aA INCEPTIONS Starting a Software Project BOOK 1 Software Craftsmanship The hidden Toolbox SERIES ENRIQUE COMBA RIEPENHAUSENInceptions Starting a Software Project Enrique Comba Riepenhausen This book is for sale at [Link] This version was published on 2014-06-30 This is a Leanpub book. Leanpub empowers authors and publishers with the Lean Publishing process. Lean Publishing is the act of publishing an in-progress ebook using lightweight tools and many iterations to get reader feedback, pivot until you have the right book and build traction once you do. ©2012 - 2014 Enrique Comba RiepenhausenTweet This Book! Please help Enrique Comba Riepenhausen by spreading the word about this book on Twitter! The suggested tweet for this book is: I just bought “Inceptions - Starting a Software Project” by @ecomba #inceptionbook The suggested hashtag for this book is #inceptionsbook. Find out what other people are saying about the book by clicking on this link to search for this hashtag on Twitter: [Link]Contents Foreword . . Preface Acknowledgments Introduction The Art of the Start . . What is an Inception Workshop? Why an Inception Workshop? . Structuring an Inception Workshop . . Choosing the Right Environment Facilitating Inception Workshep Selecting Activities . Activities . . . Activity: Who is isin ‘the room? : Activity: The rules of the Game Activity: Why are we here? Activity: Create an Elevator Pitch . . Activity: Design a Product Box . 28 29 32 36 38 42CONTENTS Activity: Create a NOT List Activity: Meet your Community Activity: What Keeps you Up at Night? . . Activity: Show the Solution Activity: Give your App some Perey : Activity: Let’s make it flow Activity: Wireframing Activity: Story Mapping... . Activity: What's Going to Give? Activity: What's Going to Take? Wrapping Up Appendices . ‘Appendix A: The User Persona . Appendix B: The Design Persona Appendix C: Wire-framing Appendix D: Story Mapping ‘Appendix E: Remote Inception Workshops Bibliography Books . . Articles & Blogs 45 48 52 97 58 61 64 66 69 72 14 76 7 79 82 86 89 93 93 95Foreword One of the easiest things to miss when starting any new project or endeavour is the why. Why are we doing this? This why is important because without it the team can’t op- erate. They can’t make informed decisions or trade-offs when constructing and designing the software. They can’t prioritise and ensure that they get the important stuff done first. And they run the risk of building something of little or no use to their users. Our industry is notorious for missing the “why”. Enrique’s book is here to help address that. Enrique has created a nice lightweight guide to show you how to successfully setup, prepare, and execute, your own Agile Inception Deck Workshop. Not only will you learn how to get the why behind your project, it will show you how to bring your stakeholders together, get ev- eryone on the same page and hopefully minimises the surprises along the way. ‘We never get everything upfront. That’s not possible. But we can go into projects with our eyes wide open, with everyone on the same page.Foreword 2 So study Enrique’s book. Take what he has learned. And start piloting your own Inception Deck exercises. I wouldn’t start a project without going through an Inception Deck like exercise. Nor should you. Jonathan RasmussonPreface This book is a work in progress. I started writing this book because, after running so many Inception Workshops over the course of a few years, | feel that I must share with others my findings and help them start their software projects better. By purchasing this ebook you are supporting my effort to create a guide that will help you and others to start your next software project with a clearer idea of what the project is all about and why you should care about it. Lappreciate your feedback! Any form of feedback is acceptable: a pint of beer in your local pub when I am in town, a nice email, gentle or harsh criticism, requesting more material, anything goes! During my writing period I had a case of serious writers block and I am sorry that it happened (specially for those of you who bought the book early on). There is really no excuse for having writers block, it just creeps on you and you feel paralysed by the thought of sitting down to write. Finally though, with a little push in my last Christmas break, I managed to get back into my writing and was able to finish the book! ‘As mentioned before, if you find any typos, or miss some better explanation in any chapter of the book, send me an email and IPreface 4 will reply to you (and hopefully incorporate your feedback into the book), Again, to all of you who have purchased this book, thank you so much! EnriqueAcknowledgments Writing a book is an amazing experience. It is hard at times, frustrating and other times you are in the zone and the text just flows out of your fingers. Without all the people that supported me while writing you would not have seen this book today. Thank you! First of all 1 want to thank the team at patheleven for reviewing the book and giving me the first feedback. Also thanks to you guys we have been running a lot of these and perfecting our practices over time. Thanks for pushing me and the team day in and day out! Very special thanks go to aimee rivers and Spencer Turner for helping me prepare the very first Inception Workshop | ever facilitated. Without the help of Sebastian Hermida you