Diagram the problem with “MAP” and ask the experts in a sprint.
A simple diagram representing lots of complexity to solve the problem statement
A map will show customers moving through your service or product. Not quite as thrilling, but every bit as useful.
The map is a big deal throughout the week of design sprint. At the end of the day on Monday, you’ll use the map to narrow your broad challenge into a specific target for the sprint. Later in the week, the map will provide structure for your solution sketches and prototype.
The common elements?
- Each map is user centered, with a list of key actors on the left.
- Each map is a story, with a beginning, a middle, and an end.
- And, no matter the business, each map is simple. The diagrams are composed of nothing more than words, arrows, and a few boxes.
Make a map
You’ll draw the first draft of your map on Monday morning, as soon as you’ve
written down your long-term goal and sprint questions. in. When we’re drawing our maps, we follow these steps:
- List the actors (on the left) — They are the important characters, most often different kinds of customer.
- Write the ending(on the right) — It’s usually a lot easier to figure out the end than the middle of the story.
- Words and arrows in between — The map should be functional.
- Keep it simple — Your map should have from five to around fifteen steps.
- Ask for help — As you draw, you should keep asking the team, “Does this map look right?”
You should be able to make the first quick draft of your map in thirty to sixty minutes.
At this point, you will have reached an important milestone.
- You have a rough draft of your long-term goal, sprint questions, and map.
- You can already see the basic outline of your sprint: the unknowns you’ll try to answer in Friday’s test and the plot line of your solutions and prototype.
For the rest of the day, you’ll interview the experts on your team to gather more information about the problem space. As you go, you’ll add more questions, make updates to your map, and perhaps even adjust the phrasing of your long-term goal.
Your team knows a lot about your challenge. Somebody knows the most about your customers; somebody knows the most about the technology, the marketing, the business, and so on.
Most of Monday afternoon is devoted to an exercise we call Ask the Experts:
a series of one-at-a-time interviews with people from your sprint team, from
around your company, and possibly even an outsider or two with special knowledge.
As you go, each member of your team will take notes individually. You’ll be gathering the information you need to choose the target of your sprint, while gathering fuel for the solutions you sketch on Tuesday.
Nobody knows everything!
In the sprint, you’ve got to gather it and make sense of it, and asking the experts is the best and fastest way to do that.
For your own team, you probably have a hunch about the right people already. We think it’s useful to have at least one expert who can talk about each of these topics:
Strategy
Start by talking to the Decider. Some useful questions to ask: “What will make this project a success?” “What’s our unique advantage or opportunity?” “What’s the biggest risk?”
Voice of the customer
Who talks to your customers more than anyone else? Who can explain the
world from their perspective?
How things Work
Who understands the mechanics of your product? On your sprint team, you’ve got the people building your product or delivering your idea — the designer, the engineer, the marketer. well. We frequently talk with two, three, or four “how things work” experts to help us understand how everything fits together.
Previous Efforts
Often, someone on the team has already thought about the problem in detail. That person might have an idea about the solution, a failed experiment, or maybe even some work in progress. Talking to these experts reminds the team of things they knew but may have forgotten. It always yields a few surprising insights
Once the expert is ready, we follow a simple script to keep things moving:
- Introduce the sprint — If the expert isn’t part of the sprint team, tell her what the sprint is about.
- Review the whiteboards — Give the expert a two-minute tour of the long-term goal, sprint questions, and map.
- Open the door — Ask the expert to tell you everything she knows about the challenge at hand.
- Ask questions — important, ask the expert to tell you where you’ve got it wrong. Can she find anything on your map that’s incomplete? Would she add any sprint questions to your list? What opportunities does she see? Useful phrases are “Why?” and “Tell me more about that.”
- Fix the whiteboards — Add sprint questions. Change your map. If necessary, update your long-term goal. Your experts are here to tell you what you didn’t know (or forgot) in the morning, so don’t be shy about making revisions.
After this we’ll continue with “ HOW MIGHT WE” exercise to Choose one specific target for the rest of your sprint’s efforts.
Thanks for Reading!
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