How to quickly prepare for your next Design Sprint

A confident and caffeinated practitioner the day before a Design Sprint begins. (Warner Bros)

Most of the time, requests for design sprints are fast…. real fast.

The calls I normally receive from potential clients have a sense of urgency about them. Some have just gotten funding approved and need to execute in two or three weeks. Other situations involve subject matter experts or “Deciders” going on vacation and the importance of getting their involvement before they head off to Belize… or Spain… or Hawaii… man, going on vacation sounds like a great idea.

If you’re a design sprint facilitator of any stripe, and feel overwhelmed with planning and logistics before the Sprint even begins… I feel your pain.

If you have less than a day to get an entire design sprint effort planned and prepared for the following week… I can definitely relate with that feeling of stress, worry and anxiety that you’d experience.

Here’s the good news.

I’ve worked out a simple process for getting your next Design Sprint prepped and ready in 60 minutes or less. It’s a bit of a hack, in that you’ll be bypassing some things you’d normally do if you had more time. Still, you can take what I’ve assembled here and customize it to your liking.

Here’s how it works

There are usually five general steps to getting the logistics and planning for your design sprint squared away:

• Reserving your space
• Setting the agenda
• Assembling your team
• Getting sprint supplies
• Create a presentation deck for the week

If you’re just sitting down and need to get those 5 items done in less than an hour, here’s how I recommend going about it.

1. Delegate (15 minutes)
   Unless you haven’t spoken to a soul about the Design Sprint effort you’re facilitating, chances are you have a handful of people you can count on to assist with your logistics and planning. If they’re invested in the success of the Sprint like you are, it would be a disservice not to include them.
   
   Take the first part of the hour to get the following done:
   - Finding a co-facilitator to help with the week (or on Monday at the very least)
   - Tasking another person with finding a room or common area to work in on Monday (or ideally the full week)
   - E-mailing each of your Sprint Team members to confirm their attendance while asking for their help (getting/pitching in for snacks, reaching out to SME’s they know for interviews on Monday/Tuesday, bringing Sprint supplies with them on Monday)
2. Plan (15 minutes)
   Your Design Sprint may range anywhere from 1–5 days. They may extend out to an additional week with user interviews and retrospectives. No matter the outlook, you need a high level framework with corresponding deliverables to organize your week and get everyone on the same page.
   
   Save some time and start doing the following:
   - Visit Google’s Design Sprint Kit and grab a few recipes to frame the design sprint team’s engagement.
   - Leverage some publicly available resources specifically made for design sprints. Some well known ones are GV’s Design Sprint Brief, Voltage Control’s Scorecard for interviews and Trello Boards for both the original Design Sprint and Design Sprint 2.0.
   - Download a free Design Sprint presentation deck from Firefox (in Keynote), covering every day of your typical sprint.
3. Modify your Sprint Brief and your ‘Monday’ presentation deck (25 minutes)
   The latter part of the hour is completely devoted to getting both the Sprint Brief and the initial presentation deck for Monday in the books. Like the prototype your Design Sprint team will be building, it doesn’t need to be comprehensive. Aim to get what you need in there, and you can work the rest out as time permits.
   
   Here’s what I’d recommend spending your time on:
   - Block out any distractions. Put your phone on silent and out of view if you can manage it. Find a remote place where you can’t be easily found. Go full Ninja and get invisible.
   - Start with the Sprint Brief first. Focus on getting the ‘Sprint Challenge’ and ‘Deliverables’ accurate, as these would represent the intended outcomes of your efforts.
   - Create an intro slide to introduce everyone in Monday’s deck
   - Decide on an icebreaker and represent it in the deck. Superpowers (what everyone’s secret power is) or Shoe Sharing (what shoes are you wearing and why) almost always play out well.
4. Review Your “All Set” Checklist (5 minutes)
   You might think “Why didn’t we have our checklist at the start?”. Why are we creating our to-do checklist at the end? Both good questions!
   
   Starting your checklist towards the beginning of the process would have deferred any ‘now’ actions for later. The whole point of the exercise is to take action in a compressed time frame, and a checklist substitutes quick execution with careful planning (which isn’t bad, just not timely).
   
   So, you create a checklist for any odds and ends you need to get done before your design sprint starts. They may include things you didn’t finish in steps 1–3 above, but they’ll definitely outline what ‘done’ looks like.

Get your own 60 Minute Design Sprint Planning Checklist

You can learn to plan your next design sprint in 60 minutes or less, empowering your team for success while ensuring a smooth start to your week-long session.

> Use the 60 Minute Design Sprint Planning Checklist

Dig in right away. Feel free to send me an email at robert@dallasdesignsprints.com if you have any questions at all.

#1 on the planet for virtual design sprints. No one else comes close.

P.S. — Do you have a friend that might benefit from the 60 Minute Design Sprint Planning checklist? You can share it with them by clicking here:

> Share the 60 Minute Design Sprint Planning Checklist