would be looking at apretty bland book with only text. I want to thank him for taking the time of creating the cover artwork and the illustrations in this book. Adewale Oshineye and Dave Hoover for taking time in their busy schedules to review the book and give me guidance. You have influenced my path over the last few years and honoured me with a great friendship. Thank you so much! Aarron Walter for letting me use his Design Persona template in a modified version and for writing the fabulous book Designing for Emotion.Acknowledgments 6 And last but not least to all of you who in some way have made this book possible. Customers, colleagues and friends that I have met worked with and interacted. You know who you are! Thanks to all of you!Introduction When we talk about Software Craftsmanship we always talk about techniques revolving around the act of software creation; how to write clean code, how to test drive, etc. These technical skills are essential and mandatory. If you want to make a living out of crafting software you will have to practice these ona daily basis. Aprofessional software craftsman has many tools under his belt. Many are technical in nature, but many others are considered soft skills. This book focuses on one such soft skill; The Inception Workshop. The Inception Workshop described in this book is a tool that will help your team understand the nature of the project and create insights that will help you provide the maximum value to your customers. The first part of the book will give you the common framework and setup to run an Inception Workshop more efficiently.Introduction 8 The second part of the book is a collection of activities that you can use while facilitating a workshop. The activities are presented in the format suggested in Agile Retrospectives to give the reader a sense of following a set of recipes. I have included comments, exercises and some advices gathered from my experiences facilitating numerous Inception Workshops over the past years. You will find many of the activities in this book in The Agile Samurai a brilliant book by Jonathan Rasmusson. | took the liberty (not without talking to Jonathan first) to use some of his materials in his book in the adaptation of the Inception Workshop. You will find his book an invaluable asset in your library when it comes to learning great techniques on how to deliver great software to your customers. Finally you will find, in the Appendices, further clarifications and in depth explanations of some of the concepts described in some of the activities. I did not want to include some of them in the activities itself as it would break the flow of a recipe you can follow. This book is the first one of a series of books I am planning to write: Software Craftsmanship: The Hidden Toolbox. The aim of the series is to touch on practices and themes that are usually left untouched in the literature and the agile and software craftsmanship communities. Stay tuned! Ready to explore the minds of your customers?The Art of the Start Starting a software project is exciting! We are hungry to get our hands dirty and jump into creating some great software for our customers.‘The Art of the Start 10 What is an Inception Workshop? The Inception Workshop is a way to understand at a deeper level the idea, context and potential difficulties of a project at an early stage. You can see it as your safety net before you commit to a project. It will help you to: Decide if you can‘ commit to the project. Know who the stakeholders are and who calls the shots. Scope the project in size and cost. Visualise the forces behind the project (community, com- petitors, advocates). Plan the work that needs to be done in order to ship the product. Understand the product through the eyes of the people behind the idea. Better advise your customers on decisions concerning the product during development. An Inception Workshop is a very intensive two day workshop in which you bring the customer and development team together in order to learn the details of the product/project. In some cases an Inception Workshop might be even longer, but asa rule of thumb 2 days is a good starting point; you will have to use your experience and judgement to decide if you want to have a longer workshop. or want to‘The Art of the Start u This is actually a very important thing that most groups over- look. An Inception Workshop works on the principle of The More the Merrier. That is, you really want as many people from the customer side as you can; including sales, human resources, marketing, operations, in short anyone! If you can get customers (aka users) of the product you'd be surprised how much great information you can get from them. On your side it is also great if you can get as many people as practically possible into the room. This not only gives you the advantage of having a lot of different input from different people, but also allows anyone to actually be working on the project once you decide it is a good fit between your team and your customers team. The activities in an Inception Workshop focus on different as- pects of the product, trying to see it from as many angles as possible. There are activities that are very creative, some are emotional’ and others analytical. It will be hard at times and you will be drained by the end of every day you incept. All the assets that are generated during the Inception Workshop will be invaluable during the course of the project. You will be able to write User Stories with the personas you discovered during the inception, or know exactly why a feature should be a certain way and not another. "Thad the founder ofa startup erying during one activity once.