How I became the MVP (Most Valuable Practitioner) of the 2019 Global Virtual Design Sprint
This may be the first time we’ve ever met, so I’ll give you a brief introduction.
I organize Design Sprint meetups and teach Design Sprints. I was recently recognized as the most valuable practitioner (MVP) in the Global Virtual Design Sprint event (GVDS). I facilitated and/or advised nearly five different virtual sprint teams in the month of April.
In fact, more and more people have been reaching out to learn how I run remote workshops and the Design Sprint process. It’s been wonderful.
Truth is, I knew next to nothing about Design Sprints or remote workshops about six months ago.
Yep, I was a complete newbie.
How did I go from knowing nothing to be seen as an expert in just six months?
Here were the five steps I took to transform the way I understood and practiced the Design Sprint process:
- Step 1: Learn the basics
- Step 2: Look for opportunities to practice
- Step 3: Walk the extra mile to maximize the opportunity
- Step 4: Reinterpret your belief system to get out of your comfort zone
- Step 5: Share your knowledge and learnings with the world
Let’s go through these steps in some details.
1. Learn the basics
This is an obvious step. To begin with anything, you need to learn the basics at the very least.
For me, I took the Design Sprint Masterclass by AJ&Smart. Unlike most online courses I took, this Masterclass was actually fun and easy to consume. I’ve learned everything I needed to know about Design Sprints, as well as some handy facilitating tips and tricks that I can apply to any meetings or workshops.
Even after I graduated and became a “Design Sprint Master,” I wasn’t even close to being seen as an “expert”. I felt like I just took a music theory class without practicing an instrument.
At that point, I knew I needed more hands-on experience.
2. Look for opportunities to practice
Reading a book or taking a course can only bring you so far; hands-on experience can help you gain confidence and teach you how to tackle the unexpected things that could happen in a real situation.
Instead of waiting for an opportunity to come along, I nominated myself to facilitate a workshop at my workplace, as well as organize a Design Sprint meetup. It killed two birds with one stone: sharing what I learned and creating an environment to practice at the foundational principles of the Design Sprint process.
Seeing how the Design Sprints principles work in real-life situations, I was thirsty for more.
What you look for, you find.
Coincidently, a Facebook post about an event called the Global Virtual Design Sprint (GVDS) popped up on my news feed.
The GVDS is a month-long recurrent event organized by Robert Skrobe from Dallas Design Sprints. During the event in April, hundreds of people from around the world came together and ran several virtual Design Sprints simultaneously, week-to-week, for the whole month.
In the beginning, I was quite skeptical about doing a Design Sprint in a virtual environment.
Without over-thinking it, I signed up to be the Design Sprint facilitator for Team T1 (which we eventually called “People Wizards”). Our team was tasked to create a service that helps clients select the right designer/design studio for their needs.
To describe my first experience of facilitating a remote Design Sprint, it was bumpy and challenging. I felt like I was failing.
But of course, FAIL is just the First Attempt In Learning.
Having that in mind, I decided to leverage the GVDS community for advice on how to improve. As I reached out to more and more people, I gained a greater perspective on what to do versus what not to do.
Here’s the first tip I’ve learned to run remote workshops successfully: Over communicate.
3. Walk the extra mile to maximize the opportunity
This step is probably the one that can potentially differentiate you from the rest. Whenever you get the opportunity, you need to maximize your outcomes.
After almost failing my first remote Design Sprint, I was unwilling to call it quits. However, I had a small trip planned for the second week of April, and I couldn’t join a full Design Sprint like I had done the previous week.
In order to maximize any possible learning opportunities that second week, I decided to join the scheduled virtual sprint team to work on the Kampala Computer Development Program. As an observer, I watched how an experienced Design Sprint facilitator like Sabrina Goerlich managed her team and kept distractions and side-conversations under control. It was eye-opening.
Going All-In
After observing that Sprint, I wanted to test myself. Instead of joining just one more Design Sprint, I joined three more…
- Team “Master Yoda Jedi’s” as the team’s facilitator
- Team “Cats Scratching Doors“ ”as a facilitation mentor
- Team “Design Sprint Referral Network” as a co-facilitator
I basically immersed myself with Design Sprints for the rest of the month… to the point that people began to question how I could do it while staying on top of my regular, full-time job.
