What you gain from a Design Sprint

I can never tell how many people have their hands in, or who’s at the bottom holding everyone up?

A lot of the bad press design sprints have received usually involve stagnation. Whereas, any particular design sprint effort has a very high chance of not going anywhere when it’s done.

Even with influential Deciders, alignment with the business and having the best your company has to offer on the Design Sprint team, your efforts may ultimately tank… whether from a failed prototype or a lack of momentum coming out of the Sprint.

No matter if your Sprint is an astounding success or a complete dud, here’s what you stand to achieve just by doing a design sprint in the first place.

1. Respect
   A typical Sprint Team’s understanding of the problem space, by default, is usually limited. This is due to the native discipline of professionals allowing for a certain focus and authority in what they do. When you gather a variety of professionals together to collaborate on a problem, there’s typically a baseline level of respect you’ll give to a subject matter expert or practitioner from a discipline that differs from yours.
   
   But as a Design Sprint continues through the week, that respect usually goes through some organic growth. Your interactions and discussions with team members start to color your views of the value they bring to the effort. Self-affirmation of either a person’s role or place on the team further establishes the group’s interpretation of that team members’ worth.
   
   At the end of the week, no matter what the outcome… you’ll have gained a better understanding and greater respect for the abilities and gifts of others you’ve worked with in the Sprint.
2. Validation (or invalidation)
   I used to work with a very talented designer who wanted everyone on the Design Sprint team to vote for his solution sketches. And make no mistake… they were some of the best approaches to addressing a Design Sprint problem that I’ve ever seen.
   
   But as the process emphasizes individual contribution while shutting down group think tendencies, he ended up winning half of his battles. With every loss came additional perspective and opinion that helped to inform his original thesis… which he turned around during storyboarding to reframe his approach to micro interactions on particular mobile screens.
   
   Long story short, the design sprint process is an iterative loop of validation and invalidation of application and perspective. There’s really no time to dwell on a misfire, mistake or misstep. You aim, you execute, you learn and move on.
3. Time
   To be honest, this benefit is probably the most understated out of everything you normally get in a design sprint process. It’s just amazingly efficient.
   
   The standard equation used when calculating saved time from a design sprint is:
   - Take the average amount of hours used for project meetings in a month
   - Add that to the amount of time a practitioner uses to get the work done
   - Multiple by the average duration of an internal project (say 2–5 months)
   
   That number (whatever it is) gets thrown into the presentations of design sprint shops as proof positive that there’s plenty to gain from the process.
   
   Here’s the problem…
   … it’s not the right number to focus on.
   
   The real gains come on a more granular level:
   - Less time taken for side conversations about the work at your desk, on the phone or in the hallway.
   - Less time to produce a shared understanding of the problem.
   - Way less time to produce design and development artifacts that manifest in a testable prototype.
   - A fraction of the time it would take to get real customers to look at (much less acknowledge) anything you’re doing internally that’s not officially released.
   
   The unstated time gains from just doing a design sprint are never really explored, but they are very real.
4. Camaraderie
   A design sprint is a shared experience, with sprint teams spending their time focusing and collaborating on a particular problem. You work together, eat together, share personal stories about random topics and share pictures of things you’re interested in.
   
   Here’s the most fascinating thing for me whenever I’ve facilitated design sprints in the past (both virtual and in-person).
   
   For every design sprint I’ve done, there are at least two people who… in normal circumstances, would never have met and worked together on a project.
   
   By the end of a 4–5 day Design Sprint week, those same individuals form friendships and bonds that still persist as of this writing. Sometimes they can be in different parts of the world (like China/Istanbul and Japan/Australia for our global virtual design sprint last November), or on different floors of the same office building.
   
   It makes the design sprint process unique in its ability to foster a sense of camaraderie that persists even after initial effort is over. It’s wonderful to see.
5. Learning
   Most practitioners today use the design sprint to explore, prototype and test a really intriguing idea, challenge or product. Others have modified the process to tackle strategy, branding, valuations, brainstorming and other related topics.
   
   In the course of doing the work, Sprint Teams learn from subject matter experts, customers and even each other. If they’re paying attention, every single participant on the Sprint Team has a more informed approach and perspective of the problem they were working on before they started.
   
   Not only do your prototypes fast forward into the future, but they take your Sprint Team to a place of higher understanding and perspective. Everyone learns something new and becomes a better professional because of it.

Leaning in particular is key. It’s not just the Design Sprint team that gains perspective and knowledge. It’s the executive, product and marketing teams that also learn from the Sprint’s outputs. Everyone concerned comes away with a better understanding of the problem and/or opportunity (or lack thereof).

That’s why trying a design sprint (especially if you’ve never done one before) is such a huge opportunity. Whether you ultimately succeed or fail with you Sprint, it’s worth far less than the domain knowledge and practical expertise you’ve gained by taking part.

If you do decide to try your first design sprint sometime soon, be sure to post your experiences online. It’s always fun to see how others grow and evolve in this space.

Thanks for reading!