Should we Sprint?

The Sprint Process is a comprehensive and fast — paced learning opportunity. The sprint lasts five days. The first day, or Monday a company will choose an idea or challenge, and map out all aspects of that idea, thinking well into the future as well. The second day of the Sprint process, or Tuesday, the challenge is fully understood, including taking into account all the competitors that are out there. Various solutions to the challenge are proposed. The third day of the Sprint process, or Wednesday, all the solutions made the day before are evaluated and difficult decisions are made about how the company will move forward. The fourth day of the Sprint process, or Thursday, after all the planning and proposing will be turned into a real prototype of your product. The last final day of the Sprint process, or Friday, the prototype created will be shown to actual potential customers and great feedback is given.

Having this fast — paced Sprint process is definitely a different way to think about creating a startup. Personally, the sprint process seems to be effective but also highly stressful and a bit uncomfortable. I think that if a company went through this process they would gain a lot out of it, but the process at the same time seems hard to get through. I think our company would benefit from going through this process. Our company is trying to create a lifestyle app targeted towards college students that incorporates aspects of food or restaurants, fitness, shopping, and local festivities and events. Although several apps that are similar to this exist in the app store, we are trying to differentiate our product by giving our users the feeling of having a home away from their home during their time in college. We could really benefit from creating a prototype if our app. First off, creating this prototype will help us experiment and determine the best way to create and organize the app. Second off, the most benefit will come from showing and testing out our prototype to actual college students from different campuses across the country to receive their feedback. We need to know that students like the app and are going to be willing to use it when the app is launched. We also need to know what part of the app is working or liked and what parts are disliked or need to be taken out completely or changed.

The major difference between the traditional product development and customer development is is that in customer development, the customer is the main focus point in creating the product or service. All decisions are made keeping all the potential customer types in mind. This is extremely important because often time company’s get so focused on creating the product with the original vision they had. However, they do not realize that that vision may not work with everyone or their customer base. Our company company plans to “get out of the office” by talking to other college campus on Case Western’s campus to get their feedback in the Welc’home app that we are creating.