The answer was simple; all of those Design Sprints I had signed up for were being done virtually. I was able to leverage the disparities between different time-zones and my offline time to make the impossible… possible.
After participating in four-and-half virtual Design Sprints, I can tell you with the utmost confidence that they’re very possible and feasible to do. In fact, they can be even more efficient if you learn how to leverage different technologies used to help remote teams work and communicate.
Almost all of our teams used Slack and Whatsapp for passive communication, Zoom for online meetings, and MURAL, which became my favorite collaboration tool for live-interactive activities and documenting the Design Sprint roadmap.
4. Reinterpret your belief system to get out of your comfort zone
You’ve probably heard this statement before…
The magic will happen when you get out of your comfort zone.
But, how would you do that? How do you get out of your comfort zone when you’re not sure how difficult it can be.
You need to believe in yourself.
At the end of the GVDS event, something unexpected and magical happened as an outcome of Design Sprint — the team was so glued together that they felt sad to part away, so we decided to continue on with an iteration sprint.
What is even crazier is that, taking an idea from Robert Skrobe, I decided to live-stream our process to show the world what a virtual Design Sprint was all about.
I have never done any live-streaming before, nor I felt comfortable doing it. I underestimated the time and effort needed to set up. I also didn’t expect YouTube’s verification process, which needed 24 hours to verify my channel before I could even try live-streaming.
Besides figuring out all the technical stuff to even run a live-stream, I still had to prepare the Mural board, to schedule all the meetings and to get everyone ready to start on the iteration sprint.
As time was getting tight, I started to worry. A lot of negative thoughts began to emerge.
- What if the live-steam fails?
- What if nobody watches the live-stream?
- What if people watch the live-stream think I am not a good facilitator?
I was scared and feared. Thankfully, I learned a trick from Chris Do, who taught me how to reinterpret my belief system.
Fear is just a Fantasized Experience Appearing Real.
And guess what, I did not only do one live-stream; I ended up broadcasting the GVDS three days in a row.
I didn’t care if people were watching, or what they were thinking about me. All I cared about was having a fantastic experience with my teammates (Jeroen Frumau, Natasha Wainwright, Christina Carlisle, and Ian Thorne). We were the first people in the world to share a Virtual Design Sprint live.
5. Share your knowledge and learnings with the world
Nobody knows what you know if you do share what you know.
I love sharing my learnings, even when I’m not an expert on a particular subject (yet). When I teach others, I always work extra hard to research and understand my material better.
The best way to learn is to teach.
There are many different ways to share knowledge. What I’ve done so far is organizing meetups, creating presentations, conducting lunch-and-learns and sharing my point-of-view through posts and articles on social media.
Sharing knowledge doesn’t always have to be something big. It can be a short post showing what you know or what you‘ve discovered.
For instance, I recently shared a post about participating in a remote workshop on a 3-hour train ride. As you can imagine, it generated a lot of interest.
When you can get people’s attention like this, you can directly share more of your knowledge to those who really want to learn. You may not even be seen as a so-called ‘expert’, but you showcase what matters more… the experience of doing something no one has tried before.
And that’s what matters to me the most… experience. I’m happy as long as I’m learning. Failure is just a natural by-product of that learning journey.
Special thanks
There are many people who made my Design Sprint journey so far possible, whether they know it or not.
- Jake Knapp — Thank you for inventing the Design Sprint. It’s helped me solve so many problems in structured ways.
- Jonathan Courtney and his AJ&Smart team — Thank you for creating the fantastic Design Sprint Masterclass and its community. I’ve connected with so many amazing people because of it.
- Beatrice Behnisch, Christin Rahnfeld, Claudette Ocando Röhricht, Mohit Sharma, Perla Sperandei — Thank you for allowing me to test-run my first workshop on Design Sprint principles with you.
- Chris Do — Thank you for changing my mindset and giving me all those tips and tricks to reinterpret my belief system.
- Robert Skrobe — Thank you for organizing the Global Virtual Design Sprint event and providing a wonderful platform to gain hands-on experience.
- To all of the other wonderful practitioners in the GVDS — Thank you all for being such amazing teammates and allowing me to learn with you.
