7 tips for the first ever Design Sprint of a company.
Learnings, experiences, and tips.
Will this be another medium article about a group of people brave enough to try to realize for the first time ever a new way to create and develop products in a company? You can bet it is. Of course, I know that there are several stories about companies starting to adopt silicon valley methodologies with innovation as the main reason. This post doesn’t contain an ultra-power explanation about the process and what it is for. After all, everything that is to read about the process already exists. We also know of several places that applied the technique and reached success. What we have in this post are just a few notes, reflections and tips to people that are seeking information with the purpose to prepare for the first design sprint of a company based on my experience.
The challenge becomes even bigger when we talk about a company with traditional management methods. By that, I mean companies that have high hierarchy models and are seeking ways to innovate with traditional processes. Here, in Brazil, is no different. Nowadays, several companies are starting their Digital Transformation processes and modernizing their work dynamic. Besides digitalizing processes, this change is also cultural. Adopting new techniques to delivery value ends up being a drastic change that takes people out of their comfort zone.
First of all, is important to explain really quickly what is this thing called Design Sprint. Well, the Design is another innovative method that puts people to work effectively. In the words of the creators, “the sprint is a five-day process for answering critical business questions through design, prototyping, and testing ideas with customers.”. Basically, it is a process that uses the “Scavenger hunt” effect, where everyone gets involved and excited and try to move fast and in the best way possible.
Being practical, in each day of the week the participants do different things. In short:
Monday: Day to set the expectations and understand an everything we can about the problem and all involved. It is time to ask everything you want to people that know about the problem and how it is affecting the users of the product or service. By the end of the day, it is time to create a map that represents a situation where the problem occurs.
Tuesday: Sketch day. This day is focused on drawing different solutions for the problem explored on Monday. There are several different exercises you can use to facilitate this process and make everybody draw!
Wednesday: Time to decide. You will use this entire day to decide which solution the group will be focusing on the other day.
Thursday: Prototype!!! Time to take that winner idea from Wednesday and make it the closest to real as possible. Normally, we create prototypes that simulate the solution and write research scripts to get ready for Friday. Ah! We also use this day to recruit users!
Friday: Test day. We take that prototype that we elaborated on Thursday into the real world and meet with our recruited users to finally validate our ideas and move forward or not with it.
Phew. And who is the who will be the one leading and deciding to run a sprint inside the company? Well, anyone! However, as the name DESIGN SPRINT reveals, people more involved in the discovery process of a product are more commonly found being the ambassadors of the technique. UX, Product Managers, and Product Owners are some of the roles that are close to the business problems and users, so makes sense they are the ones that push it inside the company.
So… Let’s go! Where are those tips?
Tip 1: In the first time, it doesn’t need to be exactly how the methodology says. In other words, adapt if necessary.
Don’t worry, it will not be perfect from the start and that is normal. Most of the companies today are used to the format meeting-work-meeting. In other words, people got used to the idea of having their day broke to be able to work. Asking coworkers to abdicate of their normal routine for a 5 day period is insane in most companies. Therefore, it is important to understand that the first sprint is also about achieving it and reaching its goal. For that to occur, adapt the days so the participants can fit their schedules better and keep immerse most of the time is fundamental. Does it hurt the methodology? A little, but the good ones have always been the ones that can adapt to all companies context.
In the sprint that we ran, we opted to cut one day out. That way, the decision day on Wednesday was done by the end of Tuesday. Another decision made was to “parcel” the participation of the group. We understood that was really important the presence of front-end developers to help in the first two days, to help in the understanding of the problem and in the conception of ideas. In the next days of the sprint, they went back to their normal routines so they wouldn’t compromise the work of their teams. In that way, we wouldn’t risk attracting negativity towards the methodology disturbing the routine of the people that work alongside the participants of the sprint.
Tip 2: Bring together people who already have an innovative approach to work and plan ahead.
In the material released by Google Ventures and in the book Sprint by Jake Knapp, one of the creators of the method, it is said that a big preparation is not required before the beginning of the process. From the experience we had in the first design sprint we ran in the company that I work, that is not necessarily true when talking about the first try of the company with a method like that. As we discussed earlier, the first edition is about doing it for the first time and disseminate the results to the rest of the company is important to give credibility to the process. Consider the possibility of gathering a few people excited enough with the idea and plan the minimal factors related to the week. It helps a lot. it doesn’t matter much if they are people related to areas like UX or product management, the level of energy towards this kind of work change is the key factor. As an example, we assembled several sympathizers of the movement and were related to the problem to be broken in Sprint. We had a previous meeting the week before Sprint. As a result, the expectation was increasing along with the excitement.