‘The Art of the Start 12 Why an Inception Workshop? There are many ways to start a project. Most people start doing a Story Writing Workshop followed by a Release Planning Meeting. Once they have done so they will reconvene at the moment of starting the first iteration to do an Iteration Planning Meeting to get started. One of the problems with this ad hoc approach is that you have to rely a lot on your intuition and making sure you asked the tight questions. I tend to be very forgetful, and I always regret not having asked this or that question once the Story Writing Workshop and the Release Planning Meeting are over. The Inception Workshop has the advantage that, by following a set of activities, you make sure you will understand the product to the full and you will be less surprised during the course of the project. One of the most important aspects of a project is the acquisition of knowledge by the team. More often than not this happens in small doses and we have to steer quite a bit to get it right. This is not a bad thing per se, but it would be much nicer if at least we would understand the project at hand to a certain level before we start. ‘The materials that you create during an Inception Workshop will guide the whole project and should be present in the team’s War Room at all times. You have accumulated so much information in the last two days that it will help you to make most of the decisions in the future of the project.‘The Art of the Start 13 An Inception Workshop as a Sales tool Sometimes we are not sure if a project is a fit between the prospect customer and our team. We have some conversations to get a feel for each other, but other than that, the decision to take on a project is a gamble. With the common approach to sales you might end up with a sour project and a broken relationship; you decided to work with somebody too soon’, The Inception Workshop gives you a chance to be working with your prospect customer for two long and exhausting days. When you are working that hard and close to your customers you will see a lot of behaviours surfacing from the whole team that might give you a clue as in how things might work if you really engage in this project. Once the Inception Workshop is over you and your prospective customers have the chance to reflect on the last two days and decide if you really are a good match and if you want to continue working together for the rest of the project. “Obviously sometimes there axe other constrains like keeping a healthy cash-flow in the company, but I am not going to go into thete details in tit book.‘The Art of the Start 14 Bonding Creating an homogeneous group between the business, your customers, and a technical group is often nearly impossible. The gap between these two group’s tends to be huge and somehow insurmountable. When working together for a common goal, specially when it is hard, people bond. This holds true for an Inception Workshop as well. You and your customers have spent two or more really intense days working together, you are exhausted. You have accomplished really great things and you have shed some light into the product idea. This will create a special bond between your development team and the customer. They will understand much better where everyone is coming from. Innovation Breakthrough Entrepreneurs think they have a clear idea of their business. This is mostly true, but more often than not their idea is based on an ideal. They have a dream on how something should be and will be. Some talk to a lot of people about their idea trying to validate their assumptions and make sure they are on the right path. During the Inception Workshop they are suddenly engaged with a larger group of people that gives input, brainstorms ideas, kills others. It is a workshop where even the entrepreneur with the clearest idea in his head will discover that what he wants is not necessarily what he needs.Structuring an Inception Workshop ‘An Inception Workshop is usually a two day long workshop in which you want the full attention of the group to help them discover as much about their idea as possible. In order to make it possible for the group to work, you have to be aware of all the factors that will influence the workshop’s outcome. You want the group to be able to concentrate, be creative, spew ideas and in general have a productive time together. Where are you going to incept? How much time are you going to spend on the different activities? Which activities are better suited for what? This chapter will answer these questions.Structuring an Inception Workshop 16 Choosing the Right Environment It’s surprising how many books on facilitation take seating and room selection as something that everyone is proficient about. As if we had a natural gift to know exactly how the room should be set up in order to be the most productive in a highly participative workshop. Ready to become an interior designer? Size matters While preparing the Inception Workshop make sure you find a room large enough to accommodate the whole team without crowding. ‘There are some things you have to consider when selecting