The American Dream? #5
Hi dear readers,
I have teased you last week by starting to talk about the “Sprint” method. Let me explain a little bit more about it. As I told you next week, it is a five-day method to solve efficiently a problem or test a new idea. Here are the steps;
1. Set the stage
First, you have to set the stage. Make sure everyone is available during those five days and have the perfect room for you to allow creativity and flexibility (a lot of post it notes are involved in the process!). You also have to agree on the team and who will be the Decider, the one who make the final decisions. The more diverse the team is, the better it is!
2. Monday
You should first start by agreeing on a long-term goal for the startup. What is the company going to be like in 5–10 years according to the team? Then you should map the whole process of the company and identify the potential problems you might have. Ask the experts about those problems to understand them more and chose a problem to focus on for the whole week.
3. Tuesday
Tuesday is all about finding solutions to this problem. Look for old ideas and get inspire by what already exists. Everyone should sketch his or her solutions on a paper
4. Wednesday
Then without talking about it in-group, everyone should vote for the solutions they find the best. People then discuss about the ideas out loud and finally the one who suggested the solution reveals himself or herself and explains it. After the best solution is chosen, make a storyboard to create a prototype.
5. Thursday
On Thursday, you will create the prototype thanks to the storyboard. A prototype is only the façade, not the real product. It can have different shapes according to your product or your service: a PowerPoint, a sketch, a real good, etc… Make sure to assign different roles in order to be efficient and to finish it the same day.
6. Friday
The last will allow you to test this prototype. Interview 5 customers one by one, while the rest of the team watches the interview and take notes. Don’t forget at the end of the week to conclude the experiment and to plan the next steps!
I would definitely advise you to go to http://www.thesprintbook.com if you want more information and tools to set up your own Sprint!
Overall, it is a method that I can definitely use with my team. The steps are clear and it would force us to gather altogether and focus on our main problem. In my opinion, we should try to define what would be the perfect business model for us, because it is our main interrogation so far and we need to be sure we can sell it to local shops and investors, as it is our first thought.
The biggest issue will definitely be to settle the time and the place. Our schedules don’t allow us to have 5 days together so we definitely have to rethink the time process. However, I think we should keep those steps and the overall method, because as we don’t have much time, it will be a good way to be efficient.
That’s it for the Sprint method!
But my week was not over and we had the chance to speak about customer development especially explained by Steve Blank. He has created a manifesto in which he explains the main rules for a startup when it comes to customer development. The main difference between product development and customer development is that he choses to focus completely on the customer. The product is the mean to reach the customer, not the end in itself. You can take a look at this manifesto by clicking here.
One of the rules we should keep in mind for our own startup is that we should “get out of the office”. My team and I have really similar profiles and there is a big risk that we are biased by our own experience when building the app. The Sprint method and the last step with the interview would be a good way to test and interact with people with a concrete prototype, see how their react to what we offer. But I think we should all interview some of our acquaintances on campus, not only our close friends. We should agree on a list of questions and have a 5 minutes chat to identify more customer personas and try to identify their needs and how they behaved before going to college and during college.
Now, we only need to schedule all this work!