The importance of Design Sprints and why they are so expensive
You might have heard what a design sprint is or, at least, headline read about it on some other post or on youtube, but they are the best way to kick-start a new project with some direction on what everybody should focus on, but I will explain to you what is a Design Sprint and all the story behind it, then why it’s so expensive for software companies to do so every time a new project comes along.
According to GV “The sprint is a five-day process for answering critical business questions through design, prototyping, and testing ideas with customers. Developed at GV, it’s a “greatest hits” of business strategy, innovation, behavior science, design thinking, and more — packaged into a battle-tested process that any team can use.”
In this “Sprint” designers, developers, product owners, and anyone that can draw and think basically, enter in a room for 5 days (actually, depends on the type of sprint you make, there is a lot of ways of doing so), and then get out with plenty ideas, prototypes and even more!
Simple, when a new product is created, there is a lot of friction with the design-client-development part, for example, a client has a need which presents to the designer, then they create a design and handed to the development team, if you have any experience working that way, you know that there is a lot of room for mistakes and bad things to come up.
With these types of sprints, you have a choice maker, someone inside the product owner team that cares about the profit and the main idea, a designer who will advocate for beautiful and useful screens, and the developer which will put the roof on their heads in terms of things that can actually be made or not, and other “mortals” that can have an inside on what the end-user would like, use or even consider getting into.
Well, that’s an easy answer… It’s pretty expensive to do so. Why? you may ask, and the reason it’s pretty simple:
1. Sometimes you have one designer working on the company
2. You have more than one designer, that’s good, but they are working on many projects at the same time, so who can they spend 3,4 or 5 days just on one project? That’s a lot of time.
3. The product owner may not have the time to be present, or someone from the “staff”, so there would be an important seat lost.
4. Developers are usually working on their own sprints, solving some bugs or just working within many projects at the same time.
First things first, you need to have the right team and the right place so you won’t get distracted and people will focus on the right things, then we will start, in this example, we will talk about the 5 days sprint:
Monday: According to GV “Monday’s structured discussions create a path for the sprint week. In the morning, you’ll start at the end and agree to a long-term goal. Next, you’ll make a map of the challenge. In the afternoon, you’ll ask the experts at your company to share what they know. Finally, you’ll pick a target: an ambitious but manageable piece of the problem that you can solve in one week.”
Tuesday: “After a full day of understanding the problem and choosing a target for your sprint, on Tuesday, you get to focus on solutions. The day starts with inspiration: a review of existing ideas to remix and improve. Then, in the afternoon, each person will sketch, following a four-step process that emphasizes critical thinking over artistry. You’ll also begin planning Friday’s customer test by recruiting customers that fit your target profile.”
Wednesday: “By Wednesday morning, you and your team will have a stack of solutions. That’s great, but it’s also a problem. You can’t prototype and test them all — you need one solid plan. In the morning, you’ll critique each solution, and decide which ones have the best chance of achieving your long-term goal. Then, in the afternoon, you’ll take the winning scenes from your sketches and weave them into a storyboard: a step-by-step plan for your prototype.”
Thursday: “On Wednesday, you and your team created a storyboard. On Thursday, you’ll adopt a “fake it” philosophy to turn that storyboard into a prototype. A realistic façade is all you need to test with customers, and here’s the best part: by focusing on the customer-facing surface of your product or service, you can finish your prototype in just one day. On Thursday, you’ll also make sure everything is ready for Friday’s test by confirming the schedule, reviewing the prototype, and writing an interview script.”
Friday: “Your sprint began with a big challenge, an excellent team — and not much else. By Friday, you’ve created promising solutions, chosen the best, and built a realistic prototype. That alone would make for an impressively productive week. But you’ll take it one step further as you interview customers and learn by watching them react to your prototype. This test makes the entire sprint worthwhile: At the end of the day, you’ll know how far you have to go, and you’ll know just what to do next.”
The importance of Design Sprints and why they are so expensive
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