From the problem to delivering value the same day
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What if they tell you that for one day you are going to participate with people from other teams and all together you are going to ideate, design, create an Easter Egg and leave it in production that same day? I don’t know about you, but when they tell me this the first thing I think is: Yes, of course, we are going to agree and also leave it in production all the same day! Ha!
Will we have an unexpected ending? Let’s get started!
D-day has arrived. Among all the people that we are going to participate are Software Engineers, Tech Leads, Engineer Leads, Engineer Managers and Product Managers. We are all welcome, no matter the role. Prior to this day, several teams have been created in which we have been assigned people with whom we do not work in our day to day. So the expectation of what it will be like to work with them is palpable in the environment.
Our day
It is time to start, but where? The facilitators begin by marking the dynamics to follow, the rules of the game, the program for today’s activity. They are the orchestrators of today. They will guide and help us so that we don’t deviate from our goal of creating an Easter Egg. But, they cannot let us go anyway so that we can start working, first we have to be clear about what is wanted from us, how we are going to do it and what the result will be.
What happens if we get together directly in the teams and start discussing what we want to do or not? We would have brainstorming, arguments, loss of focus, fatigue. Instead of this, we are going to do something different, we are going to follow a process that will guide us in order to achieve our goal, have more ideas and make clear decisions to reach the most desired solution. It’s about working as a team sharing our ideas to seek innovative results. Lightning Decision Jam (LDJ) comes into play.
A little break on Design Thinking
We may have heard about Design Thinking or read how they apply elsewhere. Today is what we are going to use and I will accompany you to see the steps we have done. But before that, what is it? It’s a methodology to generate innovative ideas that focuses its effectiveness on understanding and solving the real needs of our users, validating each stage of process as a team.
The problem is broken down into very small parts that are analyzed, thinking with everything that occurs to us and, in a collaborative way among the members of a team, the solution that we are going to give is built. Knowing this, it’s a methodology that could be applied to anything. From product development to definition of business models.
We will identify the problem that we have to solve, we can even pose new problems to better contextualize the situation and be aware of the starting point with all possible aspects.
We have to be curious and question everything, we have to be empathetic with the people who are going to use our product, we have to identify with them and their problems as this will be essential to help you.
After this little break… We continue! Our facilitators tell us a beautiful story about the origin of Easter Eggs and some examples. Of course, there are very creative minds, come to think of being able to play Atari’s Super Breakout if you are looking for Atari breakout or put the T-Rex game in Chrome if you don’t have internet. Now we want to sometimes drop the net (just kidding).
We know what is expected of us: create an Easter Egg. But you have to take into account some things, which user is it going to be aimed at? A developer is not the same as an older person browsing the Internet and finding a surprise. Also, do not be scared if you find it, you have to know that it is an Easter Egg, it should not break the functionality you were using. But we want it to be very difficult to find … or not so difficult. And we want to know that they have found it and how many have, right?
Despite having many questions to answer, we are ready. We can start working together with our team but without forgetting:
- Don’t lose focus.
- Respect the times that will mark us in the LDJ process.
- Know that all ideas are welcome.
- Think positive.
- Every step in the process counts.
Now yes, to the mess
After all the introduction, the explanation of the process, the desire to share everything that we are thinking that could help, we begin with the LDJ process, which will have a series of steps that we must follow along with the help of the facilitators and a board in Miro.
1. What works for us?
Stop! No rush. Before we start with the focus on the problem and the challenges that lie ahead, we are going to start by collecting everything that works well for us.
We have a sailboat on the board, at the top we have the things that move the boat, give it air. It is what moves the team, what motivates us to solve our challenge.
We have 5 minutes to work silently and individually and put all the ideas that come to mind at the top. The more ideas the better!
Afterwards, our facilitator indicates an order in which each one must read the ideas that he has been placing. We have many positive ideas!
Tip: Starting by reading everything positive that the team members see causes both our motivation and the desire to continue with the process increase more.
2. Capture the problems
Now we are going to see the problems that we may have in this project, both for ourselves and for the most important thing: our clients, we must not lose focus on it. In this part we will put the cards at the bottom of the boat, the one that anchors the sailboat and makes it move slowly.
We have another 5 minutes for this phase in which we work the same as in the previous one, individually. But at the end, instead of reading them, we are going to let the team have a few minutes to read all the cards.
Tip: By allowing time to read the cards of others and not reading them one by one the person who has put them, makes that no one can be attacked by the thought they have had.
