Episode 3: Diary of a reluctant Remote Design Sprint Facilitator

One of my idols, Bruce Lee spoke life into these iconic words: 

“empty your mind … be formless … shapeless like water … now you put water into a cup, it becomes the cup … you put water into a bottle, it becomes the bottle … put it in a teapot, it becomes the teapot … water can flow … water can crash … be water, my friend.”

 Bruce Lee’s mother style of martial arts was Wing Chun. Later in his evolution as a martial artist he created his own style of fighting called Jeet Kune Do, which he believed would address some of the limitations of traditional martial arts. As an oversimplification of one of the Jeet Kune Do philosophies “Don’t follow any style blindly. Take what works for you and forget the rest”. Now you must be wondering what Kung Fu has to do with the design world. I’m glad you asked! When I was Vice President of a global financial institution’s Agile Transformation, I would use the Bruce Lee quote to get across the point that Agile welcomes change. You can throw uncertainty and changing requirements at the process and, as long as you live the core principles, you can get to a successful outcome.

 Bruce Lee’s words popped back into my mind recently when I was working on a Design Sprint for two large banks in South Africa. These organisations wanted a custom Sprint agenda as they believed that the traditional process would not get them to a desired end state. This wasn’t the first time a client has discussed the Design Sprint process and wanted something more. A client in Thailand wanted a conceptual technical architecture as an output. Another client in Australia wanted customer insight on day 1 of the Sprint. This got me thinking back to my Agile days as I see a lot of parallels with where the Design Sprint community is now and where the Agile community was 5 years ago. One of the key questions which Agile grappled with as it evolved and broke out into numerous variations was: “Do we dogmatically do things by the book or is there room for evolution?”. The current passionate debate between the Scrum and SAFe Agile communities is a great example of the point I’m making.

 I’ve come to realise that I’m not the only one wondering if there is room for creating a custom Design Sprint process. Do we create a process unique to a customer’s needs or do we stick to the tried and trusted? Let me asset my proverbial stake in the ground - I believe that, in this day and age, the “one size fits all” approach to Innovation and Product Design does not work. This firmly puts me in the camp of team “Custom Design Sprint”. Now one of the likely retorts against me lobbying for a customer specific Design Sprint would be “maybe you aren’t communicating the process and benefits well enough?”. My rebuttal to that: a Design Sprint works amazing well when you are running it for a startup or tech client who has an agility and experimentation entrenched in their DNA because it’s part of their culture. However, when you are dealing with a 300 year old bank that still delivers their software according to a Waterfall methodology and only has 2 software release windows a year, the concepts and way of working in a stock-standard Design Sprint are at times a bridge too far to cross. In this scenario I have found that it helps to incorporate different ideation techniques to get the client to “trip over the truth” as Dan and Chip Heath said in their book “The Power of Moments”. In spending a little more time working with the client, we can help them uncover the real problems to be solved. We can also shock them out of their comfort zones and help with shifting towards the beginnings of cultural change, in addition to getting to a successful outcome.

 Over the past 18 months, I’ve run over 18 Design Sprints for clients across the US, UK, Australia, New Zealand, Thailand, Nederland, South Africa, Nigeria, Kenya and the UAE. Over that time period I’ve had the chance to experiment with a few additions to the standard Design Sprint which I feel have improved the quality of output. In the spirit of sharing and advancing the discussion on the future of the Design Sprint, I’ve shared some of the additions which have served me well below:

 The 5 Whys

What is it?

• Originally created at Toyota Motor Corporation, it was a way to evaluate cause and effect in order to get to the root cause of a problem. The theory is that if you don’t solve for the root cause of a problem, then you are solving for a symptom. The problem with solving for a symptom is that the issue will come back in some shape or form at another time.

When to use it?

• When you have a client who isn’t clear on their “Long term goal” statement or the focus of the sprint is too broad. The 5 Whys can help to break down your clients internal organisational structures and politics and get you all on the same page as to why you decided to invest 4 days of your time in the same room.

Personas

What is it?

• Originally championed by Alan Cooper in his book “The inmates are running the asylum”, Personas are fictional characters, which you create in order to represent the different user types that might use your service, product, site, or brand in a similar way. Creating personas will help you to understand your users' needs, experiences, behaviors and goals.

When to use it?

• To my earlier comment on there being no such thing as “One size fits all” approach, in this day and age, I’ve found that sometimes clients try to create “a Swiss Army knife”, instead of a scalpel. To help clients be more specific about who their target market is and what needs the product must solve, I’ve found that a quick Persona creation exercise helps to align the team. This is also is an effective way of focusing the work in each of the Design Sprint exercises.

 Customer Panel Interview

95% of your Customers just want to cut an apple right?

What is it?

• We use “Ask the Expert” during our Design Sprints, but isn’t the ultimate expert the customer? A customer Panel Interview is a short 20 – 30 minutes Q&A session on Day 1 with 5 or so actual/potential customers.

When to use it?

• The point of a Design Sprint is not to waste any time with lengthy theoretical research up front because the first time we get any useful data is when we have a prototype in the hands of a customer. I like to improve the odds of us building a more accurate prototype at the end of the week by asking customers what their pain points are and what they would pay for.

Jobs to be Done

What is it?

• This framework is an approach to developing products based on understanding both the customer's specific goal, or “job,” and the thought processes that would lead that customer to “hire” a product to complete the job.

When to use it?

• Having spent the bulk of my career in Banking, I’ve seen first-hand how teams thought they knew what the customer wanted, only to recoil when their freshly released product was met with customer disinterest. The phrase I coined: “we are being Bankers in a room” meant that we were trying to build products for ourselves and not solving for an actual customer need. I find the Jobs to be done framework helps you get to the crux of why a customer would need your product in the first place.

Lean Canvas

What is it?

• Also called the Business Model Canvas, this tool is a business plan on a page. As championed by Alexander Osterwalder in his book “Business Model Generation”, this is a great way to determine how your idea will make money and how you will measure its success.

When to use it?

• When you are working with a client whose business operates according to detailed governance and project approval gates, they are going to need more than a flashy prototype and user feedback before their board approves a single cent. For these clients it becomes important that the sprint outcomes also anticipates and provides high level answers for CFO and CEO approval.

Customer Value Proposition

What is it?

• The CVP framework gained prominence in Geoffrey Moore’s book “Crossing the Chasm”. There exists a chasm which any new product must cross from initial launch to mass market adoption.

When to use it?

• Startups and new entrants are challenging the status quo of companies with legacies of 100 + years. The initial reaction of these organisations is to copy the competition with very little thought of how their product will differentiate them in the market. The CVP statement is a good way of showing why your product exists and how it’s going to set itself apart in the market.

The above are just some examples which have worked well for me when dealing with clients who are new to Agile or Design Sprints but have been in business for many years. I’ve also successfully used exercises for Growth Hacking Experiment Design, Conceptual Solution Architecture and Pitch Deck Presentations, but more on this in a future article. Having a set of new exercises helps to get clients to think things through at a deeper level and enables a better-quality output from the Design Sprint. As a Design Sprint Facilitator, I’ve seen how easy it can be to hide behind the process and just tick off exercise after exercise, while relying on a flashy prototype to hide gaps in the ideation process. The bulk of the prototypes created in this way will never see the light of day. In a situation like this, your client will have a nice week with you and they will feel energized that they created something amazing. However, back at their day job, there will be many unanswered questions. The organisations ecosystem will necessitate answers for the prototype to make it past day 4 of your Design Sprint.

Until the next entry in my diary, I’ll leave you with this….

“You don’t need sight to see you need vision” – Maxi Jazz, Faithless