a room though; the outcome will be quite different depending on your choices. Lighting If the room has no natural light it will usually tire the group more quickly. You possibly have experienced that if you have gone to the cinema in the afternoon. You watch a movie for two hours in the dark and when you come out to the sun you feel displaced (your body was already adapting for night time). When there is no natural light your body will send signals to slow you down slowly and get ready to sleep. You need to avoid that when you want everyones attention in the workshop. Having windows and natural light is a great start, but if the view is good (a park or lake for example) the better!Structuring an Inception Workshop 7 Ceiling Height The height of the ceiling influences the groups creativity big time! When you have a room with a low ceiling you will be able to concentrate better. It is great for your home office or for getting things done. A high ceiling helps thinking in more abstract terms which fosters your creativity. As noted in a study by Meyers-Levy: “Tt very much depends on what kind of task you are doingaé} if you're in the operating room, maybe a low ceiling is better. You want the surgeon getting the details right. [a€!] We think you can get this effects just by manipulating the perception of space” You will have to make sure that you find a room with high ceilings if you want to boost your groups creativity. The use of the walls During the inception you are going to generate a lot of material. It is important that you keep the generated insights at sight. The obvious candidate for this are the walls in the room. You are looking forward to let the people working in the inception to. be inside their own inception with all the ideas floating around them. You can also use moveable walls if the room offers them. The important thing here is that the information is visible and that the group is right in the middle of it.Structuring an Inception Workshop 18 Wall g and Standing Just as a final observation on room space. Some people need to move to think; the best of their ideas come from when their bodies are in movement. It is good that you keep that in mind when selecting and preparing a room for an Inception. Seating The way we sit, stand, kneel or squat affects how we feel and how we interact during a workshop. The way you arrange the seating in a room carries coded messages about the intra-group relationships. They influence our attitude towards the group and the whole workshop* One important factor is that the group can have eye contact with each other when listening to the facilitator. This will mostly avoid quiet conversations between the participants and results in shorter more interactive conversations. Another benefit is that naturally quiet people will feel more compelled to speak and they will usually do so. ‘There are a few seating setups that I recommend which I will explain below. “Depending on the seating disposition the group willbe putin a disciplined, chaotic, formal, informal, centralised, decentralited, hierarchic, egalitarian, exposed, private, threatening or non-threatening position.Structuring an Inception Workshop 19 Half Circles and Us ‘The projector wall and the facilitator is visible to all and in a position of control. If you are facilitating with a projector this is the preferred seating arrangement for presenting the activities to the group. You are sending a clear message to the group that they have to pay attention to what you are saying at this moment. Circles and open clams Sitting in a circle is widely adopted as a democratic and partici- patory way of sitting. At the same time this way of sitting arrangement can be in- timidating, specially when the group is big. Shy people can feel exposed. Even though the symmetry of this sitting arrangement is obvious the facilitator can still dominate over the group. Ifyou are concerned about the sense of exposure a circle can give you can try out an open clam, with two arcs of chairs facing each other. This way no seat can command as much attention as in a closed circle. There is also another advantage of this way of sitting as it leaves two clear exits from the circle and it gives a slightly less sense of exposure. This is a brilliant seating disposition to have group conversations where it is important that everyone participates.Structuring an Inception Workshop 20 Buzzing Clusters ‘When the group has to form pairs for the activities presented in this book it is recommendable for them to buzz in clusters. This can be achieved by turning the chairs around (when you had a half circle, U, circle or open clam) and create little clusters that are separated from each other. Tables and Desks I don’t advise making tables or desks the main element in the room. A boardroom table creates a barrier between the participants making participation more difficult. You will need some tables though. I use two tables usually for an Inception Workshop, but I keep them against a wall and only to organise the materials we will need during the workshop. I keep stacks of post-it notes, index cards, A4 paper (in different colours) and all sorts of other things that will be of use during the inception. You will also have to have space on the tables to have water, glasses and any other food supplies to nibble. I recommend offering the healthy kind of food as high sugar foods will