Virtual Sprint Week Diary, Day 6 & 7
Weekend Update
Here comes the moment of truth.
Can 6 virtual design sprint teams come together and take on challenges and ideas and make it to the finish line on Friday? Can they get through technical challenges, being a first-time facilitator or any sort of real adversity, when the easier path is just to disengage?
There are so many things where this sort of idea/endeavor can fall apart. I’ve already seen some teams reduced from 7 participants down to 3 or 4. New facilitators, without a clear road map, need help getting set up with online meeting rooms and facilitating activities. Unless I’m on my game, there’s a plethora or reasons why our volunteers can tap out and call it a day.
That’s why I’m holding these crazy hours till 1:30 am to get the work that needs to get done, done. Whether its presentation decks, side conversations in Slack or on the phone, leaving an open calendar for anyone to schedule a meeting, or proactively planning a social media campaign when the virtual sprint ends, I want this endeavor to have the best chance of succeeding.
I’m also the last line of defense. If things go wrong or turn out unexpectedly, I have to own up to it. If the presentation deck doesn’t match the overall draft schedule I had sent out two days before, that’s on me. When it’s over, I want to look back and know that I didn’t make excuses or blame others. I want it to be my win, or my loss.
Yeah, yeah… what’s going on with the teams?
Team F is really coming along. They’re going through the activities much faster than I had thought, and the team Mural has so much action going that it looks like it’s being fast-forwarded. I barely had time to finish my HMW questions listening to Ross Chapman’s interview on the referral network before Brian Leung grabbed everything I was working on. I thought I had lost my notes for a second.
Teams D and E are about to come online as of this diary entry. Sabrina, Saadia and Lukasz are all gearing up to get things going. Team E in particular has got some great momentum behind it, and am really looking forward to seeing how an experienced and trained design sprint facilitator work together on a challenge.
Teams A, B, and C have all been hit with reductions in volunteers. They’re still functional, but I’ll have to fill in for some of the lost roles. I’ll be helping one team with facilitation while offering my services as a user experience researcher (UXR) for the other. That should be a lot of fun. :)
That’s it, because it’s time for sleep! If you’re following us on social media, give any of our practitioners a shout-out this week. We’d love to know if your’e paying attention and hopefully sharing what we’re doing with others.
See you tomorrow!
