Advancing child literacy with the help of NxtStep
How Springboard was able to identify the top problems worth solving in bringing new products and programs to market to further their pursuit of closing the literacy gap for children in grades K-3 from Title I schools.
Springboard Collaborative
Industry: Education Management
Location: Philadelphia, PA
Focus: Closing the child literacy gap
Specialties: Education and training tools
Company Bio:
Springboard Collaborative closes the literacy gap by closing the gap between home and school. We coach educators and family members to help kids learn to read by 4th grade. Springboard envisions a world in which all children have the requisite literacy skills to access life opportunities.
Overview
Springboard has had tremendous success with their school programs to provide education and training for family members of children in grades K-3 from Title I schools. However, they had specific goals for bringing new learning tools and self-service training programs to market. Previous attempts were made, but ultimately became stalled in their progress for various reasons.
Springboard decided to hire the team at NxtStep to move both of these programs forward and closer to how they envisioned success.
It has been a pleasure working with Sean and his team at NxtStep. Our products knowledge has increased significantly and the benefits of their work will continue to pay dividends as we continue to grow and scale our product organization.
Rebecca Block
PhD | Sr Director, Innovation and Continuous Improvement
Tangible Results
50
Client interviews complete
12
Problems worth solving identified
3
Detailed insight reports delivered
The Challenge
The team at Springboard knew they had successful programs to offer to schools, but they felt there was much more they could do to provide families with learning tools outside of the classroom. This is when VP of Impact Strategy, Megan Rosenbach, connected with the NxtStep team to provide the product strategy and research support necessary to kick their projects into high gear.
The Approach
Over the course of 6 months working with the Springboard team, we’ve conducted over 50 client interviews to determine the problems worth solving for both projects. We coached the Springboard team in the area of product strategy to ensure the project was able to build the proper amount of momentum to carry it forward successfully.
Each product had its own unique goals and challenges. The NxtStep team evaluated each and designed a strategy for execution that would lead to the discovery of the shortest path forward for both stakeholders and Springboard clients to experience positive results.
With our help, Springboard was able to better understand the needs and challenges of their clients in the search for the top problems worth solving. This was made possible by the research services, coaching and training provided by the NxtStep team.
The Solution
NxtStep has provided Springboard with fractional product strategy support and user research sprints to uncover the top problems for each project. This helped Springboard leadership keep the project on track and prioritize each step in order to ensure success.
This support enabled the Springboard team to focus on building up their internal team to support both projects moving forward through the next phases of solution design and development.
The NxtStep team helped us prioritize our stakeholders biggest problems first, and learn new methods to understand their needs. They were consistently open to collaborate, run with feedback, and talk with both us and our stakeholders to help us learn what we needed to learn. of our product plans.
Having the right product strategy has helped us prepare for rolling our product out ahead of schedule with critical customers.
It has been a pleasure working with Sean and his team at NxtStep. Our products knowledge has increased significantly and the benefits of their work will continue to pay dividends as we continue to grow and scale our product organization.
Rebecca Block
PhD | Sr Director, Innovation and Continuous Improvement
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