Tip 3: If possible, do the first one away from the office.
Remember: this is the first edition of all. None of the participants is used to be away from their desk and e-mails during all this time. It will itch their brains! So, in order to don’t run the risk of people in and out of the room the whole time, find a way cut this out. Normally, the simple rule of “No-notebooks” isn’t enough most of the time. Besides that, it is part of the work routine of almost all traditional companies to be present at your desk most of the time.
In our case, we opted to take a room in another building close to the office. We noted that we nailed on this decision when almost no interruptions were made during the sprint. Besides that, being far from the office affect your behavior on the exercise. Outside the normal office vibe, you don’t have to perform so accordingly to your position or role in the company. In other words, people were more flexible to reach the goals of the sprint. We realized how the collaborative work prevailed in the sprint.
Tip 4: Take advantage of the excitement of the team.
One thing is for sure: If you chose people who get excited with different methodologies and managed to find a real business problem that the company is facing is because you are half the way there. Because of that, it is important to keep the energy level high during the sprint so everybody works hard and focused. Also, this prevents that the mistakes made unfolding your first Design Sprint (mistakes happen, especially on the first one) hold your back from reaching the sprint goal.
It is not worth it to test a process that manages to get things done but make people unhappy along the way. Normally, the Design Sprints are interactive and fun but it is easy to get lost and frustrated on the first try. Therefore, pick people that know the value of executing something for the first time for the sake of test it and learn from the experience. Besides having everybody focused all the time, affects positively the result of the sprint.
Tip 5: Make a temporary WhatsApp group with the participants at the beginning of the week.
This consolidates all the tips before. Making a WhatsApp group to get everybody on the same page about several sprint related issues can save a lot of time. It is common for people to forget that you picked a place outside the company or that you don’t have to bring your notebook or prepare any material. The group will make communication between the sprint team member much easier. Besides, it helps to get the excitement, allowing for motivational registers. It is also a great place to share the pictures of the material produced on the sprint. Don’t forget to mention that the group is temporary and will be disabled after the sprint is over. In the sprint we ran, it was fundamental for recording important things and necessary alerts.
Tip 6: Besides solving a business problem, the first sprint its also used to give credibility to the process.
In the first tip, we talked about how its hard for traditional companies to understand that moving away employees from their routine during five days can mean something productive. Thus, the first sprint has also a very noble second objective besides the business one: to prove to all the company that is something that works.
Normally, people are afraid of what is different. Isolate a group of employees during five days, focusing on one thing and leaving e-mails, sheets, and meeting in the background is something REALLY different for most traditional companies. Therefore, prioritize removing this bias. After finalizing the first sprint, do a presentation that shows the story behind the process. Besides showing the meaningful results, it is important to show the learnings and the “human part” of the process. Most of the time, the participants have a lot of fun running a sprint as they note the quick evolution in building something meaningful. The excitement is contagious. In our case, we presented the results in a weekly meeting with all the team. After the presentation, we noted that the rest of the company got interested, and we were asked about how to run a sprint in other areas. This is how you give credibility to the process.
Tip 7: Schedule a retrospective meeting with the participants.
One thing is for sure: mistakes will happen. Although all the feeling of collaborative work and delivery where everybody is excited and hoping for the best, we always forget something or recognize better ways to conduct the process in the next time we run it. A good way to collect all these perspectives from the participants is scheduling a retrospective meeting, very common in teams using scrum methodologies. The objective of the meeting is to understand which points were positive and must be capitalized in the next sprint and which were the mistakes made and how we can do it better in the next one. After our sprint, we ran a meeting like this to do just that: find ways to do it better next time. You can find a lot of formats for this meeting right here. In fact, most of the positive points we mapped were the motivation for me to write this post.
In the end, the experience of running a Design Sprint is really similar to launching an MVP. Start small, with the only certainty being the uncertainty and that mistakes will happen for sure. These tips aim to minimize some of the problems that can derail the sprint as a whole. However, is worth mentioning that every company has its culture and moments. Mistakes will happen and the most important thing is to know how to adapt the methodology and map the possible improvements. If all goes right, the credibility of different work methods like this will built inside the company, becoming a powerful tool to solve business problems in a short amount of time.
Hey! We also have this post in portuguese right here.
