Planning a Remote Design Sprint
Design sprints have been around for a fair while now and are not a brand-new concept. Before we look at remote design sprints let’s do a quick recap of what is a design sprint. In a nutshell a group of engineers, designers and product owners get together and try to work out solutions to a specific customer problem. Or as defined by GV,
“the sprint is a five-day process for answering critical business questions through design, prototyping, and testing ideas with customers.”.
Traditional design sprints span five days, and each day addresses a different aspect of the process: Map, Sketch, Decide, Prototype, and Test.
Today due to business needs, or health reasons (looking at you Covid!) teams are spread across different geographical locations. It becomes harder to put people in to one room for five days to work on a solution. This is where the remote design sprint steps up and helps to address these very problems. Of course, there are a few things we need to look at before getting into a remote sprint to ensure that we have as smooth a run as possible.
Choosing the right tools and technology
The key pieces of technology needed for a remote design sprint include a virtual whiteboard and a great video conferencing platform.
Your white board forms the center of the design sprint, this is where you will gather your teams’ thoughts and solutions. Virtual whiteboards can help you run your sprint smoothly by being a living, changing document with the added advantage of saving your historical notes.
A great video conferencing application is another mandatory need when trying to run a smooth remote design sprint. There are few things more annoying than having a garbled, hard to hear, VC where you can barely identify who is speaking. It’s worthwhile to invest in a decent VC as it will certainly pay for itself by making your process that much more enjoyable.
Setting the time frame early
Another key aspect of a smooth design sprint is good timing. This becomes less of an issue when all team members are living within the same time zone but can be an issue with even a couple of hours difference. Work hours for one team member, may be lunch or late evening for another. It’s important to be aware of these changes and plan accordingly. For example, you may change the time of the meetings through the week, so no one party is continuously penalised. There are easy to use services online in order to figure out the time frames that work well for everyone.
Agree on the Behaviour and focus
It’s easier to be focused when everyone is in one physical location and providing checks and balances for everyone else. The energy in a physical design sprint and in a remote one tends to be different. During a remote sprint especially when working from home (looking at you again Covid!) we tend to get distracted by happenings around the house.
Furthermore, it’s much easier to be tempted to have your favourite TV show playing in the background, or to check your mail or social media. It makes everything a lot easier and your process a lot more efficient if your team can keep their phones away and be convinced not to multi-task wherever possible. In addition, when in one location it’s easy to have planned breaks and snacks on hand, these remain as easy to plan out on a remote sprint if you don’t neglect them.
Set expectations
When going into a remote design sprint you must also remember to set expectations. There are so many things that can go wrong and throw a spanner in your works. Your team must be ready to take these in stride. Connectivity issues, product owners not showing up, webcams refusing to function, kids breaking into the meeting space, are just a few of the things that can affect your design sprint. If you set expectations for these and other breakdowns it’s possible to avoid flare ups in the meetings and breakdowns in communication.
In conclusion
Remote design sprints are a great way to get work done during the lockdown period. In addition to saving time on travel it allows people to work from the comfort of their homes.
In order to make them work we do need to put in some effort in organising the weeklong sprint so it runs as smoothly as possible. Has your company tried organising remote design sprints? What were some of the challenges you faced?
