Stop “Running” your Design Sprints: Prioritizing Results Over Process

When conducted effectively, design sprints can help teams accomplish several months’ worth of work in just a few days. However, when ran poorly, they can only cause the team to lose time while making no progress at all.

As an ex-Googler and now a designer at Meta, I have run and participated in numerous design sprints, some of which lasted only half a day and others took weeks.

While there are multiple online resources available that shed light on effective design sprint practices (e.g., Google’s 5-day Design Sprint method), in this article, I would like to share 5 tips on how to run result-focused design sprints, based on the common pitfalls I’ve observed in my experience.

But before I delve into each of the 5 tips, here’s the key takeaway I’d like you to have:

Don’t run a design sprint just for the sake of it; focus on driving meaningful outcomes for your team. Customise your sprint structure and activities to maximise results.

Now, let’s take a look at those 5 tips:

1. Prepare Opinions Ahead of the Sprint

The key to a successful sprint lies in preparation, which has several aspects to it:

Start by creating a clear sprint brief that addresses such questions as:

• Why are you running the sprint?

• What is the ideal outcome of the sprint?

• What key questions should be answered during the sprint?

• What is within the scope, and what’s out of the scope of the sprint?

• Who should be invited?

Next, decide on the sprint logistics, including:

• The schedule;

• The activities for each session;

• Figmas or FigJams for people to collaborate in (make sure to provide all the relevant screens, assets, and components to save people time from re-creating elements).

But most importantly, formulate opinions:

• Which ideas do you find most promising and would like your participants to explore?

  • If you are running the sprint, most likely you are the domain expert. However, it might take some time for your participants to familiarize themselves with the topics. To avoid missing key ideas, it's recommended that you suggest some starting points for them to explore.

    
    

• After the sprint, which direction do you think the team should take?

  • While you don’t want to overtly dictate the course of action, you still need to have a viewpoint on the product and its design. The key is to have strong opinions, loosely held, so you can guide the team in the right direction but also adjust ideas as necessary.

  
  

  • The bottom line is this: if you, as the domain expert, don't have coherent ideas at the beginning of the sprint, how can you expect others, who have spent less time on the topic, to form opinions in such a short period of time?

2. A Generic Icebreaker Is a Missed Opportunity

Every activity in the sprint is an opportunity to stimulate thinking, even the icebreaker. When kicking off the sprint, think of warm-up exercises that can both engage the participants while also prompting them to think about the topic at hand.

Suppose your sprint is focused on making your app more “effortless” to use. In that case, ask your participants to think of products, both physical and digital, that they would describe as such. The goal here is to encourage the participants to think about the concept of “effortlessness”.

3. Acknowledge and Address Misalignments

The key goal for sprints is usually to drive alignment and bring everyone on the same page. When running a sprint, don’t shy away from misalignment or conflicts. Instead, acknowledge them, and use them to your advantage.

A great way to do this is through the "Spicy debate" activity, where two opposing opinions are placed on the two ends of a scale. It then encourages the other participants to share their views on a question and place themselves on the scale accordingly. Here’s an example:

Although it may seem counterintuitive, this activity can help create a safe space for diverse opinions and ultimately lead to greater alignment.

By calling out misalignments and addressing them head-on, you can work towards resolving conflicts and achieving your sprint goals more effectively.

4. Allow Adequate Time for Idea Development

Sprints always feel rushed. This is the nature of a sprint; they are designed to be fast-paced. Yet, in order to drive meaningful results, it is crucial to provide adequate time for the team to fully absorb information, reflect, and explore ideas.

Remember, simply running a sprint does not guarantee that valuable ideas will emerge.

If you are running a multi-day sprint, it's important to strike a balance between group collaboration and individual focus time to allow for productive work. Here’s an example schedule for a two-week sprint:

Don’t rush people by scheduling too many stand-ups or check-ins. Give individuals, especially those who thrive when working alone, enough time to do heads-down work.

5. Focus on the ‘Why’ - Tailor Your Process and Outcome

Finally, and most importantly, I want to emphasize once again the importance of focusing on results. Throughout the sprint, you need to maintain absolute clarity on “why” you are undertaking the sprint and “what” you aim to accomplish.

This will allow you to determine "how" to best navigate the sprint and achieve your desired outcomes.

For example, if your goal is to create a north star vision to secure leadership buy-ins, focus on generating excitement amongst the sprint participants and producing a high-quality vision artifact as an outcome to drive buy-ins.

Alternatively, if your goal is to align on the immediate next steps for a project, focus on hashing out the details of the features. In this case, it's best to avoid wasting time creating polished artifacts and instead prioritize designing the features in detail.

To sum up, design sprints are a powerful method that pushes teams to move fast. However, it's important to remember that the sprint itself is only a means to an end. While running a design sprint can be a fun and rewarding process, its true value lies in driving meaningful results.