How can design sprints drive technological innovation?

Through the adoption of sprints, teams can identify and concentrateocus on the project's pivotal elements, strategically allocating resources. This methodology mitigates the scattering of efforts across less impactful aspects, ensuring a proportional allocation of time and resources based on task importance. Consequently, the judicious prioritization of resources with sprints not only expedites the development process but also enhances the alignment of delivered solutions with the project's and users' prioritized requirements.

It is very important to have a boundary around the level of details that should be sorted out. The outcome of this exercise is not a fully built design or architecture, rather alignment on the purpose, usability and validation of the real world scenarios.

Follow SAFe best practices for innovation. This is typically in investing in resources and technology aligned to an architectural runway. Create enabler features and balance with new features and tech debt.

We don't commence the design process until we have a set of user stories and a set of functional requirements that solve a problem. We use the equivalent of the design sprint to take the user stories and functional requirements and pose them as an overall solution architecture that is technology-neutral. The full user stories typically include both technology and non-technology aspects. You need to tease out technology from non-technology aspects of the solution while ensuring the non-technology aspects are not compromised.

In my experience, Design sprints can help you rapid prototype or figure out that you need to make a product pivot faster. They allow structure to brainstorming.

By incorporating rapid prototyping of emerging technologies like AR/VR, IoT, or AI during the sprint, teams can explore and iterate on futuristic concepts quickly. ?? This can lead to breakthrough innovations in these fields.

In my experience worthwhile technology innovation comes from solving supposedly 'intractable' problems. They often are part of the current non-technology aspects of the user story. e.g. the invention of phone Apps has allowed users to interact with systems such as banking while mobile. Solutions typically sit within a business functional domain. So tech innovation can occur by using solutions from another domain to solve a known problem within the business's functional domain. It can also occur by looking at the issues with the current user environment and finding better ways of achieving the same outcome.

I previously worked on an R & D team that was tasked with creating rapid prototypes. We used Design Sprints before every prototype to figure out what we should focus on next and how we could innovate further. They were the guiding light to help us move forward.

Below framework can help in achieving innovation using design thinking 1. Gain empathetic understanding of user (VOC) 2. Define key problem that needs to be addressed 3. Brainstorm and generate range of ideas to solve problem 4. Build prototypes with range of ideas identified 5. Get feedback from set of customers/users 6. Repeat

We take a slightly different approach. Our equivalent of a design sprint typically covers: - isolating tech from non-tech requirements. - look at the degrees of freedom associated with each tech requirement, i.e. the things, systems, or modules that intersect with it. - Identify and map out each tech's dependencies. - merge the individual map into a high-level- dependency diagram. - Analyse the maps to look for opportunities to merge or abstract dependencies to simplify the solution architecture. - Review design to identify where alternative approaches or technologies could improve or innovate the solution and/or user environment, e.g. move web app functions to device App functions or look at API-first or API-only implementations.

As a design agency, we have flexible sprints depending on clients and tasks its not the same for developing any functionality. And not all clients can work at the same speed.

Design sprints can accelerate getting customer feedback and validation not only on features or UI / UX, but also is a good way to experiment on business models. They also are a good way to vet out and prioritize the value : complexity ratio of different capabilities to add to the product of service. For example, prioritizing a sprint on a capability that is simpler and faster to implement with good assumed customer value yet might not be the highest, is better to get into the market with real customer response data and then building the next cycle of sprint(s) to grow the customer value, vs tackling something more complex with longer design time.

Beware if there are too many people in the meeting and more if the team is inexperienced working in sprints meetings can become unproductive and a waste of time.

Honestly best piece of advice is to block the time and remove the distractions. Three suggestions: 1. Use pen and paper - no computers 2. Phones away 3. Schedule breaks and provide drinks and snacks

?Cross-Functional Integration: Design sprints can include professionals from diverse backgrounds (like psychologists, sociologists, or artists) alongside tech experts. This interdisciplinary approach can result in more holistic and innovative tech solutions.

Encourage teams to engage in speculative design - creating radical prototypes and scenarios about the future. ?? This can push the boundaries of current thinking and lead to more visionary technological innovations.

Decide when a design thinking methodology is needed and when it is not. If the problem statement is not well defined. - Know your problem, goals, and assumptions. - Pick the right activities for each stage of the process. - Plan a realistic and engaging agenda. - Balance team, group, and individual work. - Connect each activity to the next one. - Use existing templates or create your own, explore Mural.