How Design Sprints Save Us Time and Improve Results

…and the strategy behind why they work

To get started lets dig into the what, why and how behind Design Sprints. This methodology is taking off. We will build an understanding of the objectives of the method. Most importantly we will also dig into the rationale and strategy behind them to ensure we will see similar results as we apply the method to our own business problems.

What (Objective)

Often projects go on and on and we are incrementally learning as we go. Design Sprints shortcut the time from idea to learning. They create big results, FAST! This is what the whole strategy is designed to deliver:

• Short, time-bound method to answer big business problems
• Go from nothing to something, fast!
• Have a testable outcome!

How (Strategy)

Design Sprints accomplish the objective above through a very deliberate strategy, supported in execution by specific activities and sequencing built to benefit from the best of individual and group thinking and how creativity works.

They use a structure which:

• Clearly separates problem-space (core business problems) from solution-space (the solution to the problems)?—?this one warrants a post of it’s own
• Empowers the Design Sprint team to bring the solution to the table
• Fills the room with everyone involved in making the product/service?—?there are no longer deciders and builders, or strategists and executors
• Uses a defined process of going from nothing to something
• Creates a meritocracy, a flat structure and source ideas from all of your employees
• Leverages diverse thinking, the dynamics of when individual versus group activity is better and goes deep or broad at the right times to get the most creative solutions

Specific tactics are embedded into the execution of this strategy to ensure that it retains the reasons the strategy outperforms. The important part is that the specific execution choices still leverage these key strategy elements, at the right times in the process.

Why (Reasoning)

• Engage and empower your team by setting them up with clear problems statements but freeing them to deliver solution ideas
• Access a broader set of ideas through a meritocracy structure with a diverse and small team?—?this is one of the most important elements, it must include everyone involved in making the output
• Leverage the speed focus brings but removing interruptions and executing all the sessions in sequence

Benefits (Realized in recent sprints)

• Take a 3 month process and bring it down to 5 days?—?shrinking the calendar time by -92%, lowering risk and time at the same time
• Bring additional subject matter expertise to the table creating more diverse thought?—?while bringing down the total people investment by -30%
• Consistently create deeper and better solutions through a structured approach to understanding problems, getting broader ideas and delivering testable solutions, FAST!

Background

Design Sprints are a process combining strategies & tools from design thinking and agile development. This is not an agile development methodology such as Scrum or Kanban and should not be confused with those. Design Sprints are for starting with a blank sheet of paper and a big business problem to solve. Design Sprints were pioneered at Google and work done at their venture capital arm, Google Ventures, have battle-tested the approach with a myriad of high profile products and services. The approach brings a common language and formal method to product thinking and is incredibly powerful.

• What is a Design Sprint?
• Sprint: How to Solve Big Problems and Test New Ideas in Just Five Days by Jake Knapp, John Zeratsky, Braden Kowitz
• Design Sprint: A Practical Guidebook for Creating Great Digital Products by Richard Banfield, C. Todd Lombardo, Trace Wax

Execution

Start by pulling together a small and nimble team depending on the scale of the problem and span of subject matter expertise. Keep the room fairly junior to help enable a flat structure. There are no roles or seniority when creating solutions in a Design Sprint.

The five sequences have specific activities under them. These are important as they are the system for executing the strategy above and to best leverage individual versus group thinking throughout the phases.

Problem owners set expectations by providing the team with clear problems to solve. These are the results (outcomes) to be achieved and avoid solutions (outputs) entirely. The problem-owner then validates the output to see if it achieves the outcomes of the problem statements they provided. We’ve added the mid-stream check-in for the stakeholder as well to see how things are going. It is specifically just before prototyping starts to get quick early feedback and was designed to address the radical change from existing approaches that Design Sprints represent.

This sets up the problem owners to set direction and hold the team accountable while simultaneously empowering the team with the freedom to design solutions.

Process

Further process material is available here if you are interested in the specific activities under each of the phases.

Roles

The structure during Phase 1?—?Phase 4 is flat, no hierarchy or different roles. Phase 0 & Phase 5 involve two roles.

1. Stakeholders are the problem-owners
2. Design sprint team are the solution-designers

Steps

Each step has a specific set of activities designed to achieve Design Sprint objectives, embodying the Design Sprint strategy and best leveraging group versus individual activities at the right times.

The five phases are setup on a 5 day timeline in the official methodology. This is to give a starting point and to give people a feel for the amount of focus each phase needs and the size of business problem Design Sprints should be lined up against. This is not a one size fits all figure.

The actually number of days should be determined after the problems are scoped. Running out of time is one of the largest risks to Design Sprint strategy however, more on this later.

Who: stakeholders (problem owners)

Phase 0?—?Gather

Who: Design Sprint team (solution designers)

Phase 1?—?Understand

Phase 2?—?Ideate (Diverge)

Phase 3?—?Decide (Converge) *Includes check-in with stakeholders

Phase 4?—?Prototype

Who: stakeholders (problem owners)

Phase 5?—?Validate

Feedback received for far

• “Very engaging process”
• “Having the time to focus changes everything”
• “It is great having more partners in the room”
• “I can’t believe we made it through is much in such a short time but we did!”
• “I’m not sure a five day investment is worth it”
• “I need to be in the room”

Areas of opportunity

1. Bring more structure to the Gather and Validate phases (Who, what, where, when, how)
2. Help the problem-owners really feel their key part in the new approach, provide insight into the process choices and clarity on the benefits
3. Pull specific tactics and ways of operating that we can leverage in other areas of work items like the power of setting aside focused time and getting a diverse group of people in a room together

Plan extra time, especially for phases like understand, to ensure you don’t break the flow. The strategy calls for building a small but diverse team and it often takes time to build deep understanding. Even when subsequent phases are smaller the understand phase is often still a day in practice. You also need to spend more time then you may be used to in the ideate phase. You need to go broad during ideate to diverge and really explore what might be, this is core to the Design Sprint strategy. Design Sprint is not a label for going from understanding to validation and getting people in a room. The magic is in the details of this battle-tested strategy.

It is not a prescriptive method in the details but the areas of individual versus group thinking, the amount of time it sets aside for certain things, who is in the room and sequence of activities are how it actually works. They are based on a strong foundation from human behaviour, psychology (deep into how creativity works) and organizational design.

Flow and focus are crucial, as is living in problem-space before moving into solution-space! This may all feel very foreign but that’s okay. Try Design Sprints today by sticking with the details of this tried and tested strategy. You will be impressed by the results!