Journal tags: sprint

The sixth episode of the Clearleft podcast is now live: design sprints!

It comes in at just under 24 minutes, which feels just about right to me. Once again, it’s a dive into one topic that asks “What is this?”, “What does this mean?”, and “Where did this come from?”

I could’ve invited just about any of the practitioners at Clearleft to join me on this one, but I setttled on Chris, who’s always erudite and sharp.

I also asked ex-Clearleftie Jerlyn to have a chat. You’ll notice that’s been a bit of theme on the Clearleft podcast; asking people who used to work at Clearleft to share their thoughts. I’d quite like to do at least an episode—maybe even a whole season—featuring ex-Clearlefties exclusively. So many great people have worked at the agency of the years, Jerlyn being a prime example.

I’d also like to do an episode some time with the regular contractors we’ve worked with at Clearleft. On this episode, I asked the super-smart Tom Prior to join me.

I recorded those three chats over the past couple of weeks. And it was kind of funny how there was, of course, a looming presence over the topic of design sprints: Jake Knapp. I had sent him an email too but I got an auto-responder saying that he was super busy and would take a while to respond. So I kind of mentally wrote it off.

I spent last week assembling and editing the podcast with the excellent contributions from Jerlyn, Chris, and Tom. But it did feel a bit like Waiting For Godot the way that Jake’s book was being constantly referenced.

Then, on the weekend, Godot showed up.

Jake said he’d have time for a chat on Wednesday. Aargh! That’s the release date for the podcast! I don’t suppose Monday would work?

Very graciously, Jake agreed to a Monday chat (at an ungodly early hour in his time zone). I got an excellent half hour of material straight from the horse’s mouth—a very excitable and fast-talking horse, too.

That left me with just a day to work the material into the episode! I felt like a journalist banging on the keyboard at midnight, ready to run into the printing room shouting “Stop the press!” …although I’m sure the truth is that nobody but me would notice if an episode were released a little late.

Anyway, it all got done in the end and I think it turned out pretty great!

Have a listen for yourself and see what you make of it.

This was the final episode of the first season. I’ll now take a little break from podcasting as I plot and plan for the next season. Watch this space! …and, y’know, subscribe to the podcast.

Our hack week at CERN to reproduce the WorldWideWeb browser was five days long. That’s also the length of a design sprint. So …was what we did a design sprint?

I’m going to say no.

On the surface, our project has all the hallmarks of a design sprint. A group of people who don’t normally work together were thrown into an instense week of problem-solving and building, culminating in a tangible testable output. But when you look closer, the journey itself was quite different. A design sprint is typical broken into five phases, each one mapped on to a day of work:

1. Understand and Map
2. Demos and Sketch
3. Decide and Storyboard
4. Prototype
5. Test

There was certainly plenty of understanding, sketching, and prototyping involved in our hack week at CERN, but we knew going in what the output would be at the end of the week. That’s not the case with most design sprints: figuring out what you’re going to make is half the work. In our case, we knew what needed to be produced; we just had to figure out how. Our process looked more like this:

1. Understand and Map
2. Research and Sketch
3. Build
4. Build
5. Build

Now you could say that it’s a kind of design sprint, but I think there’s value in reserving the term “design sprint” for the specific five-day process. As it is, there’s enough confusion between the term “sprint” in its agile sense and “design sprint”.

James and I went to Ipswich last week for work. But this wasn’t part of an ongoing project—this was a short intense one-week feasibility study.

Leon from Suffolk Libraries got in touch with us about a project they’re planning to carry out soon: replacing their self-service machines with something more up-to-date. But rather than dive into commissioning the project straight away, he wisely decided to start with a one-week sprint to figure out exactly what the project would need to go ahead.

So that’s what James and I did. It was somewhat similar to the design sprint popularised by GV. We ensconced ourselves in the Ipswich library and packed a whole lot of work into five days. There was lots of collaboration, lots of sketching, lots of iterative design, and some rough’n’ready code. It was challenging, but a lot of fun. Also: we stayed in a pretty sweet AirBnB.

You can read all about it in our case study. You can also read all about from Leon’s point of view on his blog:

I can’t recommend this kind of research sprint enough. We got a report, detailed technical validation of an idea, mock ups and a plan for how to proceed, while getting staff and stakeholders involved in the project – all in the space of 5 days.

I think this approach makes a lot of sense. By the end of the week, James and I felt pretty confident about estimating times and costs for the full project. Normally trying to estimate that kind of thing can be a real guessing game. But with the small of investment of one week’s worth of effort, you get a whole lot more certainty and confidence.

Have a look for yourself.