Let’s take a two-week sprint model and assume that we can tie a series of these sprints together under one umbrella, which we’ll call a theme (Figure 7-2).
Figure 7-2. Sprints tied together with a theme.
Kickoff Sessions for Sketching and Ideation Each theme should be kicked off with a series of brainstorming and validation exercises like the ones described in Section II. These activities can be as short as an afternoon or as long as a week. You can do them with your immediate team or with a broader group. The scope of the theme will determine how much participation and time these kickoff activities require. The point of this kickoff is to get the entire team sketching and ideating together, creating a backlog of ideas to test and learn from. Once you’ve started your sprints, these ideas will be tested, validated, and developed new knowledge will come in, and you’ll need to decide what to do with it. You make these decisions by running subsequent shorter brainstorming sessions that take place before each new sprint begins, which allows the team to use the latest insight to create the backlog for the next sprint. See Figure 7-3.
Figure 7-3. Timing and scope of sketching, ideation, and brainstorming sessions.
Iteration Planning Meeting The output of the kickoff session should be brought to the iteration planning meeting (IPM). Your mess of sticky notes, sketches, wireframes, paper prototypes, and any other artifacts may seem useless to outside observers but will be meaningful to your team. You made these artifacts together and because of that, you have the shared understanding necessary to extract Integrating Lean UX and Agile 99
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