Plan and commit
Cover story
Also called Future headline, Press release from the future
Imagine a magazine cover story about your success a year or two from now, to agree what success would look like.
- Time40 to 60 minutes
- People3 to 12 people
- Steps4
What it's for
Writing from a future where things went well frees people to be ambitious and concrete at the same time. A headline has to be short and newsworthy, which forces the team to say what would actually be different, and the quotes make it about customers rather than the team.
Amazon's practice of writing the press release before building a product works the same way.
How to run it
Set the date2 min
Pick when the story is published: one or two years out.
Write the headline8 min2 votes each
Everyone drafts headlines. Vote for the strongest.
Fill the story20 min
What happened, what customers said, the numbers, and how we got here.
Pick what to start10 min
What has to start now for this story to come true?
Tips
- Write customer quotes in the customer's words. Jargon in a quote shows the idea isn't clear yet.
- Keep the photo frame. A quick sketch of the moment of success gets remembered.
Where it comes from
Published by Dave Gray, Sunni Brown and James Macanufo in Gamestorming (2010). Amazon's "working backwards" press release, written before a product is built, is a close cousin.
Pairs well with
Objectives and key results
Set an ambitious objective and three or so measurable key results that would show you achieved it.
Hopes and fears
People write what they hope the session or project achieves and what they fear could go wrong, so both are said out loud early.
Storyboard
Show an idea as a short sequence of panels, from the person's problem to their life after using it, before building anything.