Customizing the Design Sprint: the three-in-one Master Sprint
Whenever we talk about the Design Sprint process we talk about how it’s such a terrific approach because it’s flexible. This typically means that we swap out a few of the activities in the course of the Design Sprint. For example, we may work on Hopes vs. Fears rather than Goals & Anti-Goals. We may work with the client on Personas rather than Empathy Mapping. When we create agendas, we tend to place more weight on one thing rather than another — e.g., we may spend more time exploring the user (through Personas, Journeys, and Discovery Interviews) or more time exploring the problem (via Problem Storming, Current Solutions, or Challenge Mapping).
Recently we had a client that helped us take this concept to a whole new level. Meet Adrienne Leahey, ACT Inc.’s Senior Director of Product Line Management and innovative powerhouse. Adrienne leads the new product development team, responsible for creating new solutions at the organization made famous for their college entrance exams. We had previously run a few Design Sprints with the innovation team as a way to jumpstart new opportunities, and they saw the magic in the method.
The Problem: Avoiding Design Sprint Fatigue
Although firm Design Sprint believers, the ACT innovation team was beginning to have trouble incorporating the intense-nature of the Design Sprint process into a regular cadence.
They were determined to identify a repeatable Design Sprint process to get to their ambitious corporate goals without inadvertently creating Design Sprint fatigue.
They boiled it down to three key issues:
Tackling One Problem at a Time
Solving only one problem per Design Sprint was not good enough. Sometimes a Design Sprint validates an idea/process/product and the team moves forward. But sometimes, a Design Sprint reveals a process/product/idea should not move forward, leaving a team back at square one. ACT wanted better odds that their Design Sprints would produce a validated concept the innovation team could continue to work on and eventually graduate into development. In a sense, the team wanted to fail fast and get to the good ideas.
Participant Burnout
Asking people to step away from their desks for a whole week to participate in a Design Sprint is always a significant ask, but it has been proven to be a worthwhile endeavor. Try recruiting participants for multiple Design Sprints on a regular basis, and you might expect to meet resistance pretty quickly. Back-to-back cycles of Design Sprints was simply not something the innovation team could sustain for very long. They needed to find the right cadence to keep their new concept pipeline full and hit their department goal for number of validated concepts produced, while not overburdening or eroding the pool of participants.
Tough Recruiting for Validation
The innovation team gets help from the Customer Insights team at ACT for recruiting subjects to test and validate ideas. But depending on who the key stakeholder is that needs to be interviewed, the effort to get in front of the right persona can be considerable. How many university budget directors do you have in your address book? The team needed a way to make sure they were getting the most out of this recruiting effort.
The Solution: A Three-In-One Master Sprint
Adrienne examined the constraints and conceived the idea to conduct three Design Sprints at once. She and the team called upon Fresh Tilled Soil to help refine, test, and validate this concept of a Master Sprint. Here’s what it looked like:
PHASE 1: Understand Together
A large group of 18 from across ACT combined for one, big Understand day, which allowed the group to spend time exploring the existing research, examine the stakeholders, and spend a good amount of time talking about the different problems. The Master Sprint kicked off with a fairly broad topic: How might we better serve students who are new to America, including immigrant and first generation students? This allowed for the opportunity to solve for multiple problems together. It also allowed the team to share one iteration of pre-sprint research for multiple problems.
PHASES 2–3: Diverge and Converge, The Sprint Multiplies
Predetermined teams of six participants formed around each of the three top problems. Each team spent two days ideating, selecting, and refining ideas to produce a single, well-defined concept for testing. The ACT innovation team has some seriously talented, concept managers/emerging facilitators, Jonna Higgins-Freese, Derrick Parker, and Shawn Finlen, who were able to divide and conquer to keep the sprint moving in three different directions.
PHASES 4–5: Prototype and Test, Determine Desirability
The group working sessions concluded at the end of the Converge day and the innovation team partnered with ACT’s UX and Customer Insights teams to create prototypes and collect customer feedback. Two of the three ideas shared a persona so the Insights team was able to test two ideas at once with the same recruits.
AFTER THE SPRINT: Determine Feasibility and Viability
Two of the three ideas were validated for desirability and the concept managers moved them through the pipeline to evaluate cost to develop (feasibility) and market potential (viability). These additional levels of validation involve significant cross-functional engagement at ACT and can take some time. The Master Sprint format gives Adrienne’s team a few weeks for validation activities between sprints, while still generating the same average number of concepts over time.
Master Sprint Approach Benefits
We studied the benefits of this three-in-one approach at the conclusion of the first Master Sprint and determined that it was indeed a model that would work for the ACT innovation Team. ACT felt the Master Sprint approach allowed them to:
Improve internal sprint participation (there’s more time in between sprints)
Reduce the pre-sprint research effort (three problems share one pre-sprint research cycle)
Consolidate sprint planning and the Understand phase (“I’m sure there’s a conference room that has no booking for several days in a row” — said no admin ever)
Reduce the test recruiting effort (multiple ideas can be validated/invalidated with single test group)
Increase the likelihood that a validated idea can be progressed (two of the three concepts were validated with users and moved into additional stages)
Solve for 3x more problems facing ACT stakeholders (that’s really what we’re here to do, right?)
Since Fresh Tilled Soil ran the first Master Sprint with ACT, the innovation team has taken the baton and has run several successful sprints exploring a variety of topics. There have been a few tweaks to fine-tune the process with each additional sprint but, the Master Sprint has been validated as the best solution for ACT. (We’re so meta!) In fact, it’s exceeded expectations. The innovation team at ACT delivered 50% more validated concepts, above and beyond their corporate goal!
Want to learn more about Master Sprints or put heads together on finding solutions to your own Design Sprint woes? Get a hold of our Design Sprint experts at ds@freshtilledsoil.com.
