The Real ROI of Design Sprints

“Solve BIG Problems And Test New Ideas In Just Five Days”

This bold, intriguing and thought provoking statement shines on the front cover of a New York Times Bestseller that came out in 2016, taking every industry by storm and has since completely changed the way we approach the product development process.

If you haven’t figured it out yet, I am talking about the book Sprint by Jake Knapp, and his two colleagues John Zeratsky & Braden Kowitz, that came out in 2016 and outlined a detailed, time-boxed process that uses design thinking to clarify and decide on a product roadmap before starting development, using design, rapid prototyping and usability testing.

This process is now widely known as a Design Sprint.

The premise of running a Design Sprint is to help startups shortcut a long learning cycle, that precedes the launch of their product (MVP) to the market, and actually collect real, meaningful data from a realistic prototype and gain a great deal of learning in just one week without having to do a launch. The application of a Design Sprint has, however, extended beyond new product launches to solve any big challenge.

Design Sprints: A Quick Primer

How would a typical Design Sprint look like then? Quoting from the GV Sprint website:

"The sprint is a five-day process for answering critical business questions through design, prototyping, and testing ideas with customers.”

The perfect team would be made up of 4-7 members comprising a mix of experts in finance, marketing, customer management, tech/logistics and design in addition to a decision maker (like a CEO, founder or head of design) and a confident, skilful facilitator who can manage the time, steer the ship and pull off this extensive exercise on time. 

The sole objective of this group is to build a prototype and get it tested by real end users in just 5 days.

I would recommend grabbing a copy of Jake Knapp’s Sprint as soon as you finish reading this article to learn more about the history, approach and benefits of Design Sprints and the structure, theme and activities of each of the 5 days. You can also read more about interesting case studies at Sprint Stories.

The ROI of Running A Design Sprint

The inevitable question that usually jumps to the minds of prospects (be it your boss, a prospective client or a startup) when being pitched the benefits of running a design sprint is:

“That’s all fine and dandy, but is it really worth my time, effort and investment?”

Let’s talk numbers to get a ballpark estimate.

Start with the time. The general process for pushing a product into the market (from ideation to launch) would follow a pattern similar to this:

1. Come up with an unbeatable product idea: 0-1 month
2. Run market and user research and analyse the competition: 1-2 months
3. List, refine and develop features : 4-6 months
4. Launch product, collect feedback and analyse success: 1-2 months

And let’s add buffer for issues, risks and unforeseen events: 1-2 months

Remember that this path is just to push the first version to the market!

And if you have ownership of a product or run a product business, you know very well that you get to collect insightful data only after at least one version of your product is developed, deployed and in the market.

How about the money? There have been many contributions to that subject over the past few years. Numbers from ITOMIC and stats from otreva and formotus suggest that the cost can easily range from as little as $10,000 to as much as $1,000,000+, depending on complexity of requirements, integration points, originality of the idea, infrastructure and many other factors.

But the average cost of building an app seems to lie between $110,000 and $250,000. So, let’s use $150,000 as an acceptable average cost for the sake of simplification.

One would have then wasted 8-12 months, countless hours of work and $150,000 at minimum before getting the chance to collect insightful data from real users just on the first version of the product. Add to that feelings of confusion, frustration and anxiety.

One would have then wasted 8-12 months, countless hours of work and $150,000 at minimum before getting the chance to collect insightful data from real users just on the first version of the product. Add to that, feelings of confusion, frustration and anxiety.

How Running A Design Sprint Would Have Brought Significant Value?

1. For starters, it is timeboxed. You get to see immediate results after 4-5 days.
2. Prototyping, a core activity in the design sprint, significantly increases the chances of success as it allows you to try different ideas quickly and get them user tested at the end of the sprint.
3. You get to minimize the money, time and effort spent on unsuccessful launches by actually being able to go to market in 1-2 weeks, test the high-fidelity prototype you built in the design sprint and collect insightful feedback from target users.
4. It brings a mix of key stakeholders together in one room which helps validate business ideas much faster.
5. You get to confidently invest your money, time and effort in building your product in the right direction based on the insights and data collected from target users.
6. It teaches stakeholders the importance of engaging and validating ideas with end users.

The Takeaways

A Design Sprint is not a silver bullet, a sorcerer’s magic wand or the solution to all human misery. It won’t help you finish with a ready-to-ship product for sure. But, you will make rapid progress in a matter of days, validate assumptions and, most importantly, know for sure if you’re headed in the right direction instead of spending countless hours, putting in an enormous effort and significant amount of money and waiting for weeks, usually months, to launch an MVP, not knowing if your idea is any good.

And that’s the true ROI of a Design Sprint!

So there you have it! In my next article, I will dive deeper into how, at robusta, we’ve embraced COVID19 as an opportunity to shift to a remote design sprint delivery model, which comes with its own unique set of both benefits and challenges. So stay tuned!

In the meantime, check the work we’ve done at robusta for a better understanding of how we are leveraging the Design Sprint 2.0 model, developed by AJ&Smart and the Jake Knapp, to help our customers get a clear direction and reduce their chances of failure for their next big challenge in just 4 days.

Happy Sprinting!

Got any questions? Feel free to email me directly at [email protected] or reach out to Mahmoud Badr to find out how robusta LABS can help you confirm your hypotheses and shape your market entry strategy.