Example data. Fieldnote is a fictional company used to fill all 61 boards, so the examples tell one consistent story.
Pre-PMF Fieldnote, month four: a five-day sprint on 'can a technician log a job in under a minute with the customer present?' with Élise as decider.
What the team took away
Under a minute is possible if parts are picked, not typed. The parts search became the first thing Tom built.
How to run it
Preparation
Recruit the team three weeks ahead: a decider with real authority, a facilitator, and 5 to 7 people covering product, design, engineering, marketing, support. Block five full days in every calendar.
Choose the challenge: big enough to justify a week, small enough to prototype in one day. Write it in one sentence and get the decider to sign off.
Book a room for the week with two large walls, or a dedicated board. Order sticky notes, markers, a timer, and healthy snacks; the afternoons are long.
Recruit five test users matching the target segment for Friday. Start recruiting on Monday of the sprint at the latest, ideally the week before.
Agenda
420 min
Monday: map Set a long-term goal and sprint questions. Map the journey from actor to goal. Interview internal experts, capture 'how might we' notes. The decider picks the target on the map by end of day.
420 min
Tuesday: sketch Lightning demos of inspiring solutions, 3 minutes each. Then four-step sketching, solo: notes, ideas, Crazy 8's, and a detailed three-panel solution sketch. Sketches stay anonymous until Wednesday.
420 min
Wednesday: decide Art museum, heat map with dots, speed critique, straw poll, then the decider's supervote. Afternoon: storyboard the prototype in 10 to 15 frames. Every frame is a screen or a step.
420 min
Thursday: prototype Build a realistic facade of the storyboard, not a product. Split roles: makers, stitcher, writer, asset collector, interviewer. Trial run at 3 pm; fix what breaks.
420 min
Friday: test Five one-hour interviews with target users, one at a time. The team watches in another room and takes notes on a grid: user × screen. Debrief after the fifth: patterns, not opinions. Decide: go, iterate, or drop.
Pitfalls
Do not run a sprint without a decider in the room. A decider who joins for an hour on Wednesday and Friday is acceptable; a decider who reads a summary is not.
Do not build a working product on Thursday. Keynote, Figma, or a fake landing page is enough; if it takes more than a day, the storyboard is too big.
Do not skip Friday or replace it with a team review. Five real users is the entire point; the rest of the week is preparation for it.
Afterwards
Friday's patterns go into a one-page report to leadership within 48 hours: what was tested, what held, what failed, the decision. A go leads to a real build; an iterate means a second, shorter sprint on the failed part.