make the participants sleepy. Also don’t forget to have a good amount of coffee, specially after the lunch break!Structuring an Inception Workshop 21 Place the tables in a secondary space of the room (at the back of the room works best), but not to far away from the information that you will be hanging on the wall over the course of the Inception Workshop. You want people, when taking a little rest, to have the findings at sight. It might lead them into interesting conversations with their peers.Structuring an Inception Workshop 22, Facilitating Inception Workshop The Facilitator Role The Inception Workshop needs a good facilitator to keep mo- mentum, help the group generate insights and make the whole workshop flow. If you are not careful you will end up with moments where the group will be stuck and you will feel like you aren’t moving anywhere, As a facilitator you hold the key to the process, but not the outcome. You have to make sure that you don’t spill your preconceptions and worldview into the minds of the group and therefore prime their thoughts (you'd be surprised how easily this can happen). You should always bear in mind that you are just channeling the group’s energy throughout the Inception Workshop. You are not a participant in the workshop, only a guide in the group’s journey. Itis important that you keep an eye on the timing of the activities. You are there to help the group when they are working on an activity and also controlling the time you have set up for each activity,Structuring an Inception Workshop 23 Overseeing Group Dynamics When facilitating an Inception Workshop you have to make sure that ideas flow and that everyone gets a chance to speak up and share their thoughts. Some people are quiet and more reflective and others speak out their thoughts with ease. You have to keep an eye on those group members that speak too much as they might be hijacking the activities and not giving the more silent members a chance to share their ideas. If you notice that someone wanted to speak but was cut off make a mental note and wait till the person currently speaking finishes. Once the speaker has finished his train of thought make sure you ask the person who was cut off if she has something to say. You don’t want to create an antagonistic atmosphere during an Inception Workshop. Make sure that when someone is constantly cutting off people or talking too much you address this in private with that person on a break. When the group includes founders or managers of a company make sure that you create a safe space for the employees in the workshop. Make sure you talk to them before you start the Inception Workshop and let them know that they should hold their horses a little and let their employees share their thoughts with the team. Sometimes it is good to agree to a subtle sign that you can give them when it is ok to talk (so that they are not the first ones to speak up when brainstorming for example).Structuring an Inception Workshop 24 Guiding Activities Make sure that you introduce each activity with a clear voice and positive energy. You want the group to be excited and energised about the next activity about to start. When you explain the rules of an activity don’t rush the group to start. Give them some time to assimilate what they just heard and make sure they can ask you clarifying questions in case they haven’t understood the task at hand. Sometimes some participants will not understand the point of the activity and challenge you as in why they should be doing it. They will argue that they could be doing something else; something, in their eyes, more productive. In these cases you have to try to make them see that the Inception Workshop is aprocess by which you will be discovering all the nuances of the project. Each activity is targeted to discover some key elements from the project idea. ‘The more angles you look at the more you will understand the project and the group will be able to give better advice and create a better product in the long run. Understanding the context and details of the project and it’s main idea is key.Structuring an Inception Workshop 25 Controlling Time One of the big challenges when working on the activities in an Inception Workshop is to make sure that the group keeps the time. This doesn’t mean you should be looking frantically at the watch all the time heckling people into going faster though. When you work on the activities you should always announce how much time they have to complete the task at hand and make sure they see you turning on the timer as you do (make a little ceremony out of it). I find a common kitchen timer to be excellent, it has a ticking sound that gives some sense of urgency (although it might not be heard in some activities as the group is engaging in some lively conversations). You can also use some more visual timers as the ones you can find for an iPad for example (Iam using the iPad as an example as you can easily turn the timer towards the group for them to see the time ticking.Structuring an Inception Workshop 26 Selecting Activities ‘An Inception Workshop usually follows the same order of activ- ities, You can change the order of some of them, although I don’t really advise it. The order of the activities has a purpose. The order presented will engage the creative thinking of the group early. This is important as you want them to start being creative