3. Prioritize problems
At this point, we all know the problems we can have. In this step we are going to vote individually on the problems that we consider most important to solve. We have 3 votes each and we can use them however we want: we can vote our own cards or vote on one of them with more than one vote.
We took a few minutes to vote and then we ordered them from most to least voted.
Tip: Voting the problems and ordering them from most voted to least forces you to read them and share them with everyone. The problem that one has put, is now everyone’s problem.
4. Find information about our problem
To have more context and information about our goal, to create an Easter Egg, the facilitators have left us 30 minutes of individual work in which to search for information, add ideas, and what comes to mind. Everything we see we add in Miro, either by copying a text, an image, etc. whatever we can think of.
Tip: This phase is not typical of LDJ but it has helped us to see examples of Easter Eggs that have already been made, get ideas and possible answers to the problems we have.
5. Reframe problems as challenges
In this phase we have to reformulate the challenges with questions in the form “How Might We” (HMW). This means:
- How: tells us that we can find solutions.
- Might: there would be more than one possible solution.
- We: suggests that we work together and build on each other’s ideas.
So we each one explain everything we have found in the previous step while the rest of the colleagues are writing down in notes the HMWs that they find with what we are saying. For this you have to take into account:
- HMWs cannot be very generic as they do not solve anything in that case: How might we make the user happy?
- They shouldn’t give an answer to a specific problem because otherwise we are saying the solution itself. Does HMW show a button in the picture above?
So we will have questions like:
- How might we reduce user frustration on error pages?
- How might we activate hidden animations?
After having all the HMWs and grouping similar ones if necessary, each one has another 3 votes to vote for the HMW they like the most.
6. Job statement
Time to write the job statement from the top rated HMWs. We must build a class of the form:
When… (context)
I want to…. (jobs to be done)
so I can… (goals)
Ideally, with a single HMW we could build this phrase, but if some are complementary they could be joined.
Tip: We have our problem defined and we know what we want to solve for it to be done.
7. Ideation
We can move on to the part of ideating the solution to which we are only going to arrive with 1 problem that will be the one defined in the previous step.
In this phase we will have 30 minutes to individually put possible solutions to our problem. They must be the most unitary possible. The more ideas the better!
After finishing, we group the similar ideas and we have 5 votes each one to vote for the ones we like the most.
Tip: The quality of the ideas doesn’t matter, but the quantity, since they can be put together to provide more complete solutions. Now is when you notice that the visual designer makes sense in these types of sessions.
We are going to order the most voted solutions for keeping an order … and looks like this:
8. Decide what solution to do
We are going to use an impact/effort matrix in which to place the solutions that we have voted on in the previous step.
Our facilitator will take each solution, starting with the one with the most votes, and will place it in the center of the matrix. We have to decide how much value this solution is going to provide and how much effort it’s going to cost us. For this exercise we will have 10 minutes.
9. To do list to follow
After finishing the previous exercise… We already have the solution that we are going to develop! Obviously we will choose the one that generates the most impact with the least effort.
We only have one more step left and that is to generate a list of the tasks that we have to carry out. We will start with those that provide the greatest impact and least effort, as we have commented. But you have to know that if the first one doesn’t work because it doesn’t solve our problem, it will be time to move on to the next one.
It only remains to get to it! We have a couple of hours left to do the development and get it running in production. So we divide the tasks and in a little while it will be ready …
Tic tac…
We finally have our Easter Egg! What an intense day, creativity, thinking, ideating, collaboration, developing the solution and letting it work.
In our case we decided to create a final gala another day in which each team showed us their Easter Eggs. We also voted for the one we liked the most and they received a surprise prize!
Seen from outside
The following week, we repeated the process with another team, more than 4 people who had not been able to participate in the previous edition and this time I was the facilitator.
It is very fun to accompany the team in its ideation phase, from the outside you can see with greater perspective how it starts being separated, each one has their thoughts set on something different and they are ideas that are far apart from each other. However, as the LDJ process progresses, you become aware of how these positions are approaching and solutions that are built together are reached.
And this is how in one day, an activity has been carried out in which, working with people from other teams, it has been possible to deliver value, we have worked collaboratively being creative, contributing ideas and, above all, we have had fun and united more each other working side by side on a solution.
By the way … some Creditas products has hidden Easter Eggs … Will you find any?
Thank you Ernesto Gonzalo and David Stanete for this great experience! It has been a very intense and rewarding day.
Interested in working with us? We’re always looking for people passionate about technology to join our crew! You can check out our openings here.
