Speed Boat cover image

Speed Boat

Identify what customers don’t like about your product or service.

Profile image of Luke Hohmann
2006 • 30 min read
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Design Thinking
Managing Change
Continuous Improvement
Alignment
Deliver Value Continuously

Summary

Although most customers have complaints, few customers are genuinely “against” you or your product. Even if they express extreme frustration, the reality is that they want to succeed when using your product. Giving them a way to express their frustration without letting a group mentality or a single person dominate the discussion is what most customers want. Speed Boat creates this relatively safe environment where customers can tell you what’s wrong. You’ll find fresh new ideas for the changes you can make to address your customers’ most important concerns.

How to play: Draw a boat on a whiteboard or sheet of butcher paper. You’d like the boat to really move fast. Unfortunately, the boat has a few anchors holding it back. The boat is your system, and the features that your customers don’t like are its anchors. Customers write what they don’t like on an anchor. They can also estimate how much faster the boat would go when that anchor was cut. Estimates of speed are really estimates of pain.

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