My top 5 tips for virtual design sprints

Just some of the many smart, talent, great looking and well dressed virtual sprinters I’ve worked with recently.

I had an email exchange with Douglas Ferguson from Voltage Control over the past couple of days around virtual design sprinting. Here were my top suggestions from that thread.

1. Meet in person before you start any virtual sprint.
   Whether it’s an existing team that knows each other or a bunch of people who seem kinda/sorta familiar, have a human experience before venturing off on a virtual one.
2. Define amazing success and devastating failure.
   When you get together for that face-to-face get-together, cover both extremes of success and failure. Map out what you would do for each scenario, and who would be responsible for carrying either possibility forward.
3. Hold a practice session to test connections, play with the software and have some fun.
   Once you figure out if everyone’s connected, play around with the virtual whiteboard and test its functionality. You can also play with Snap Camera or have everyone draw a sketch of someone on the call (and have everyone guess who it could be).
4. Stop your Virtual Sprint after Day 1 if attendance is low or leadership is too disruptive.
   Spare yourself the pain of doing more than you should for a team/executive that remains uncommitted or unconvinced of the model, or wants to do it a different way. Kill it early and get your week back.
5. Test your prototype in the market and not in a simulated, interview environment.
   User and customer opinions do not equate to intended action. They basically tell a narrative that’s unproven in the real world. Find a way to put your prototype into the real world and see how actual humans interact with it (and if they’d pick it up, buy it, etc.)

Have any suggestions on how to make virtual sprints sing like Pavarotti? Post up in the comments below!

Thank you very much for reading. 👍