Problem Framing vs. Foundation Sprint vs. Design Sprint - When to use each and why?
by John Vetan
Most teams don’t struggle because of the work. They struggle because of how they work.
Take a typical project kickoff. You have a goal, a team, and a sense of urgency. Maybe it’s a new feature, a strategy shift, or a whole new product. Exciting stuff, right?
But then, things start to slow down.
Meetings pile up. Talk, and talk, and talk. ?Every stakeholder has a different opinion. No one agrees on what the real problem is—or if there’s even a problem at all. The team gets stretched between priorities, making plans, debating whether they should be fixing, improving, or reinventing.
Everyone is working, yet somehow nothing moves forward. Work starts to feel like a slow, grinding treadmill.
It’s exhausting. And it happens all the time. And it takes all the time.
Crazy, right?
But there’s a better way.
Problem Framing, the Foundation Sprint, and the Design Sprint exist to break this cycle. Each one is a shortcut through the chaos, a structured, time-boxed way to make faster, better decisions.
What takes six months the old way can be done in weeks—or even days.
That’s because these methods replace scattered, unstructured work with short, focused bursts. Instead of endless meetings, you get intense, high-quality time dedicated to tackling one critical challenge—while shielding teams from the usual distractions.
So, which one do you use—and when?
?? Problem Framing: Start the Right Way
When to use it:
? When the problem is big and messy
? When jumping straight to solutions could be a disaster
? When you need leadership buy-in for high-stakes decisions
Think of all the times a team jumped to a solution too fast—only to realize, weeks or months later, that they weren’t solving the right problem.
It happens all the time.
Most teams think they know what the problem is. Stakeholders come in with strong opinions, armed with past experience and gut instinct. Teams want to move fast—not pause to analyze. Everyone has different priorities—and they’re not always aligned.
Problem Framing is about getting all of these voices in the same room and guiding them toward clarity.
It’s a high-stakes, one-day strategic workshop. The people in the room—senior leaders, executives, decision-makers—don’t have time for ambiguity. They want quick decisions and clear action.
Problem Framing forces people to slow down and rethink.
But you don’t want to waste your leaders time. This is why it requires deep preparation. Before the workshop even begins, you’ll need to:
Then comes the hardest part: facilitating the discussion.
A Problem Framing workshop brings together leaders, senior stakeholders, and decision-makers—the people who usually don’t have time for this kind of deep thinking.
And they’re opinionated.
Everyone in the room has their own version of the truth. The CMO thinks it’s a marketing problem. The Head of Engineering blames tech debt. The CEO just wants the damn thing fixed—fast.
Problem Framing provides a proven method to navigate this battlefield, challenging assumptions, questioning priorities, understanding customers and and making data-driven decisions.
At the end of the session, the team walks away with one clear outcome: ?validated problem statements that connect user needs to business goals — all informed by actual data and insights.
Problem Framing is best suited in large organizations, where decision-making is slow, problems are complex, with solutions requiring collaboration between multiple departments and where a wrong decision has serious consequences.
It’s not easy. But when done right, it prevents months of wasted effort.
? Foundation Sprint: Get Started, Not Perfect
When to use it:
? When you have a general direction but need to refine it
? When exploring alternative strategies before committing
? When you don’t have time for deeper problem exploration
People don’t start with a problem—they start with a solution.
It’s human nature. You see a gap in the market, a new technology, an exciting idea.
Maybe you have a strong intuition about an opportunity. ?Or in today’s fast-paced workplaces there is no time for problem framing, and and leadership expects their solution to be implemented ASAP.
Before you know it, the team is building, convinced they’re on the right track.
And sometimes? They are.
But more often? They’ve locked in too soon. They love to move fast—but they don’t always love to slow down and question their thinking.
And that’s how teams end up running full speed in the wrong direction.
This is where the Foundation Sprint comes in.
It’s not about defining the problem—it’s about challenging the first solution that comes to mind.
The Foundation Sprint is a two-day workshop designed to stress-test ?assumptions before committing to an approach. Unlike Problem Framing, no pre-work is needed—but it does require deep thinking.
And this is where teams get stuck.
By the end, the team walks away with a clear, refined hypothesis of a solution approach.
This still needs to be validated though through experiments.
The foundation sprint is a strategic and tactical workshop, involving both decision-makers and subject-matter experts (SMEs)—leaders define the direction, while experts contribute to the potential approaches and challenge them.
Think of it as a strategic checkpoint—a way to refine the direction before investing time, money, and resources.
?? Design Sprint: Fail Fast, Learn Fast
When to use it:
? When the problem is well-defined, but solution is not straightforward
? When you want to innovate and think out of the box
? When you want to de-risk big investments by testing solutions with real users
The Pain of Building Something Nobody Wants
You’ve framed the problem. You’ve defined the approach.
The problem is clear. The direction is set.
Here’s the nightmare scenario:
Your team spends months working on a solution. It’s beautifully built, packed with cool features, and everyone is high-fiving each other.
Then you launch.
And customers?
They hate it.
Or worse… they don’t care.
This is where the Design Sprint comes in.
Instead of launching blindly, you build a prototype, put it in front of customers, and get feedback in just four days. A Design Sprint compresses idea generation, prototyping, and testing into a single, high-intensity process.
The stakes are lower than in Problem Framing (because we already know the problem) and the thinking is less abstract than in a Foundation Sprint (because we’re focusing on a specific solution)
So out of all three methods, the Design Sprint is the most straightforward.
But it’s also intense work.
A Design Sprint brings together a cross-functional team of experts. ?People who don’t normally work together—sitting side by side, focusing on a single challenge.
Depending on the challenge their roles might vary, but the main criteria is that they have expertise, diverse perspectives and they can all contribute to a solution.
Over four days, they:
And here’s where it gets real.
When you put a prototype in front of real users, you can’t hide from reality.
If something is confusing, they’ll struggle.
If they don’t care, they’ll ignore it.
If they love it, they’ll light up.
The team watches it all unfold—firsthand. No guesswork. No "we think" or "we assume." Just raw, direct feedback.
By the end of the sprint, they have a concrete answer.
And the best part? They learn all of this in days. This is the ultimate sanity check before you invest in months of development.
Design Sprints are intense—but they prevent the ultimate pain: building something nobody wants.
Which One Do You Need?
?? If the problem is unclear or complex, start with Problem Framing. Especially in enterprises, where stakes are high and risks are real —this is a strategic workshop for senior leadership.
?? If you feel confident about an approach, idea or even solution but need to refine it, use a Foundation Sprint to challenge assumptions and align the team—this is both strategic and tactical, for decision-makers and SMEs.
?? If you’re ready to validate with real users, a Design Sprint will give you fast answers—this is a tactical, operational sprint, best suited for SMEs and execution teams.
Together, these methods form a structured, repeatable system for solving problems and testing solutions—fast.
The best part? They’re practical, easy to learn, and adaptable. Any team, in any organization, can apply them without disrupting existing workflows. They don’t require a complete transformation—just the right intervention at the right time.
Each method aligns teams, accelerates decision-making, and removes uncertainty—so that when it’s time to execute, everyone knows exactly what to do.
And most importantly? They bring teams together and make work actually enjoyable.
Join us at Design Sprint Academy on March 11 at 5:00 PM CET, for a live webinar to discuss together these methods, how they compare and when to do what.