2. Run the Workshop
Think about the shape of the session.
SET THE STAGE.
Explain the parts of the workshop: empathizing, envisioning, and evaluating. Set expectations that the outcome will be a plan for running further experiments. Remind people that the conversation does not end with this workshop—it’s ongoing.
ENGAGE WITH THE DIAGRAM.
Plan exercises that make people absorb the information in the diagram. Have them read through and assess the experiences people currently have.
FACILITATE DIVERGENT THINKING.
Brainstorming is the principal way to generate new ideas. Use the diagram as a springboard into new concepts with some of the techniques discussed here.
CREATE ARTIFACTS.
Sketch, draw, and prototype your ideas quickly. The room should be more like a project war room than a board room (Figure 1-19). Alignment workshops are messy affairs.
SELECT CONCEPTS.
Focus on ideas that have high value to customers and to the organization.
RUN TESTS.
Quickly evaluate the leading concepts, outlined above.
Figure 1-19. An alignment workshop is a working session to prototype and test ideas immediately after they are conceived.
Additionally, plan social activities. In many cases, the group of people you bring together may have never been in the same room together. Include a social event such as an evening dinner. It’s important for continued collaboration that people get to know one another on a personal level. This helps build trust and respect, which goes a long way for the success of the effort.
3. Follow Up
Alignment activities do not end with the workshop. Make sure that you keep the momentum going after the session has ended. Consider ways to continue working with the team.
GET FEEDBACK ON THE SESSION.
Follow up with a brief survey on the effort itself. This can be done verbally at the end of the workshop or by a short online survey. The intent is to learn how you can improve this type of effort in the future.
UPDATE THE DIAGRAM.
Take the feedback you get from the session and update the diagram. Include on it the additions and comments others made. You can also map other outcomes from to the diagram.
DISTRIBUTE MATERIALS.
Collate the output of the workshop and distribute it to others who didn’t participate. Schedule a meeting to present the workshop results to a wider group of stakeholders.
MAKE THE DIAGRAMS VISIBLE.
Create different forms of the diagram and make them visible. Print out large copies for the office space. Create flyers or handouts of the diagram that colleagues can keep by their desks. Integrate it into presentations and other documents internally.
Finally, the effort does not end with the workshop. Ensure that the experiments are actually conducted. Keep the momentum going with an action plan and assigned owners of each experiment. Hold weekly checkpoints to track progress.
Single-Day and Multiday Workshops
The process for an alignment workshop outlined in this lesson—empathy, envisioning, and evaluating—has no time frame. It can be done in a matter of hours or extend for days. I have found that multiday workshops are effective for gaining momentum quickly.
For instance, I have been able to run two or three tests with external test subjects within a few days. The three scenarios in Figure 1-20–Figure 1-22 show approximate schedules for workshops across one, two, and three days, respectively.
Diagrams don’t provide answers, they foster conversations.
Figure 1-20. Example flow of a one-day workshop.
Figure 1-21. Example two-day workshop.
Figure 1-22. Example three-day workshop.
Plan Experiments
Creating new value brings uncertainty. Although you already have initial feedback on your ideas, you still don’t know how the market will react to the proposed innovation in the proposed context of use. It may or may not be adopted.
To address this risk, plan for ongoing experiments. Start by creating hypotheses statements for each of the concepts you’ve decided to move forward. Structurally, there are three parts:
We believe that providing [solution, service] for [individual, customer, user]
Will likely result in [desired outcome, assumed effect]
We will know this when we see [result, measurable impact]
Notice that the hypothesis is phrased as a belief. You won’t know the impact until you introduce it into the market. Also note that if there is not a measurable outcome, you don’t have a testable hypothesis. Be sure to include a metric. Then plan experiments to be conducted over the following weeks. Some specific approaches include the following:
Explanatory video.
Create a video explaining your service and circulate it on the Internet. Measure interest via traffic and response rates.
Landing page (sometimes called a “fake storefront”). Creating a landing page. Announcing the fictitious launch of your proposed service.
Prototype testing.
Simulate a functioning version of your concept. Test this with potential customers and measure concrete aspects such as task completion and satisfaction.
Concierge service.
Start with a simulated version of your service. Invite a very limited set of potential customers to sign up, and then provide the service manually.
Limited product release.
Create a version of your service with only one or two functioning features. Measure the success and appeal of those features.
Combinations of the above are also possible. For instance, after one recent workshop I conducted, we developed both an explanatory video and a landing page (Figure 1-23). Visitors could view the video and then sign up to be notified for a beta release. There was a short, three-question survey we introduced after signing up as well.
From these touchpoints we were able to measure traffic to the website over a given period of time, the number of sign-ups, and responses to our survey. We also spoke with selected individuals to better understand their motivations and what excited them about our value proposition.
Those familiar with the current literature on “lean” techniques will recognize some of these approaches. Other techniques and tests are also possible. For more on defining and running market experiments, see Eric Ries Lean Startup and Ash Maurya’s Running Lean. Also recommended are Lean UX by Jeff Gothelf and The Innovator’s Hypothesis by Michael Schrage.
