Abramad Teleworking Solution Package
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Abramad is a cloud computing company that was born in 2019 with the shared investment of two giant Iranian Software and Hardware corporations System Group and Remis. This company provides innovative cloud infrastructure services and seeks to meet the IT needs of its subscribers by delivering a variety of cloud services through innovative approaches. Abramad’s enterprise vision is to solve its customers IT related needs by using new methods and providing a diverse set of cloud services with the combination of hardware and software services in the Cloud Computing context (ITaaS).
The Story Behind Of Abramad Design Sprint
Like the other countries in the world, Iran has been dealing with crises since the COVID-19 virus pandemic has occurred. Businesses in Iran have made new decisions about how their employees work since last month. The majority of the businesses decided to provide teleworking experience for their entire organizations via variable communication tools such as messenger, video call platform, etc. The new situation has led the Abramad company to generate an idea based on a teleworking solution for medium-sized businesses that have suffered the most from this crisis. These medium-sized businesses specifically include organizations with fewer than eighty employees and didn’t have good enough IT infrastructure and knowledge. So we decided to run Design Sprint in order to define Abramad teleworking solution package.
Team:
Mohammadreza Mousavi: Design Sprint Coach, Facilitator
Aidin Ziapour: Design Sprint Coach, Facilitator
Farid Fooladi: Adviser, Decider
Rouzbeh Sahebkar: Sales Manager
Pouria Estaki: Business Development Expert
Saeed Kazemi: Technical Product Manager
Hamid Yazdaninezhad: Customer Relationship Expert, Decider
Day Zero
Mini Problem Framing Workshop
Abramad's Design Sprint Outcome Map
Superhero | Exercise
To start the conversation we all introduce ourselves using the Superhero icebreaker. We like this exercise because it shifts our mindset from its current state to a potentially positive one focused on the future.
Even if this may be entirely fictional, it also helps uncover similarities between Abramad's Design Sprint team members. After 10 minutes we found that who is multitasking (Pouria), who has a crazy idea (Roozbeh), and who has decision-making skills (Hamid).
It also helps us, as facilitators, map the roles and strengths to the people in the room.
Superhero | Direction
Why: to uncover strengths and highlight similarities between people.
Two minutes to draw a superhero, or a superpower.
Eighth minutes for everyone to introduce themselves as superheroes to the group.
Superhero | Outcomes
What is the business need | Exercise
At this phase, participants presented their ideas to express the company's business needs according to the high-level vision and strategy, market opportunity, and existing potential.
First, they were asked to write business needs separately with silent brainstorming practice. As a facilitator we wanted to gain a clear understanding of their current business needs, so we asked everyone in the Abramad design sprint team to write down their answers to this question:
“ What is your business need? Why do you want to launch this kind of solution to the market? ”
After everybody wrote their answers, those needs determined as an abstract or concrete item, and then
During this phase, great efforts were made to achieve a shared business needs with the help of all participants. Finally, After reviewing the needs and related themes, the team came up with the business need statement.
What is the business need | Direction
Why: to get specific answers and align everyone on the same need.
Four minutes Individual brainstorming
Four minutes Abstraction laddering
Two minutes Affinity mapping
What is the business need | Individual Brainstorming
What is your business need?
Why do you want to launch this kind of solution in the market?
What is the business need | Abstraction Laddering - Affinity Mapping
Abstraction Laddering
What is the business need | Outcome
“Abramad Company wants to target the SMB enterprises market by using current services and creating new services centered on VDI (virtual Desktop Infrastructure) service. Also it wants to improve the teleworking culture in SMB market.”
What have we tried | Exercise
After understanding the needs of the present, we wanted to take a good look into the past so that we know what mistakes to avoid, what challenges to expect in the future, and most importantly, what worked before.
To explore the team members history, we asked the team three questions:
“ What are some steps, actions they tried? ”
“ What were some small wins? ”
“ What were some challenges they faced? ”
Everyone answered the questions individually, in silence, one idea per sticky note.
What have we tried | Direction
Why: to have everyone share what they know, to highlight what worked and what didn’t.
