The Sprint Mentality

On Friday last week, I gave a short talk at MADE X, a monthly speaker session for all employees, friends, guests and industry professionals that we host at Made Agency, South Africa.

I chose to speak about The Sprint Mentality. As someone who is always looking for more efficient and creative ways of solving problems and developing products, I’ve been experimenting and diving into different types of product design sprints which have been immensely productive.

Yet rather than focusing on a specific sprint methodology, I wanted to talk about the mentality behind it and share some fundamental principles I believe are common to all of these executions.

What do I mean about Sprint Mentality? For me, it’s an overarching approach to solving problems and challenges collaboratively through exercises and workshops that are founded upon design thinking.

As for the sprints, to those I refer in a broader, generic sense as executions of design thinking. Where design thinking is a methodology, a sprint is its actionable execution that applies it.

Design sprints, or similar types of workshops and executions, come in many forms and every day, new ways of problem solving are being introduced by leading professionals worldwide (shout out to Jake Knapp, GV and Jonathan Courtney).

And whilst the executions mentioned can follow different exercises, time frames and focus points, I believe they are based on some key commonalities:

• Collaboration - Solutions are driven by the collaborative efforts of many different minds and perspectives, rather than a single individual’s vision.
• All Stakeholders - Moving away from a waterfall approach, every person that has some stake in the product sits in at the same time: from the copywriters, designers and developers, to the CEO, the customer and the industry experts.
• Distraction Free - Most workshops will entail a distraction free environment. Leave other work behind, find a quiet area, and start sprinting. Often all phones and laptops are not allowed- we’re going back to basics.
• Structured - The beauty of any sprint is that it follows a carefully crafted and timed series of exercises, that collectively aim to lead the participating team to solve the desired challenges.
• Facilitated - To maintain flow, structure and reach end-results, sprints are facilitated by someone that is familiar with their process and comfortable leading the team through the exercises.
• All Equal - During a sprint, irrespective of your role, profession or position, all are equal. Everyone contributes, everyone has equal say, everyone builds the solution and everyone celebrates it.
• They’re Quick - Most importantly, as the name entails, sprints are QUICK! The workshops are designed to make the most of your time so you can walk away with solutions quicker than through other means.

And it is through such basic commonalities that I encouraged the audience to do same as I encourage you: develop your own methodologies, or study those in existence, and start sprinting right away, for anything and everything.

I’d love to hear your thoughts, and will happily share the presentation with you - simply let me know in the comments below! A little 💚 goes a long way too :)