Training of Project Team

1. Purpose

Nobody goes into the field without training. The Team Manager and the Team Members complete a one-day Business Design training before they walk into the Kick-off Workshop (see Step 1: Setup). Six weeks of exploration are short. A team that learns the method during Step 2: Research loses its first week to it. A team that learns it in the training starts researching on day one.

The day starts with Exploring Playgrounds. The team learns what the focus of a playground means and which scope the Project Charter "Exploration" sets: Scanning covers several research areas, mostly with desk research. T-shaped goes deep in one research area and touches two or three others with a few desk research questions. Deep Dive works through one research area thoroughly. The scope decides how deep the team goes in each area. A team with a Scanning scope does not need fifteen interviews. A team with a Deep Dive scope cannot get away with five websites.

The rest of the day belongs to the three research areas: Exploring Customers, Exploring Competitors and Exploring Markets. The training is not a lecture on the method. On a case study, the team practises what it will do in the exploration, and every block ends with a short exercise. By the end of the day, every participant has asked an interview question, placed a competitor in a target groups matrix and estimated a market at least once. Mistakes cost nothing here. In week three of a real exploration, they cost an interviewee you can't ask a second time.

After the training, every participant is able to:

1. explain the Guiding Principles, Phase II and the Roles — and their own role in the exploration

2. explain the difference between focus and scope, and what Scanning, T-shaped and Deep Dive mean for the team's work (see Exploring Playgrounds)

3. frame research questions and choose a fitting method for each of them

4. prepare and conduct a customer interview, and document it on a Customer & User Card (see Exploring Customers)

5. identify competitors from the customer's job instead of industry categories, and place them in the Target Groups matrix (see Exploring Competitors)

6. estimate a market in orders of magnitude with TAM, SAM and SOM, including source and reference year (see Exploring Markets)

7. use AI to support the preparation and execution of research

The Team Coach usually runs the training, ideally the coach who will accompany the exploration. The coach sees who is at ease in an interview and who prefers to work with numbers, and takes these observations into the task distribution in the kick-off workshop.

2. Duration

1 day

3. Participants

• Team Manager

• Team Members

• Team Coach

4. Example Agenda

* P = Presentation | D = Discussion | B = Break | T = Teamwork