Nine minutes Individual Brainstorming
Twenty minutes Affinity mapping
What have we tried | Outcome
What do you want to achieve | Exercise
After understanding the pressing needs of the present and the challenges of the past, we were finally ready to define the future. So we asked the team to answer this question individually, in silence, one idea per sticky note:
“ What do you want to achieve? ”
What do you want to achieve | Direction
Why: to align the team towards the same direction.
Three minutes Individual Brainstorming
Six minutes Abstraction Laddering
One minute Vote
What have we tried | Outcome
Who is affected by the problem | Exercise
At this session, the participants determined personas for the idea that they wanted to create. After individual brainstorming, two persona selected as the key items. The participants then described their shared challenges, pain, behavior, and goals for deep understanding.
Who is affected by the problem | Direction
Why: to empathize with the client, change the perspective and align on the same understanding.
Five minutes Individual Brainstorming
Five minutes Proto-Persona
Five minutes discussion
Who is affected by the problem | Selected Personas
How are they achieving their goals today | Exercise
At this point, after identifying the challenges, pain points, behaviors, and goals of the users, they decided to draw a customer journey map. Customer journey maps help identify the right user processes to reach the end goal and suggest solutions for each of the relevant solutions depending on the user's needs.
How are they achieving their goals today | Direction
Why: to spot barriers, pain points and ultimately opportunities.
Storytelling
User Journey Map
HMW | Exercise
Team tried to reframe the insight statements as How Might We questions to turn those challenges into opportunities for design. Team use the How Might We format because it suggests that a solution is possible and because they offer you the chance to answer them in a variety of ways. A properly framed How Might We doesn’t suggest a particular solution, but gives you the perfect frame for innovative thinking.
HMW | Direction
Why: to spot the opportunity and ignite ideas.
One minute to review everything
Five minutes Individual Brainstorming
Four minutes revise and Vote
HMWs | Outcome
Challenge Statement | Outcome
Understand:
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Long-Term Goal & Questions | Exercise
This activity is about looking into the future and creating a plan of action for the Abramad Teleworking project. As a facilitator, we help the team formulate a long-term goal by asking open-ended questions like:
What is the purpose of this teleworking project?
Why is this worth pursuing?
What milestones do we want to attain in 6 to 12 months or 3 to 5 years?
What impact will we have?
Who will benefit from our success, and how?
When an agreement has been reached on a common goal, it was the time to consider Sprint questions. As a facilitator, we help the team envision the Teleworking project's success and all possible roadblocks or reasons for failure by asking open-ended questions. Finally, when the team came to a shared understanding of questions, with our guidance they agreed on two main questions.
Long-Term Goal & Questions | Direction
Why: to looking into the future and envision the project success.
Set a long-term goal
Set Sprint questions
Long-Term Goal And Questions | Outcome
Lightening Talks | Exercise
Lightning Talks are a core Design Sprint method and a powerful opportunity to build ownership in the Design Sprint challenge. Depending on our goal and deliverables we spent almost 1.5 hours on this activity. Topics were covered such important aspects of project vision and business goals, the voice of the user, competitor audit, and technology consideration and opportunities
Lightening Talks | Direction
Why: to gain more knowledge about the user, technology, market, etc.
Determine which topics are relevant for your challenge
Identify speakers from your team for each topic and explain the scope and length of their presentation
Consider creating a slide template for speakers to use and incorporating the content into your Design Sprint slides
Follow up with each presenter to be sure they are prepared in time
Ideate
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Ideate
Lightning Demos | Exercise
In the original process, half of Tuesday is reserved for Lightning Demos. By assigning Lightning Demos research as homework on Monday we can jump straight to the presentations, thus, cutting the required time from 3 hours to 30–45 minutes.
At this stage, the participants discussed the company's solutions based on the revenue and past experiences of the company. At this point, participants were asked to talk about other solutions. After the conversation, the team members prepared for the idea.
Mini LDJ | Exercise
Creative problem solving and clear decision-making is what separates a good team from the best. The problem with anything that requires creative & critical thinking however, is that it’s easy to get lost, lose focus, and fall into the trap of having useless, open-ended, unstructured discussions. Projects stall, teams, lose momentum, and everything goes over-budget, causing many products and services to be released late and full of compromises, all because the team is so fatigued from working on endless, unprioritized problems. The solution:
Replace all open, unstructured discussions with a clear process with LDJ.
