I suggest that your facilitator have design experience, I’m speaking of solutions design or service design. While this individual could have experience moving pixels the goal is to look for deep experience solving hard problems and designing systems. During the sprint, your focus is on solutions that solve your problem and the right facilitator will have the experience to guide you there.

Research Experience

Teams without a dedicated UX researcher or someone skilled at conducting interviews often rely on me to run the interviews on Friday. If you know you’ll need help with the interviews on Friday, make sure you consider this when selecting your facilitator. It is critical that they have experience recruiting and interviewing in the 5 Act Interview format. While the Day 5 interviews resemble other moderated interview styles, there are some unique characteristics that make them special. Spend the time and ensure you have someone experienced in this type of interviewing or you risk tainted or suboptimal results.

Sprint Experience

Your first Sprint is always a huge learning experience. It is best to have a facilitator who knows the process well and can keep you focused on the task so you don’t have to worry if you are properly following the process. I wasn’t completely comfortable facilitating Sprint until I worked closely with Jake and the rest of the Google Ventures Design team. Look for someone who has run many Sprints and has mastered the nuance of the process.

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Facilitation Experience

After getting bit by the facilitation bug, I’ve gotten interested in other co-creation and ideation frameworks. This research has not only helped me enhance my custom workshop offering, it has also bolstered my facilitation skills overall. My toolkit is ever-growing and my current favorite is Liberating Structures. If you can’t find a facilitator who has studied other practices and techniques consider someone who has prior experience managing complex projects, presentations, or running scrums and other large meetings.

Hopefully, I’ve provided a bit more perspective on the various qualities to look for in a facilitator. Your facilitator may not have all of the traits and experience above, however, I hope that you are now better equipped to assess if a facilitator will help you get the most out of your Sprint.

I’m looking forward to running the Design Sprint Essentials workshop once a quarter as long as there is interest and new people looking to learn the mechanics of a Design Sprint. If you weren’t able to come out, perhaps you can join me in a future workshop.

The post What Makes a Good Sprint Facilitator? appeared first on Voltage Control.

Executive Buy In

Executive buy in, meaning the CEO for small-medium companies or the project/department head for larger organizations, is critical to success. Workshops without executive buy in are doomed from the start, no matter how well defined or creative the process.

If the executive doesn’t believe there is a problem or they aren’t properly educated on the process, then stop and correct this before proceeding any further.

I highly recommend that your executive play the decider role or personally select a delegate to decide on her/his behalf. It is important that the decider be decisive. I know this sounds obvious, but nonetheless I recommend you discuss this ahead of time. Set the expectation that they will have to make hard decisions on the spot.

Attendees Selection

In an effort to embrace transparency and inclusion, we opened up our first sprint to the entire company. This was a huge mistake. People filtered in and out. As a result, there was a general lack of consistency and cohesion. Exercise thoughtful selection when deciding who to invite to the sprint. If you want to be inclusive, host an end of day recap, where anybody can stop by for a progress update.

Limit yourself to a total of 7 attendees. Select attendees who represent the most important perspectives as dictated by the problem you are solving. It is always helpful to have a few designers. Ensure that the designers are core members of the sprint and not just brought in on day 4 to prototype a solution the rest of the team designed. Consider all business units and stakeholders that have relevant insights or will be directly impacted by the solution you are testing.

If you are having trouble cutting your list down to 7 or less, consider moving some of your attendees to an “experts” list. You can bring them in on Monday afternoon to provide extra context from their point of view.

Reserve the Time

If your sprint attendees don’t block off their calendars, there is slim to no chance that you will be able to execute all the exercises with precision and attention to detail. You will have less than ideal results.

If someone can’t block the time then consider rescheduling. If they continue to have scheduling issues, then they are not really bought into the process.

Learn the Process and Educate the Team

If you are facilitating or are just invested in seeing the workshop be as successful as possible, do your homework! Read the Sprint book. Read sprint stories. Attend a couple of meetups. Learn the process, inside out.

Now that you know the process well, take the time to educate your team. They will be more effective if they are educated. You may even decide to give them some homework so that Day 1 runs more smoothly.

Locate materials online or make your own to print out and share with the team. You can even share the sprint video that Google Ventures produced. I like to start off Day 1 with this video and an overview of the process just to map out the journey we are embarking on.

Set a Schedule and Stick to It

Create a schedule. You can use the checklist and timelines provided at the back of the Sprint book as a guide. Feel free to make any modifications that your team may require. Make sure to include plenty of break times when people can check email, use the restroom, stretch their legs, etc.

Type up your schedule. Share it with the entire team first thing on Day 1. Encourage them to respect the schedule, to ensure that you move with precision and accuracy through the exercises.

I’ll be covering these topics and more as I tell the Twyla Design Sprint story at the first Austin Design Sprint meetup on July 12 6:30 @ Capital Factory.

Hope to see you there!

If you are thinking of hosting your own design sprint and need help or are just curious, I look forward to hearing from you.

The post 5 Lessons from Twyla’s First Design Sprint appeared first on Voltage Control.