Challenge  Reflection – Learning Launch  Being the member of advertising department,our challenge is to improve the workflow within the  department in order to increase sales and to spend advertising budgets on the right campaigns. The  project scope includes 15 employees, as well as the marketing department and IT department, with  whom we work closely. The project is limited to internal resources (i.e., budget and employee time).  The project should not exceed 30 business days and the solution should include an even distribution  of working hours amongst the team members. We will focus on trying to uncover what our team  members and our key stakeholders within the marketing department and IT department, consider to  be ineffective or problematic with regard to the workflow.    Selection  Our team has already gone through several design thinking activities/tools, so we are ready to  experiment  with the learning launch tool. Broadly speaking, the learning launch is an experiment  meant to quickly test an idea and prototype.    Application  For our first learning launch, we focused on the structure/execution of our online tasks. In particular,  we wanted to see if we could structure our tasks, projects, and processes to adapt the methods of  Scrum project management for our work (e.g., time boxed, daily, specific meetings, reviews, etc.) in  an effort to become more agile. This tested our assumption that the structure and execution were  the main causes of our workflow challenge. Our team went through a two-day training. Next, we  went through five workshops to structure our tasks and processes in a more agile way. These two  sessions occurred within in a three-week timeframe. We expected to produce a document with a  clear description of our new, more agile processes/workflow.  For our second learning launch, we focused on gaining clarity about our tasks and priorities. This  tested our assumption that our prioritization of tasks was the main cause of our workflow challenge.  Our team completed an anonymous survey. Additionally, five key stakeholders from the larger  marketing department and IT department also completed an anonymous survey. The surveys  included questions about our new, proposed process, understanding the process and the  prioritization of tasks, and feelings about the change, and were conducted within a one-week  timeframe.  Insight  By applying the learning launch tool, our team identified our assumptions and designed launches to  test these assumptions.   Additionally, we thought through anticipated results, expecting to find that a more agile approach  would improve our workflow, and that both our team and the key stakeholders would be fairly open  to the new prioritization of tasks and process. Our actual results were slightly different from what  we anticipated: while our team was open to the prioritization of tasks and process, the key  stakeholders in the larger marketing department and IT department expressed some concerns.  Moving forward, our team will review this insight and incorporate it into future launch designs. The  ongoing    incorporation of insight is particularly important at this stage, as launches come before a full rollout  in the design thinking timeline.  Approach  Given that our team has already gone through several design thinking activities/tools and are at this  stage in the timeline, the learning launch is the appropriate tool. As previously mentioned, our team  needs to review the insight gained from our first two launches and incorporate this insight into  future launch designs. Future launch designs should reflect insight gained, progress made, and come  closer to a compelling solution ready for full rollout.

