Use Blueprinter "generic" questions for a good start to your interview.
Here are some general guidelines for selecting your Current State questions:
- No problems: Don’t ask about problems, challenges, frustrations, etc. You just want to know more about what they currently do… not what they’d like to change. (Save that for the yellow sticky notes.)
- No sensitive information: Don’t ask for information they may be uncomfortable providing… questions about their financial performance, sales volume, competitive positions, etc.
- Keep it brief: Limit your questions to just two or three. And this entire portion of the interview should be limited to just 10-to-15 minutes. If it goes too long, it will start feeling like a boring questionnaire.
You can make your life easier by drawing on the 40 generic Current State questions that reside in your Blueprinter software (at www.blueprintingcenter.com > Blueprinter software). Just go to Tool 2.3 > Current State Questions and click “+ Generic Questions.” The next screen will show you 40 possible Current State questions, organized by the customer’s…
- Strategy
- Operations / Supply Chain
- Marketing & Sales
- Product Development
Just click the questions you think you might want to use sometime for your entire project. Then--still in Blueprinter Tool 2.3-- you can modify any of these generic questions if you'd like. You can also assign these questions for use in just certain points of the value chain, certain regions, etc.
Later—in the Prep Sheet for each interview—you’ll select two or three from the list you create. You can modify these generic questions in Tool 2.3 if you like… as well as specify if a question should be applicable to just certain types of interviews (e.g. just European interviews or those with your customers’ customers).
For more on Discovery interviews, see e-Module 15: Discovery Interviews, at www.blueprintingcenter.com > e-Learning.
Keywords: current state question, Discovery interview, generic current state questions, strategy, operations, supply chain, marketing & sales, product development, Prep Sheet, Blueprinter Tool 2.3