Virtual Sprint Week Diary, Day 4

Thursday, November 8:

We’re nearly there.

There’s a lot of last minute things to do… subject matter expert interviews, finalizing sprint week schedules, setting up Trello to-do lists and discussion guides for sprint teams to localize discussions about their prototypes. We haven’t even gotten to the actual design sprints themselves!

The great thing is that each day brings a new surprise. Today, it was Team F (Design Sprint Referral Network, Group 3) that came together in remarkable fashion. For the entire week, there was this sense of distance and hit/miss activity that I feared I helped to propagate. But after our initial kickoff this evening, it’s pretty clear that it’s easily one of the better assembled sprint teams we have going into next week.

And here’s the thing… I know that the people who are volunteering their time for this endeavor are INCREDIBLY gifted and talented. They bring some amazing professionalism and candor to each engagement that I feel extremely lucky to be part of it. And it’s that aspect of this whole event that’s driving me to do as much as I can and not let anyone down.

It’s also probably why I’ve been up till 1:00 am every day for the past two weeks. But I’m not complaining… I’m loving every minute of this.

Exercises in Improvisation

It’s becoming abundantly clear that this entire pilot is a huge exercise in experimentation and improvisation. Whether it’s the scarcity of team members being able to engage the team on Design Sprint activities, or the sheer lack of time you’d normally have to get interviews and candidates together, there’s a definite thread of ‘how can we achieve this?’ going on.

The great this is… I haven’t encountered anyone yet that seems this as a deterrent. I think I’ve actually gotten some folks upset when I’ve proposed a sort of ‘kill switch’ if they feel the Design Sprint is a waste of their time. It’s like I made a *really* bad Dad joke, unprompted by anyone or anything. So I’m shutting up and rolling with the notion that everyone is putting their best forward to see where this goes.

What I think will come out of it are some challenges to some of the approaches to getting things done within a remote Design Sprint. It’ll be interesting to write about them when this ends, and to illuminate learnings about the ‘right’ way versus the ‘potential’ way of doing any particular design sprint activity or process.

I’m pondering continuing these diary entries through the weekend. I probably should. A couple of Sprint teams are going to be starting theirs on Sunday afternoon my time, and I have no doubt that I’ll be working late into the night on Friday and Saturday.

Unless everything goes smooth like butter and everything gets done on time, you’ll likely see more banter from me on Medium. :)

Thanks for reading, and we’ll see you tomorrow.