as soon as possible. We want this to happen as we need a good deal of creativity to come up with solutions for the problem at hand in later activities. Here is how it might work for a common two day Inception Workshop: Day One Who is in the room? 30 minutes ‘The Rules of the Game 30 minutes Why are we here? 15 minutes Create an Elevator Pitch 20 minutes Create a Product Box 1 hour Create a Not list 40 minutes ‘Meet your Community hour What keeps you awake at night 2 hours Day Two Show the solution 4 hours What's going to give hour What's going to take 1 hour Wrap up 15 minutes ‘The times here are just an approximation and depend largely on the group size. You also need to consider that all the exercises create discussion in which you will discover more about theStructuring an Inception Workshop 27 product and your schedule will slip slightly as you go. Make sure you take time for breaks when there is a logical stopping point or the energy levels of the participants will drop considerably. You want creativity to be flowing and it is important that everyone is well rested. The only activities that | would advise to change are “Who is in the room?”, “The Rules of the Game” and “Why are we here?”. Sometimes you will want to let the main stakeholders to explain first why we are in this Inception Workshop and what this is all about. You will find the best way that suits you.Activities ‘The activities described in this chapter will help you to facilitate a successfull Inception Workshop. I do encourage you to experiment a little with the activities so that you get used to them. During the workshop it is important that the flow is not interrupted because you do not know exactly how to explain an activity to the group. Some of the activities are optional; as you saw in “Selecting Activities” in the previous chapter. I have separated these optional activities, that are purely meant for a business or startup, into their own chapter as they are less common in most cases. Inceptions are a wonderful tool that can be used to start almost any endeavour’. “in fact we did a 3 day long Inception Workshop before we et up our company, patheleven,back-in 2011,Activities 29 Activity: Who is in the room? ROW You are going to spend the next couple of days locked up in a room conducting an Inception Workshop together, maybe it would be a good idea to get to know each other. Purpose Get to know everyone who is participating in the Inception Workshop. Time Needed Ten to thirty minutes, depending on the size of the group. Description Form pairs of people who have never worked together. Each pair has five minutes to interview the other person.Activities 30 Steps 1 Mate! Introduce the activity: “Before we start it would be a great idea to get to know each other”. Then explain the process (see the description earlier). Let them form pairs. Once the pairs have been formed and are sitting together hand each pair a pen and two index cards. Describe the process: Each interviewer has to write the following about the person he is interviewing + Name + How to contact + Likes + Dislikes + Draw a picture Start the timer and let the interviewing begin. You should make sure that you pay attention to the interviewing process to see if someone is stuck so that you can help them out. Once the interviewing is done ask each pair to present the person he interviewed to the group by standing in front of the group. Post all the interviews on the wall so that they are visible to the group during the course of the Inception (you might want to look again now and then to learn something from the people you are working with). Is and Preparation Index cards and pens.Activities 31 Observations Conducting the interviews at the beginning of the Inception Workshop makes sure that you know everyone in the room before you start working together. Knowing their likes and dislikes also gives you the opportunity to understand them better. During future conversations or during the activities to come you can make use of the information you gathered in the Who is in the Room Activity to be able to accommodate for everyone. Make sure you make a mental note about their dislikes, it will give you a clue of how to talk to that person. Drawing the person you are interviewing helps to slowly let the tight side of the brain to activate. We will need a lot of creativity in the following activities! @ Tryit out! d Thy interviewing a friend or colleague using this technique. Who knows, maybe you find out some- thing you did not know about them!Activities 32 Activity: The rules of the Game Working together as a group in a workshop is not an easy task. Different people react differently to situations and express themselves in different ways. Some are more silent and others more outgoing. When starting an Inception Workshop it is a good idea to set up some time to decide the engagement rules you are going to apply during the workshop so that you have a common ground to work more effectively during the activities. Purpose Create a set of behaviours that will support the team in having a productive Inception Workshop. Make sure that every team member understands them. Everyone is responsible of monitor- ing the interactions of the team making sure that the rules are applied and kept. Time Needed Ten to thirty minutes, depending on the size of the team.Activities 33 Description The team will work together to generate