Can we reinvent design sprint for a remote working world?
Anakin was worried. As the Product Engineering Lead, he had to deliver a prototype of the underwriting solution in the next four weeks and they had not even begun. The reason that they had not begun was that they were taking a different approach. At first he had been doubtful, then had come round to the view that the proposed approach made sense. Then, the world had changed quickly. For the worse. Much worse!
Anakin decided to call Shreya. She was the Product Manager for the solution. It had been her idea to use the different approach. At first, the term “design sprint” had sounded strange to Anakin. He was very familiar with agile sprint. In fact, that’s how he did almost all his product engineering work. He had also completed an e-learning course on design thinking. Design sprint had sounded like some kind of hybrid between the two. That’s what he had told Shreya. She had laughed at his suggestion and said —
Shreya — “Well, you could say that. Design sprint is in fact about applying design thinking in a time-constrained, five-phase process with the aim of reducing the risk when bringing a new product, service or a feature to the market.”
Anakin — “Okay Shreya, but tell me one thing. Why can’t we use an agile scrum sprint approach of first creating a product backlog of user stories to be developed, scoping them in iterations and developing them in monthly sprints? It is the approach that we have taken earlier and it has worked quite well. So, why change our approach?”
Shreya — “Fair question Anakin. Do you remember our discussion with the underwriting head Vicky. She had said that she wants a platform to make her underwriters more efficient, that is increase their speed of underwriting decisions and more effective, that is improve their quality of underwriting decisions. Beyond this problem statement, it is our job to figure out what needs to be built.”
(Note: Insurance underwriting decisions are about whether to accept a risk submitted and at what price to accept the risk.)
Anakin — “Yes, I do. However, in the past too, we had sometimes come across similar situations. In those projects, we had first spent a couple of months doing high level requirements in inception and then run monthly iterations of requirement, build and test of the solution during elaboration.”
Shreya — “You are right. That was certainly an improvement over the earlier waterfall method of software engineering. However, even then, sometimes we had found after 6 months that some stakeholders had not been on board about the scope of the solution. Sometimes, it was even worse and we found while planning to go-live after a year of development that the business priorities had changed.”
Anakin — “I believe that a lot of these problems stem from not following the agile scrum methodology diligently, but by making all kinds of compromises that finally ends up compromising the promise of agile.”
Shreya — “I can’t disagree with you Anakin. In this case, if the problems to be solved were clearly defined and we could create a backlog of requirements, I too believe that a true agile development approach might have been better. However, here we only have a high level problem statement. We need to first map the problem, select the target process to re-imagine, look for various possible solutions, choose the best solution ideas, create a storyboard, develop a prototype and validate with users.”
Shreya had gone on to explain in detail how each of the five steps of the design sprint process needed to be done. She had shared a set of slides explaining the approach, including a summary slide shown below.
After that, they had met, along with rest of the team and discussed their preparation to conduct the design sprint beginning after a couple of weeks. Meanwhile, a new disease COVID-19 was quickly spreading across the world including in the city where they were to conduct their design sprints.
Soon a lock-down had been imposed for 30 days. Within the next 10 days, social distancing and working from home were the norm.
Presently, Anakin was worried. He called Shreya with the intention to propose that they speak with Vicky and postpone the plan. Perhaps also alter the approach. Shreya picked up her phone after a couple of rings.
Anakin — “Hello Shreya. How are you? I hope that you and everyone else in your family is safe.”
Shreya — “Hi Anakin. Yes, we are good. I hope the same is the case with you. Listen, it’s good that you called me. Incidentally, I was about to call you.”
Anakin — “Oh! Is it to discuss about postponing or changing our approach from design sprint?”
Shreya — “Well, yes and no. I mean, a no to any postponement. Yes, we have to make some tweeks. I have been working on a plan. Now, I need your help to implement that.”
Anakin — “What kind of plan? How can I help?”
Shreya — “We have to conduct a Virtual Design Sprint.”
Anakin — “A Virtual Design Sprint! What is that?”
To be continued …
Postscript: This is the fifth article in a series. The earlier ones were —
