Design Sprints: They Work for Enterprises, Too
We sometimes get inquiries from managers and product designers at larger companies who’ll say something like this: “I read The Sprint Book, but I’m not sure if it’ll work at my company.” The Sprint Book, admittedly, is geared towards the type of company that doesn’t blink at the idea of getting all its decision-makers in one room, or starting the week off as a 3-D modeling software and ending the week selling boutique candles.
OK, so maybe that’s a stretch, but it’s by and large been a tool for startups; companies that can make decisions fast and turn on a dime. Sprints value flexibility, pivotability, and lack of hierarchy — so it makes sense that large enterprise teams might feel like the underlying principles behind this type of design exercise aren’t meant for their organization, and abandon the idea of an exciting, hands-on Sprint for a safer-feeling, slower-moving framework that will maintain the status quo.
But we’ve found that by following some important guidelines and adjusting expectations (your company’s value proposition probably won’t change in a week, unless everyone’s really ready for it!), Sprints can have a big impact on company culture and decision-making, and help pave the way for the type of big, important pivots that are typically seen in smaller companies.
Pluck participants from the highest rungs of the corporate ladder.
When thinking about who to have in the room, stretch. If the product team needs to take a hard look at its value proposition, and Greta’s the team lead, get Greta’s boss in the room. Heck, get Greta’s boss’s boss in the room. The more decision making power you can get invested in the Sprint, the more likely the changes are to actually happen.
And, if you can try to “infect” the people at the highest levels in your organization with the research bug — get them listening to and valuing users — it’s a chance to get large swaths of the company all on the same page, working towards the same goal: making the users happy. It might not happen all in a week, but it has the potential to change company priorities and perspectives down the line.
Extend your Sprint thinking out to fit your product cycle.
Treat the Sprint week like a giant kickoff at the beginning of, say, a quarter. Think about how to extend the energy of the Sprint throughout the months that follow it — whether that’s getting those folks together in the same room for an hour a week to talk about progress, setting up recurring research at your organization to support iterative design, or planning another Sprint week at the end of the quarter.
Think of your first Sprint as an advertisement for the next one.
Change in large organizations happens more slowly. You might end up needing a couple of these dedicated weeks to accomplish the longer term outcomes you’re hoping for. As you’re doing your first Sprint, think about ways to get others in your organization excited about what you’ve accomplished and knocking at your door to be part of the next one.
Our clients have done this in a few creative ways:
- sharing photos we took with the larger team or group
- holding Sprints in central areas of the office where colleagues walk by and wonder what all the Post-Its are for
- sending company-wide newsletters about the Sprint process
- sharing about the week in Lunch & Learns or other workplace venues
- inviting C-suite executives to drop in for a portion of a day (especially on testing days!)
We love getting to hear about the momentum and excitement that Design Sprints help to build and create in enterprise settings — you might be amazed at the culture shift and cross-team communication benefits that a Sprint can have for a large company!
