The Lean Internship
How Made by Many brings Lean to its internship program
A successful internship program requires reflection and iteration.
It adapts accordingly and encompasses input for the intended end-user: the intern.
Using a prescriptive process to plan an internship (like waterfall development) neither accounts for errors nor allows pivots. An interactive design approach, on the other hand, involves both the studio and the intern. It de-risks the chance of creating a program that isn’t mutually beneficial.
Co-designing an internship program is allowing us to collect better insight and arrive at agreements quicker. We reduce time spent in comprehensive documentation like company manuals and more time collaborating towards our common goal — launching a product in three months.
By engaging interns in the development of their own program, we improve not only their experience but our own. Interns are empowered to create their own future, and in the process we get a chance to practice and improve how we teach our process.
Three Tips for Making your Internship more Lean, Less Waterfall
- Get out of your building before you plan. Talk to employers and former interns about their internship experiences. It is better to find if your ideas are missing the mark early before you dedicate resources building a program nobody wants.
- Cultivate a shared understanding of the internship during recruitment. Share your goals, values, desires, and concerns to manage expectations throughout the interview process. During orientation revisit this discussion and feel free to change your answers (if necessary).
- Use a plan, but expect it to change. Before the internship begins, share the master plan. Throughout the internship, refer to the schedule and question its validity. Break it down with weekly objective that correspond to the larger goal. Refer back to the plan weekly; pivot and re-plan accordingly, and do this with your interns.
Check out Made by Many interns’ journeys:
