What Is a Concept Sprint and What Is the Difference to a Design Sprint?
This is a very short overview for my colleagues who
a) have somehow heard of Design Sprints but don’t really know what they are.
b) want to know what the difference between Design Sprint and Concept Sprint is.
First, I’ll give a brief overview of what a Design Sprint is. If you want to go deeper into the subject, you will find some links at the end of the article.
What is a Design Sprint?
Design Sprints are a wonderful thing: in a very short time, people work on a relevant problem with full concentration and focus, as cross-functionally as possible. Design Sprints are very challenging, exhausting but also inspiring and a lot is achieved in a short time — given that the challenge is big enough and suitable and that the sprint has been well prepared.
A Design Sprint is a process limited to 4 or 5 days** (timeboxed) in which elements of Design Thinking are used. The aim is to reduce the risk of launching or improving a new product, service, or function and to solve major challenges quickly: Work that potentially took months to complete is condensed into a few days.
The process helps cross-functional teams to clearly define goals, form hypotheses and validate them before starting development and spending a significant amount of money and resources. After a one-week sprint, teams often have a good idea of whether the idea is worth pursuing, whether they should adapt the solution after feedback, or whether a complete change of direction is needed. The goal is to answer strategic questions with the support of prototyping and user feedback, as well as to discover solutions and to take decisions.
The Design Sprint format was developed at Google Ventures by Jake Knapp and John Zeratsky, among others. (See Google Ventures website)
- * Originally, Design Sprints were designed for 5 days — there are now also variants with 4 days called Design Sprint 2.0.
If you conduct a Design Sprint, the following Problems may also be solved:
- Different teams that would need to work together on a problem have a hard time aligning on common business goals.
- Teams often work towards unclear goals as the project scope changes repeatedly.
- Teams lack data on which to base their decisions and instead have endless internal discussions.
- Teams are under pressure to “innovate” but don’t know when or how to start.
- Product development cycles are too long, causing teams to lose enthusiasm and focus.
- The exchange between different areas does not work well and it is difficult to get relevant people with different perspectives around the table to solve the problem.
Goal at the end of a Design Sprint
At the end of the four-to-five-day Design Sprint, the team will have developed at least one solution idea for the sprint challenge and tested it with a minimal prototype.
A Concept Sprint is a Variant of the Design Sprint
A Design Sprint is about developing or improving new products, services or features. The ideas generated in the sprint are prototypically tested with users. A concept sprint focuses on developing, defining, and modelling new approaches to business problems, the result is in this case, for example, a concept. In contrast to the prototype, there are no user tests here, but the concept is presented to relevant people and feedback is gathered.
The most important results after a Design/Concept Sprint
No real user tests
One big difference between a Design Sprint and a (technical) Concept Sprint is that no real user tests are done. The “prototype”, for example, is an architecture map, and the “users” might be teams affected by new architectural solutions. Thus, a “test” could be a session with stakeholders, people from affected teams, and experts in which the Sprint team presents the result and asks for feedback.
Literature
There is extensive literature and material on Design Sprints — here is just a small selection.
Design Sprint — the “Originals”
- Jake Knapp’s book is the classic:
Sprint. How To Solve Big Problems and Test New Ideas in Just Five Days. (amazon link) - Website of the Book
- Videos about Design Sprints (2.0)
- Miroverse: A huge amount of Miro-Templates — we love the Miroverse! (recommended not only for Design Sprint templates :)
Others (a small selection)
- A detailed description of a remote Design Sprint at idealo (German)
- The Design Sprint. A practical guide to answering critical business questions, created by Google Ventures.
- What is a Design Sprint and why you should care
- Frequently asked questions about Design Sprints
- Design Sprint 2.0: Was hat sich geändert? (German)
- Design Sprint 2.0 at a glance: the 4-day process
- Design Sprint (4 days, 2.0) by AJ & Smart, a Berlin based Design Sprint Agency: you can find a lot of info, videos and material her.
Good sources on concept sprints are rather rare
If you find any good sources on Concept Sprints, please let me know! :)
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