For a Handful of Sprints

A business that grows at an unbelievable rate far away from the growth the market and its competitors achieve - that is an experimental organization. And while there are more ways to become one, my favorite choice is organizing your business in Sprints. Because it starts changing the center of your business: the way you deal with your main tasks.

But what kind of Sprints are there? Is there an overview? And which Sprint format to apply to what kind of problem or business area? Let us talk about these question and try to get an overview. 

If we approach these questions from a more holistic point of view, we need a model to describe how businesses are run in the digital age. One core principle is the iterative cycle BUILD - MEASURE - LEARN, this gives us a different view and helps us putting the Sprints into an overall business perspective. Each of the three dimensions mentioned has its own goal, so we build to develop a product, we measure with data, and we learn something to create new ideas. 

After we have run the cycle the first time, we start getting customers, which need to be managed on an ongoing base. So we need to add this 4th dimension. The overall picture describing the core business then looks like that:

BUILD (product), MEASURE (data), LEARN (idea) and MANAGE (customers).

And for each dimension there is a Sprint format, so that we can complete the picture as follows:

BUILD (product) → Development Sprint

MEASURE (data) → Analytics or Business Intelligence Sprint

LEARN (idea) → Design Sprint

MANAGE (customers) → Business Sprint

Some Sprint formats are more known, others are rather for experts in their fields, but they all share common ground, because they are all A) time- boxed, B) follow a certain format, C) put the user and its feedback in the center and D) are iterative and thus adaptive. What does that mean exactly?

A) Time-boxed

This means that we achieve results in a given time frame. Experience tells that this enhances productivity by putting your people under pressure, it is highly effective, but we need to take care of the people involved, so that they do not burn out over time - as an executive you need to focus on the well-being of your employees. 

B) Follow a certain format

Each format gives you clear roles, responsibilities and rules that in total create the Sprint process, which all participants need to follow and contribute their part. At the beginning each team needs to overlook these and adapt all of it to the task and the individuals, but then stick to it. This is part of the self-enablement and creates stability for the team. 

C) Put the user and its feedback in the center

Sprints are customer-centric in one way or another. The feedback of those who are using whatever comes out of the Sprint is essential. With Sprints you create thus the most valuable data: first party data from your clients, which can be used to improve your solution or service further. 

D) Being iterative and adaptive

These improvements happen in the next iteration; each sprint is not a one-time event, but a method that over and over and over again iterates the same format to adapt the solution or service towards the customer needs and wishes. There is an exception with Design Sprints, which normally are only run once iteratively, but if we understand the cycle explained above as a framework, it is clear that the Design Sprint is for the ideation part and needs to be run on a regular base there as well. In short: It is a business decision with a certain growth mindset and does not lie in the format itself. 

Let us have a closer look at each Sprint format itself.

The Development Sprint

The mother of all Sprints, the original format introducing agile principles and often using the framework Scrum and KanBan boards. It is to develop an incremental piece of often software to your product, a new feature for example. It has a fixed, iterative structure and includes roles like the Product Owner, the Scrum Master and the developers. 

The Analytics Sprint

The Analytics Sprint seems for me the most undercover and least developed Sprint format, not really following any standard rules and often are integrated with its functions into other Sprint formats. Ivan Chen states that there “are Requirement Analysis, Data Presentation and Visualization, Data Modelling, and Data Integration types. These four types of work items can be iteratively developed through the sprints.” 

Certainly this Sprint format will need more attention in the future. If you like to know more about it, read this article from Ivan Chen.

The Design Sprint

This format was developed to create prototypes out of ideas and test them and its underlying assumptions with the clients and customers. It stands on the base of the design thinking mindset and it is very flexible, e.g. can be adapted to other problems, such as growth hacking, which leads to new formats like Design Hacking. It follows a fixed structure, but regular iterations do not lie in this format itself, so it needs to be decided as the method to prototype new ideas in the LEARN section. Roles include the facilitator, experts, deciders and UX experts.

The Business Sprint 

It is quite common as well, maybe not so known as its big brother the development sprint, but often interlocked with him: If you want to integrate a newsletter system for example, someone needs to take care of the business side: find the right supplier, negotiate and contract him, get the specifications for the development team, concept how to use the new tool and many more. This format is using the same methods, e.g. Scrum and KanBan, and principles as the development sprint. The idea is to apply it to your existing business and to improve the way how you manage your customers, which should be the core of your run business. 

All above formats are just briefly outlined here and there is more to it in each format, but for me the important thing is getting this overview, which helps applying an agile and digital mindset for business processes. Having said that it leaves out all the supporting business functions like finance, controlling, human resource and others. But if you start organizing your core business in sprints, these functions and the units behind it will as well adapt to it in one way or the other. 

Organizing your business with this mind-set and the overview provided, will help you in becoming an experimental organization. Or in short: A business that grows at an unbelievable rate far away from the growth the market and its competitors achieve.

Do you agree? Are there other sprint formats I missed out? Or do you disagree? Let me know in the comments below

Thanks for reading! Digital Nomad Alex