Ready, Set, Sprint!
BREAKING: The office is buzzing with today's news. Reporters and film crew jump out of their seats to go out and grab footage and interviews as fast as possible. Editors double and triple check facts to ensure accuracy. Producers decide which stories are the most important to tell and write the script for anchors to read. Videographers edit all their footage from the day and reporters edit their one-minute and a half video on Premiere Pro within just a few hours to show thousands of viewers on live television.
As a recent graduate with a bachelor’s degree in broadcast journalism, this fast-paced environment isn’t unfamiliar. Everyone in a newsroom is required to think quickly on their feet and collaborate as a team to ensure the newscast is ready for television. Each person plays a different role with different tasks while creating one show. Communication is crucial to make sure everyone understands the goals and execution for the final result.
This fast-paced process isn’t too far-fetched from the process of design sprints.
WHAT ARE DESIGN SPRINTS?
Design sprints are a collection of methods and processes that are put together across a *short* period of time to foster collaboration and innovation.
In the first chapter of “Sprint: How to Solve Big Problems and Test New Ideas in Just Five Days,” writers Jake Knapp, John Zeratsky and Braden Kowitz break down what a sprint is and how it’s executed.
“The sprint gives our startups a superpower: They can fast-forward into the future to see their finished product and customer reactions, before making any expensive commitments.” — Knapp, Kowitz and Braden 16
The steps behind a design sprint include:
- Understand and Define: The team comes together to understand the problem at hand, define the challenge and set long-term goals.
- Diverge and Decide: The participants generate a wide-range of ideas individually and then share and discuss then as a group. They explore various solutions and potential approaches to the problem.
- Prototype: The team builds a high-fidelity prototype which can be a physical mock-up by using the selected idea.
- Reflect and Report: This crucial step helps the team decide the outcome of the sprint, identify what worked well and areas that need improvement through documenting and writing.
As I’m learning more about design sprints, I notice there has been a lot of discussion on collaboration. Similar to a newsroom, in design sprints a team collaborates by working independently to share goals, ideas, execution methods and then come together to share these ideas and curate a plan to complete the project.
The team members in a design spring include a decider, facilitator, marketing expert, customer service expert, design expert, tech expert and financial expert.
Personal User Manuals
A tool that distinguishes the collaboration in a design sprint setting from a newsroom is the use of personal user manuals for coworkers to better understand how each person works.
“Personal User Manuals (also known as 'Personal Operating Manuals') are short descriptions of your background, values, and communication style. All team members should complete and exchange a Personal User Manual to help teammates better understand each other.” — Anna Brown
The benefits of a personal user manual include:
- Build psychological safety
- Improve communication
- Provide insight to individual motivations
- Avoid misunderstandings.
- Foster empathy
- Improve collaboration
Design sprints require collaboration in order to quickly develop a product or solution. Collaboration is so effective that 86% of employees in leadership positions blame lack of collaboration as the top reason for workplace failures.
With more than 50% of US workers saying their jobs rely on collaboration, understanding how to utilize personal user models and collaborative design sprints can help you enhance future work environments and lead various projects.
Works Cited
Boskamp, E. (2023). 35+ compelling workplace collaboration statistics [2023]: The importance of teamwork. Retrieved from https://www.zippia.com/advice/workplace-collaboration-statistics/
Brown, A. (2022). Retrieved from https://futureforum.com/2022/07/15/personal-user-manual/
Knapp, Jake; Zeratsky, John; Kowitz, Braden. Sprint: How to Solve Big Problems and Test New Ideas in Just Five Days (p. 16). Simon & Schuster. Kindle Edition.
Lo, G. (2021). Retrieved from https://uxplanet.org/whats-a-design-sprint-and-why-is-it-important-f7b826651e09
Featured Image by Mohamed Hassan from Pixabay