Mini LDJ | Direction
Why: to generate as many idea as possible for selected target and HMW and select the best ones which has great impact on the challenge.
Ten minutes idea generation for answering HMW.
Capture all the ideas on the whiteboard.
Voting time. Each person has 5 votes. Decider has 6.
Choosing best ideas using Impact-Effort Diagram
Storyboard | Exercise
The Storyboard method unifies the entire Design Sprint team on the prototype concept and helps the group make critical decisions during the prototyping process. A Storyboard maps out each step of the experience that you want to test and clarifies the pieces you need to prototype.
At this point in the Design Sprint, the team often begins to brainstorm aspects of the product, some of which might be outside the scope of your Sprint questions and prototype. Capture these ideas for later, but keep the team focused on exactly what needs to be built for successful user testing.
Scriptwriting is important at this stage as it helps align the storyboard to the user interview and clarifies the structure of what mocks or experiences will be needed in the testing. The script can also help create a plan for the Validate phase.
Storyboard | Direction
Why: to unifies the entire Design Sprint team on the prototype concept and helps the group make critical decisions during the prototyping process.
The facilitator draws the Storyboard on the whiteboard or poster in a grid
Narrow in on four or five key moments that will help illustrate the solution
You don’t need to sketch out every single user flow or use case. Just focus on what you need to create to get accurate user feedback
Figure out which moments can be rough, and which need to be well-defined
Storyboard | Outcome
Prototype
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Prototype | Exercise
In the Prototype phase, the Design Sprint team will work together to create a prototype of the concept. This is when many decisions are made around what exactly the concept is and includes. The team will aim to create a prototype that is just real enough to validate, and they will do it fast!
In the context of Design Sprint, we use the word “prototype” in a slightly different way than in standard product development. A Design Sprint prototype is a facade of the experience you have envisioned in the Ideate phase. You are building just what you need to make the prototype real enough to get an authentic response from a potential user in the Validate phase. This means mapping out the exact flow for the experience and only building the steps you want to test.
Prototype | Direction
Why: to bring ideas into life based on the selected ideas in Impact-Effort diagram.
Divide and conquer
Narrate the storyboard
Prototype
Divide and Conquer
Here team decided to assign roles including Maker, Stitcher, Writer, Asset Collector, and Interviewer.
Rouzbeh: Interviewer
Pouria: Asset Collector
Hamid: Writer
Saeed: Stitcher
Narrate the Storyboard
The facilitator quickly recap progress to date by reading the storyboard from the perspective of an interview subject.
Simultaneously, the team takes individual notes to remind themselves of tasks that need to be completed.
After the recap, the facilitator or stitcher captures additional jobs to add to the Kanban board.
Build
Abramad Teleworking Package Prototype
Based on the ideas presented, the team decided to test the real package as a prototype of the cloud infrastructure and related tools with five target users.
Test
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Test
Test | Exercise
In the Test phase, the Design Sprint team put the concept in front of users - this was the moment of truth! Team gathered feedback from users who interacted with the prototype, and if relevant, team conducted stakeholder and technical feasibility reviews. Team ended the Sprint with a validated concept at the end.
Test | Direction
Why: to bring ideas into life based on the selected ideas in Impact-Effort diagram.
Friendly Welcome
Context Questions
Introduce the prototype
Tasks and nudges
Debrief
Determine next steps to-do list
Test
Friendly welcome: Team welcomed the customer and put him or her at ease. Explained that they were looking for candid feedback.
Context questions: Started with easy small talk, then transition to questions about the topic they were trying to learn about.
Introduce the prototype: Team reminded the customer that some things might not work, and that you’re not testing him or her. They asked the customer to think aloud.
Tasks and nudges: Team watched the customer figure out the prototype on his or her own. Started with a simple nudge. Asked follow-up questions to help the customer think aloud.
Debrief: Team asked questions that prompt the customer to summarize. Then thanked the customer, gave him a gift card, and showed the customer out.
