The Home Depot Design Sprint Program — Year in Review
As we reflect on 2018, it is evident that we gained exponential adoption of the Design Sprint methodology across our teams. Specifically, we more than doubled our reach within our Dot Com squads over 2017. Of these Design Sprints, there was a mix of current and future roadmap opportunities. Moreover, we continued to scale to outside departments, such as Creative, THD Foundation, and Global Custom Commerce.
The Design Sprint Tiers were a driving part of this success as we partnered with our User Research team to create a tiered Design Sprint offering within our project intake process. We base our tiers on the User Research inputs, problem-statement and Design Sprint outcomes. Each level offers an approach for solving the unique set of challenges within The Home Depot. Specifically, we have instituted a 1-Day Problem-Framing, 3-Day Design Sprint and 5-Day Design Sprint baseline for our Program. These sprint tiers streamline the intake process by requiring specific research inputs and sprint outputs to each level. This provides guardrails to the intake process by ensuring that each full-phase Design Sprint is supported by user research. To close-out the year, 45% of the sessions were 3-Day Design Sprints with the remaining sprints divided between 1, 2, 4 and 5-Day sessions.
Our facilitation team grew this year as we closed out with eight core facilitators and four trainers. We achieved this by creating a detailed curriculum focused on the tactical “how-to” of the Design Sprint process as well as one-on-one deep-dives into soft skills and emotional intelligence. Our facilitators also held retrospectives after each project to discuss learnings and opportunities moving forward. For scale, our Intro Course had an awareness reach of 65 colleagues across Dot Com and Enterprise. Departments include UX, Product, PM, Engineering, Creative and Strategy.
Over the course of this series, I highlighted how we use Design Thinking and specifically Design Sprints to fuel innovation within our product teams. The series starts with a foundational understanding of Design Thinking and how Design Sprints fit within the overall ideology. Next, I shared best practices both within the industry and specific applications here at The Home Depot. The topic of the third article centers on creating a culture of innovation. Up next, was an inside perspective of how we are scaling Design Sprints within our teams. To further refine facilitation skills, we made our training manual public and discussed experiences at the Google Sprint Conference.
2019 is set to be another excellent year for our Design Sprint Program. Thank you to everyone who has made this year so incredible. Keep an eye out for the next article and thank you for reading. Comments and feedback are always appreciated.
Links to the series articles are below.
Design Thinking and Design Sprints at THD
Fostering a Culture of Innovation
Scaling Design Sprints for Design Transformation
