5 days to learn fast

Exhilarating, exhausting, but truly enlightening!

As a Learning & Development team we had been working with Agile methods for 9 months, when we came across Google Ventures 5 day Design Sprint. To be able to define a real point of need and build a prototype to test with customers in just 5 days sounded pretty cool to us. A few of us started reading the book and thinking about how this could work for us. We decided it was worth a try.

The problem we needed to solve was how we could really help new managers joining our business — right at their point of need. We knew most of the information and help they needed already existed, but it was not always easy to find. Another big need was being able to connect with other managers in the same boat as them.

So we decided this was the perfect problem for us to tackle with a 5 day sprint and boy did we tackle it and learn a lot!

Before we dive in

I should explain we are a remote working team, so it wasn’t possible to all be in the same room to do this. This was the first rule of the book we broke. We did live to tell the story, but would not choose to do it again. Read on to find out why …

I will also share that our first lesson in this was definitely that the pre-planning required is essential. It would be good to start thinking about this around 3 weeks ahead of your 5 day sprint as there is quite a lot to do as well as making sure all diaries can be cleared for that week. The sprint WILL take over your life for a week!

So let’s start at the beginning which is usually a very good place to start!

Monday — Day 1

This day is all about Understanding. The essence of this day is about getting really clear about what you are trying to achieve and the problem you want to solve. The four words that come to mind are Understand — Explore — Options — Decide. So the beginning of the day is taking a pretty wide focus on your long-term goal; by the end of the day you want to be ready to present your thoughts along with some options to The Decider. This is the main stakeholder (choose wisely!) who then makes a decision about what the sprint will focus on for the week.

Top Tip for Monday — Start with the end in mind. This is from the book and is spot on!

Tuesday — Day 2

Today is all about Diverging. The great thing about this day is that you are working alone, together. This day is all about getting creative but on your own, so it avoids any group think. Everyone goes off to look for stuff from related worlds that could be used and then comes back to share together what they have found. In the book they call this Lightning Demos. The tips in the book for being creative and fast are awesome. By the end of this day, each person comes up with their drawing of what the solution could look like.

You might start to see a bit of a pattern here: each day starts wide and gets you to open up your mind, thinking of the possibilities. The structure of the day then keeps you focused so that by the end of the day you have got to a decision.

Wednesday — Day 3

The morning of Day 3 is all about Deciding. This is when you get to see everyone else’s sketches, and to vote for the bits you like. Everyone then gets one vote where they can only pick one sketch — which is really hard! The final part of the day is that the Decider gets to Supervote (which feels a bit like a new Superhero movie with the Decider as the new hero!!) Their super power is that they get to pick out what they think are the best bits from any of the sketches and this decides what goes in the prototype.

The movie theme continues in the afternoon as you then start to build your storyboard with each piece of paper (in this example) detailing the clicks your customers will need to make to navigate your design.

Aha Moment: it was at this point we all realised this was a day that you had to absolutely be in a room together. We managed to have three of us together with two other team members on a Google Hangout so they could see the storyboard we were writing up. A creative alternative but not the most efficient or enjoyable!

Thursday — Day 4

Today was all about Building. The key to this is that your ‘customers’ (who, by the way, you need to line up as part of your pre-planning) need to have as much of a real experience with your solution as possible. For us, this is where our team’s design techie guru’s came in to help us fake it! This is a pretty intense day as you are under pressure to create something in a day that real customers are going to test the next day — yikes!

Top tip: don’t skip deciding who is going to do what role and do follow the advice in the book that one person writes all the scripting, so there is a consistent feel for your customer.

Friday — Day 5

This is Validation time! Do the customers — who ultimately you have built this prototype for — think it is useful? The setup of this day is key. Again we had to manage this remotely and did make it work. However, the downside is that you simply are not as efficient. It was amazing to be able to talk to real customers, show them our ideas, and get real-time feedback on what they liked, disliked and would like more of. To be able to get to this point in 5 days really is actually very cool. Even knowing if they say they don’t think it’s right, you have found that out in just 5 days, rather than weeks or months. It’s all about learning fast.

A final word

So in summary I would absolutely recommend you give this a go. It was intense, exhilarating and oh so productive. We have got a prototype we can now build into the real thing and we have based it on real feedback from real customers. The goal of better understanding the point of need and finding a solution customers thought was useful was achieved, and then some.

One last piece of advice: READ THE BOOK! Follow all the guidelines and checklists in it. They really do work.