Stewart Butterfield, Slack’s founder and CEO, studied a sketch called “Bot Team.” It showed a new customer trying out Slack by talking to a team of “bots”—computer-controlled characters who could send messages and reply to simple questions. Stewart nodded and scratched his stubbly chin. Then he stuck his final pink sticker on the page, and the supervote was complete.
Stewart told us he had a hunch about “Bot Team.” Potential customers had difficulty imagining what it would be like to use Slack at work. With the simulation provided by “Bot Team,” Stewart predicted those customers would get it right away.
Stewart is a repeat entrepreneur who is known for having really good hunches. He’d followed a hunch to create Slack after the game Glitch failed to catch on. A decade earlier, he’d followed a hunch to create the photo sharing service Flickr. Needless to say, when Stewart said he had a hunch about the sketch called “Bot Team,” we listened. Still, Merci, the product manager, worried that the fake team might confuse customers. Not only that, she estimated that the engineering required to implement it properly could take four to six months.
Merci had credibility, too. She was an experienced entrepreneur, having started a software company of her own before joining Slack. And as head of the project, she was also a Decider for the sprint. Her supervotes had gone to another sketch: “The Tenacious Tour,” a solution that explained Slack’s interface step-by-step.
This supervote conflict posed a problem, because we couldn’t figure out how to put “Bot Team” and “The Tenacious Tour” together in the same prototype. It would be way too much explanation for one website. With two great ideas and no way to combine them, there was only one sensible course of action. It was time for a Rumble.
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On Wednesday morning, your team will make a Sticky Decision to narrow down to the most promising sketches. But what if, like Slack, you end up with two (or even three) winning sketches that can’t coexist? Since Deciders get three supervotes, this kind of conflict happens all the time. It might sound like a problem, but actually it’s a bonanza.
When you have two good, conflicting ideas, you don’t have to choose between them at all. Instead, you can prototype both, and in Friday’s test, you’ll be able to see how each one fares with your customers. Your prototypes will battle head-to-head, like professional wrestlers whacking each other with folding chairs. We call this kind of test a Rumble.
A Rumble allows your team to explore multiple options at once. For Slack, it meant building two prototypes: one for “The Tenacious Tour” and one for “Bot Team.” Merci and Stewart didn’t have to argue, or compromise on a watered-down solution. With a sprint, they could get data in just five days—before they made a commitment. (Later in this book, we’ll tell you whose hunch was correct.)
Of course, it doesn’t always make sense to do a Rumble. Sometimes, there’s just one winning sketch. Sometimes, there are many winners, but they all fit together. Savioke’s winning solutions for their robot personality—sound effects, survey, and happy dance—could all coexist in one prototype. Which was lucky, because we only had one robot.
If you think you can combine your winning sketches into one product, don’t bother with a Rumble. Instead, put them together into your best shot at solving the problem. This all-in-one approach has advantages, too. Your prototype will be longer and more detailed.
If you have more than one winning solution, involve the whole team in a short discussion about whether to do a Rumble or combine the winners into a single prototype. Typically, this decision about format is easy. If it’s not, you can always ask the Decider to make the call.
Now, if you decide to do a Rumble, you’ll have one more small problem. If you show your customers two prototypes of the same product, you risk sounding like an optometrist: “Which version do you prefer? A, or B? A? Or B?”I
Luckily, the resolution to this murky situation is easy, and even fun: You get to create some fake brands. Once your prototypes have their own distinct names and look, customers will be able to tell them apart.
In Slack’s sprint, we decided to use the Slack brand for one prototype, but we needed a fake name for the other one. We knew customers wouldn’t take a prototype seriously if it had a name like “Acme” or “Clown Pants.” It had to sound like a realistic competitor to Slack. After thinking up a few options, the team chose “Gather” for the second prototype. That name was perfect: It wasn’t a real product, but it sounded like it could be.
Blue Bottle Coffee faced a similar challenge when they tested different ideas for their online store. They needed fake brand names that sounded like real coffee companies, and they came up with “Linden Alley Coffee,” “Telescope Coffee,” and “Potting Shed Coffee.”
Inventing fake brands is fun, but it’s also a potential time waster. To keep the process short, we use an all-purpose brainstorm substitute that we call Note-and-Vote. Here’s how it works:
Throughout the sprint, you’ll have times when you need to gather information or ideas from the group and then make a decision. The Note-and-Vote is a shortcut. It only takes about ten minutes, and it works great for everything from fake brand names to deciding where to get lunch.
1. Give each team member a piece of paper and a pen.
2. Everyone takes three minutes and quietly writes down ideas.
3. Everyone takes two minutes to self-edit his or her list down to the best two or three ideas.
4. Write each person’s top ideas on the whiteboard. In a sprint with seven people, you’ll have roughly fifteen to twenty ideas in all.
5. Everyone takes two minutes and quietly chooses his or her favorite idea from the whiteboard.
6. Going around the room, each person calls out his or her favorite. For each “vote,” draw a dot next to the chosen idea on the whiteboard.
7. The Decider makes the final decision. As always, she can choose to follow the votes or not.
By lunchtime on Wednesday, you will have decided which sketches have the best chance of answering your sprint questions and helping you reach your long-term goal. You’ll also decide whether to combine those winning ideas into one prototype or build two or three and test them in a Rumble. Next, it’s time to turn all these decisions into a plan of action so you can finish your prototype in time for Friday’s test.
I. Not that there’s anything wrong with optometrists. We love optometrists.