Stop contraposing design thinking and design sprints.

Design Sprints are en vogue now. Everybody and their uncle are doing it. There are even ads ranging from cheeky to belligerent on design sprints versus design thinking. Only, there is no "against" in this case. Making a strong differentiation between them or ignoring one for the other will only hurt you and your brand in the long run. Here is why.

The Grand Debate

Actually, it's not that grand a debate. Outside of the innovation scene and parts of the design scene, nobody has really taken note of this. Go on, throw a few open ended questions to your clients or inside your organisation about this. I'll wait...

My friend Mia from Dark Horse wrote an article titled cookbook vs. chef (in German) describing the difference between the two approaches. Going by her analogy, the activity is the same, it is a matter of output. One gives you a meal, the other a chef who can deliver meals. Similarly, a design sprint will deliver a solution while design thinking is a system for discovery and solution making. So far, so good. But why the big fuzz?

In part, it's a reaction to claims of certain agencies focusing on design sprints only. They say that a design sprint is superior to design thinking. They say that it delivers results faster and with more efficiency. Only one week towards a solution.

Sprints work.

And they're right. That's what a sprint is for. To get from A to B fast. But that's something that was well established long before Jack Knapp's book. It was only known under different names. At the d-school in Germany, we called these fast forward iterations. They included a short initial user research. Sometimes, that part was pre-prepared, so it was more about mapping what we already knew, just like in the current design sprint format. They went from 3 to 5 days. At IDEO, they called them deep dives. That was back in 1999. Take a look.

To Jake's credit, he never claims that he invented this or coined the phrase. People were talking about design sprints long before the book. It is a term especially popular in agile circles. But we also did discovery sprints, iteration sprints and teaming sprints.

In fact, most design thinking workshops are devised as sprints over a few days to a week. It is also well known by any agency or consultancy offering services in this space, that small workshops and short formats pay pretty well. It's what customers ask for because they think in quick wins and short term gains. It makes sense, people want to see results asap.

Do more sprints.

In fact, fast results are what companies should aim for. After all, they are good at meetings, strategy, efficiency. They are awful at moving with speed and jumping into action. In design thinking, a bias towards action is seen as a major principle. So having a format that whips people to a solution is a great thing. Forcing them to focus on it for 5 days straight, with no distractions and side activities creates great results.

Of course it does.

Pick a project. Any project. Imagine you would and could focus on that activity alone at work for a whole week. No other meetings, no distractions, no debate. Just one week of crunch time. Do you think you could get something done?

If you read between the lines, a problem Jake is addressing is: they weren't moving forward in the project because of so many parallel activities. Sound familiar? It's the norm in today's workplaces. Hunkering down into monk mode in a small team and grinding through the task while ignoring the day-to-day will fix that.

So don't just do design sprints. Focus on your customer's needs for a whole week. Focus on that strategy paper for a week. Or on that super important presentation. Forget all else!

Scientific backing

There is research over research over research that all show the detrimental effect of multitasking. The costs of juggling many things at once is immense. It lowers performance, it decreases the quality of work and it leads to stress and burnout. Look at the people who have become well known for their skill and talent in the world. The one thing they have in common is a singular focus on one thing.

So, if you need an argument to bring colleagues on board - this is the one you can use. It just makes sense. Everyone had the experience of things moving slowly and yet at the same time, everything happening at once. Again, this is the norm in business today.

The obvious counter argument you will get is: I don't have time for this.

People would love to do it, but there are all those other meetings and projects. There are other responsibilities. Here, arguments will not work. You need to provide solutions. Here is one.

Doing sprints

In 2009, I did a book sprint on participatory democracy called reboot. It took a group of 20 experts about 3 days to come up with and write the entire book. Currently, I am working on a project with Wikimedia, Google and the Internet Governance Forum on the 2019 IGF event in Berlin. The aim is to create the online onboarding for 50+ workshops in 3 days.

Sprints work. So how do you find time for them?

Making time

It's no wonder that Jake's second book is called making time. It provides a lot of useful suggestions on this. Here is one idea he isn't covering: work trading.

If you look far ahead into your schedule, you can delegate and ignore some of the meetings and projects that you do to free up some time. But there will still be certain responsibilities left. Those, you can trade. It's simple. Someone else will do your work for you on the sprint week while you take over for them another week. It's pretty common practice in blue collar work, but I haven't seen it happening a lot in offices.

It's easy to do if you're part of a team with the same specialty. Say you are one out of 5 in a ux team. You could trade your work with a few people and go to the sprint. Just make sure you forward relevant emails and calls, then tune out.

Of course, you'll have to return the favour to your colleagues some day.

Continuing the sprint

If you don't have a design thinking environment, using the output of a design sprint will be pretty difficult. You'll still need to integrate the results into your regular processes. The same is true for any other sprint example - you need an environment that is open to it.

Imagine doing a room sprint to redesign the offices. You create ideas, build and test them. In the end, you are ready to implement the new design in a day or two...

Then, the facility manager comes in and shoots everything down because he reconsidered and feels like it should be his responsibility alone. Yes, this actually happened in a project. Needless to say that none of the team was in any way inclined to collaborate with that person again. The group effort needs to be respected. But there also needs to be a way to take the group output and put it into practice.

Ignore that last bit at your own peril. The organisation needs to be able to build on the sprint. But that isn't something covered in sprints. It's usually also not covered in design thinking, as that is the overall umbrella. What you need is capacity building (training people) and organisational development (changing the governance, the rules).

My 2 cents

Don't call your self a "design sprint facilitator". It may be trending now but it'll be part of the norm soon. Running after trends won't be very useful unless you want to make some quick money. You can, of course, specialise in a singular technique or format. The same could be done for customer journeys or 4 hour design thinking introduction sessions.

I am trying not to participate in the vs. debate. This article is mainly for the benefit of people who messaged me over the last few weeks, asking the same question. Should I do a design sprint or a design thinking workshop? The answer is: depends. Are you stuck and need to push for a solution? Are you just starting off and need to run through all of it once?

But maybe you don't need a design sprint. Maybe you need a discovery sprint. Or an implementation sprint. Or some other aspect of a goal you need to focus on. Whatever it is, I find that being very clear on an objective and putting effort on generating output is essential. That clarity, focus and energy is super rare. It's what 99% of activities don't have.

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What were your experiences with sprints? What kind of sprints have you done in the past? Share your experience in the comments.

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I have helped people throughout Europe and Asia to successfully introduce, build, manage, and operate design thinking practices.

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