Sprint is a
methodology used to find solutions to problems in just five days. Jake Knapp
divided the chapters of his books by days of the week; Monday is all about
planning, defining the problem, and choosing an objective, Tuesday is the time
when we start looking for ideas to solve the problem, and Wednesday talks about
evaluating the ideas, and choosing the best solutions proposed by the team.
In the morning, we are going to have to canalize our inner Meryl Streep, because we are going to be taking tougher decisions than Sophie’s Choice. Usually, everyday starts with a meeting where everyone gives his or her points, and nothing happens after it. Sprint recommends us another way to do so. Instead of having everyone arguing about whose idea is better, the team observes all the ideas, they will be displayed as if they were paintings in a museum.
After the team has the chance of observing them for a while they will have the chance of remarking the most interesting parts in every idea. This should be achieved almost anonymously. Then, for the first time, the team will have the time to chat about the best points of each solution. After this brief moment of talking, we get the chance of remaining quiet again for some more time; we have to vote for the best solution. If there’s a tie, the decision maker will have to use his super-vote.
By having this process in silence, the team feels more confident on making observations and giving negative feedback, without having the fear of hurting someone’s feelings. Honesty is key on getting a real solution for a problem.
Congrats! If you got to this part, you already know your solution! But it is still way too soon to start prototyping. There’s a tool in cinematography called Story Boarding. This tool helps you to understand graphically how do you want your script to be seen as. We will use it to generate a 15 squares user story, imagining what do we want the user to do with our technical solution. We have to show every step from the moment the user gets to know the solution to the moment he/she gives us feedback about it.
Although prototyping is something that we are good at,
and the fastest way to solve the problem in our heads, we have to be sure that
we are working on the best solution possible. By analyzing every solution, and
remarking the most important parts of it, we can assure to have an item that
will be used. After having picked a solution, we have to pretend to be the
customer, and if we get a good experience from the solution, we can hope other
people do it as well.