a set of rules for having an effective workshop. From the rules generated five to ten should be chosen (we don’t want to have to many rules, do we). It is important that everyone agrees to the rules set by the team. You can use different techniques for this. The simplest voting would be to ask if everyone agrees to this rule. If someone is opposed to the rule let them explain why. If he can convince the group the rule is discarded. You can also use dot voting if you prefer, but I would try not to spend to much time on this activity as the group has a long day ahead of them and you don’t want to get bogged down this early.Activities 34 Steps Once everyone has presented themselves the group will again split up in pairs (or little groups; no more than four) to develop candidate rules. » . Introduce the activity: “We are going to definea set of rules that will help us to work better during these couple of days. It will be each team member’s responsibility to ensure that the rules we agree on are kept. The purpose of these rules is to help us work together more effectively”. . Form pairs or smalll groups. 3. Ask each pair to develop three to five rules that if followed fs 2 by the group would help the team to have a productive workshop. . Once every pair has finished writing down the rules ask them to report their most important rule to the group. The group then will discuss the validity of the rule and write it on a flip chart page if they consider it to be a good rule to follow. Continue until you have discussed all the rules and have a working set of rules on the flip chart page . Explain that for the duration of the Inception Workshop everyone should be looking out for the rules and don’t let anyone break them. . Post the rules on a visible space that everyone can see at all times. It is good to have them visible as you might want to point to the rules when someone is infringing them. Materials and Preparation Flip chart, markers and index cards.Activities 35 Observations When letting the group create their own set of rules they will feel more comfortable following them. Don’t forget to remind them that maybe it is a good idea to set up some rules for breaks. @ Sample rules Lusually give these rules as examples so that the group Iam working with has a good starting point and idea what we are looking for: No phone calls (all phones on silent) + Breaks every X minutes + No interrupting when someone is talking + No monologues (some people talk really for a long time)Activities 36 Activity: Why are we here? Before you start dwelling into the creative activities of the Incep- tion Workshop you should give your customers the opportunity to tell the group why they are all there and what the project is all about. Purpose Give everyone an overview of the product/project they are about to start. Time Needed Depending on the customer and how much he likes talking about his idea (which is usually a lot!), but limit it to a maximum of fifteen minutes. Description ‘The customer team will explain to the group what their idea is and what they are aiming for.Activities 37 Steps 1. Introduce the activity: “Jim is now going to let us know what his product is all about. We are not expecting the full detail, but a little introduction that will help us get going with the rest of the activities, so Jim, be brief please”. Materials and Preparation A customer! ;) Observations Sometimes it is good to add a Questions & Answers session right after the customer has told the group about the idea to clarify anything that you did not understand. You can obviously do this while they are presenting, but that will depend on them‘. “Some people take isrue when interrupted or loote their train of thought when someone interrupts them while they are talking in front of a group. Make sure to clarify beforehand ifit is OK to interrupt while they axe talking or if it would be better if you suk the questions after the introductionActivities 38 Activity: Create an Elevator Pitch Va 1234567891011 When trying to get your idea across to others you have to be able to state what you are talking about in a concise way and to the point. People loose interest in your idea very quickly if they don’t know who you are or what you are talking about. ‘A good elevator pitch tells people what your idea is, who it is for, and what makes it special. Purpose The idea of creating an elevator pitch is to train you to figure out the essence of your product idea. What’s the key benefit of your product? Time Needed About twenty minutes Description The team will work in pairs to create a pitch that they will present to the team.Activities 39 You can use the following template as a starting point. Elevator Pitch Template For... target customer who ... statement of need/opportunity the.... product name is a... product category that ... key benefit, compelling reason to buy. Unlike ... primary competitive alternative our product... statement of primary differentiation.Activities 40 Steps » » fs 2 . Introduce the activity: “The next (first) thing we are going to do is create an elevator pitch of your product. We want to concentrate on the key benefit of your product and make akiller statement that we could use to explain our product to anyone that asks.” . Show them the sample template for an elevator pitch: “This template might help you keep going. You don’t need to follow it verbatim, but it might be