Sprint week with Leipziger Volksbank in Berlin

To understand customers even better – that is what 20 employees of Leipziger Volksbank wanted. During a week-long sprint, they set their sights firmly on this goal. They were supported by the launchlabs Berlin team.

On a warm Monday morning at the end of September, 20 employees of Leipziger Volksbank met in the innovation loft of launchlabs Berlin. The sun shone through the generous windows of the creative rooms and an exciting week began.

After a brief welcome by board member Andreas Woda, and Dr. Simon Springmann from launchlabs, and a briefing on the hygiene protection concept, the participants started directly with the first customer interviews. This took place in a hybrid setting via video conference.

The very next day, with the support of launchlabs, the collected customer needs were analyzed, solution ideas systematically generated and the first prototypes developed directly. With the help of mutual feedback rounds by the cross-functional teams, the solution approaches were quickly improved and were already presented to the customers and the board of directors via video conference in the middle of the week.

One special feature had to be taken into account: In 2018 the Federal Association of Deutsche Volksbanken und Raiffeisenbanken e.V. published the market development concept for corporate customers. This concept was the basis on which the new solution ideas should be built. Under the expert guidance of launchlabs, other methods and tools from the agile sector were used in addition to Design Thinking. For example, a common “backlog” was created. The tasks were collected, prioritized, costs and time expenditure were estimated in the groups and an agile project planning was set up in iterations until the beginning of 2021. In addition, a simple but effective kanban board was created to make the progress of work visible to all participants at all times.

On Friday, the final prototype was presented to the bank’s board of directors and to the customers. Now it is time for implementation. A complete success for both Leipziger Volksbank and launchlabs!