Mind mapping – a Design Sprint Approach

Challenge    I am a 02 years old product manager at a young startup. When I joined my company to replace  my predecessor, I took over a research and development department where the chaos was  king: no process, no organization, low confidence from most of the management, teams of  30 young (mostly interns). Naturally delivering product making enter money on the bank  account of the company was the ultimate goal of my job. But there were also a lot of excellent  points: the company was not lacking resources, all the engineers were very talented, the  teams were following agile methodologies, and we had the ambition to push to the level of  industrial grade four products.    If I do not detail here the management part of my department, I think it is essential to frame  the story about the tools I chose to refine my products quickly.    Selection    To tackle the second challenges of creating great products I started to look for the most fitting  tool. When you look for things they start to pop from anywhere around you, and I add the  chance that one of my young engineers watch a video on YouTube about Google Design  Sprint. If you do not know Design Sprint, for me, they are in direct line with design thinking,  but in a readier to use form. The big idea is to go through a whole design thinking process in  a five-day (and step) process: Understand, Diverge, Decide, Prototype and Validate. So, I  started to study the concept, and we quickly decided to go for a trial.    I the next section I will focus more my argumentation about the Understand and Decide steps  of the Design Sprint as they are the one matching the Mind Mapping tool presented in this  course.    Application    So, we decided to do the first trial on a Design sprint. We gathered all the tools required, first  the easy ones: post-it, pens, whiteboards and meetings rooms. In second the human capital  was the most difficult to motivate, but I find a way to convince the COO to join us for the  Understand step and here the magic happens. The purpose of the understand step is to  represent the system you work on by listing on one side all the actors and mapping all the  action they do until they reach the desired output. Usually, you try to work on a specific  section or sector of the whole map. My COO took a pen and immediately started to draw on  a giant diagram on the windows we use as whiteboard modeling his entire business process  from A to Z, commenting and detailing each piece of information. The exercise was so great  that in a second step we hijack his teams who join us and completed the drawing accurately  by specifying few points.    We kept the diagram on the windows and continued the activity. We go through the diverge  step where we started to explore potential solutions to the problem individually using a mix  of researches and brainstorming, and finally, we arrive at the Decide step where you have to

vote for the best ideas. This point reminds me precisely what was described as a “museum”  in the course. On one wall was exposed the master piece of mapping from the COO and his  team. And on another one, a lot of small ideas, each of them like a paint trying to solve the  significant issues. After each participant pitched his ideas, you keep a moment to re-visit the  museum and start to vote for the best details of each idea.    Insight    The Understand and Decides step where enlightening for me from many points of view. I  profoundly believe this experience was one the most enriching one from a professional point  of view. It teaches me a tremendous quantity of things. First, you know nothing about the  people for who you are designing a product until you meet and interview them. Secondly, the  mind needs space to express his ideas in a precise manner. A piece of paper or a computer  screens are not adequate for such a task you need to spread information enough to be able  to physically step back from it or come close to get details. At least, when you work on a  problem, you must multiply the potential answer at an individual level but also as a group one  and try to do the sum of the best. It is at the price of this diversity of solution and exchange  that you achieve to find solution graded real innovations.    Approach    Next time I will need to apply such a tool I will do my best to keep in mind the lesson learned.  The diversity is a critical element in the team composition. Surfing on the success of the first  series of Design Sprint, I will do my best to include a better variety of profiles in the team,  mixing: ages, gender, nationality, jobs, and positions in the company. The purpose will be to  get the best quality of output in the diverge and decide steps.    To be honest, the mind mapping part with its museum is already quite good and can be only  refined again and again until its execution is smooth. Sometimes, we get stuck in the  modelization of the process, or we miss few inputs, but we always figure out a quick way to  find the information we are looking for.    If you are curious about the methodology, I invite you to complete this course by doing extra  research on the Design Sprint.