a good idea to start that way”. . Form pairs or groups (no more than 4) and let them work on the pitch. . Once every group has finished writing their pitch let them present it in front of the group. . Discuss the strong and weak points of every pitch once they have all been presented. . Select a pitch to be the one that you want to use for the product. Variations Once you have discussed all the pitches presented by the group you can try to work on one pitch collaboratively creating a pitch that contains all the good parts of the pitches presented previously. Materials and Preparation Pens and paper.Activities 41 Observations When presenting your pitch be succinct, an adult’s attention span is eight seconds’. Make sure you give just enough infor- mation so that after hearing a sentence or two someone knows what you need and is sufficiently engaged to want to hear more about it. Hook them! The main idea of your pitch should be to get the people you are talking to wanting to listen to you for the next minute more intently* than they would have otherwise. Be clear. Use language that everyone understands. Avoid using technical terms or fancy wording (which might make you sound smarter). You will only disengage your listeners as they will not understand you. Tell a story. The best pitches puts the listeners right into the centre of a story they relate to. If you get this one right you will hook them up for sure. “itp//en wikipedia org/wiki/ Attention span “[Link] com/2010/01/1\/how-to-ride-elevator-pitch-new-heightsActivities 42 Activity: Design a Product Box Imagine you could buy your product or startup in a supermarket. What would attract the customers to grab it between a myriad of other products on the shelves? How would it convince them to buy yours and not another box? Purpose This activity will highlight the benefits of your idea. Time Needed Twenty to sixty minutes.Activities 43 Description Design a product box in which you come up with a name of your product, a snappy slogan and the main benefits of the product. Try not to focus too much on the features you are offering, but on the benefits of using your product or service. Steps 1. Introduce the activity: “We are now going to design a product box. Imagine your product or service was at display in a supermarket. What would attract people to buy it? The aim is to turn every feature you offer into a benefit” 2. Let the team form pairs (or groups of no more than 4) and hand them the product box template’. 3. Once everyone has finished their product boxes let them present them to the team. 4. After every group has presented their box have a discus- sion about the findings. Materials and Preparation Paper (or better the product box template"), pens, colour sharpies, coloured paper, scissors, glue, ete. Basically anything that could be used to get your creativity going. “attp// dl. [Link]/w/21727846/SoftwareCraftsmanshipTheHiddenToolbox! Inception#/product-box pa 22pttp//dldropboxecom/u/21727846/SoftwareCraftsmanshipTheHliddenToolbox! Inceptions/product-box patActivities 44 Observations This is one of the more creative activities in an Inception Work- shop. You will have to make sure that you have all the materials needed accessible and visible to the team. You want them to be focusing on the task and not having to ask for things. Sometimes it might be interesting to have a printer at hand as some of the pairs might want to print out media from the internet to cut it out and glue it on the box. I sometimes explain to the groups the different styles of product boxes you can find. The most obvious differences are an Apple iPad or iPhone box as opposed to the box from a competing company. Tales from the trenches: During the presentation of a product box during an In- ception Workshop a group chose to role-play two friends “finding” the box in a supermarket and commenting how cool that new product looked and how they would buy more than one for family and friends.Activities 45 Activity: Create a NOT List OUT IN When we define a product we always fall back into saying what the product is all about. It’s easy to do because we have spent a lot of time thinking about it. Purpose Figure out which things are out of scope for the project we are about to embark. This will help limiting the scope of what we want to do, helping us to concentrate on what's really essential. Time Needed Twenty to forty minutes.Activities 46 Description What is in scope? What is out of scope? We want to focus our brainstorming around the things that are out of scope in terms of the product we want to build. @ Out of Scope examples Cheap, low quality, difficult to use Steps 1. Introduce the activity by pointing to the flip charts: “We are now going to focus on what is out of scope for this project. The goal is to brainstorm as many ideas as we can and stick them to either the “Out of Scope’ or ‘In Scope’ flip charts. When you come up with something go to the corresponding flip chart and announce what you are sticking to it”. 2. Give each participant a stack of post-it notes and a pen. 3. Once the energy gets lower (i.e. the group starts posting fewer and fewer ideas) ask them if that is all. Give them about two minutes to wrap up. 4. Discuss the findings. What do they mean in the context of the product? How will they dictate the direction of the project? Materials and Preparation Flip chart paper, pens and post-it notes.