SprintFit— To Sprint or not to Sprint
A simple, 10-minute exercise that will help you decide if a Design Sprint is the right fit for your challenge.
My name is Benoît and I am part of a team of passionate people here at Knowledge Expert (KE). We have an incredible drive to make change a reality in even the biggest, most complex organisations. We help forward-thinking business leaders disrupt the status quo in their organizations to create positive growth and change. Knowledge Expert helps these visionary leaders implement cutting edge ideas and find solutions to software and business challenges quickly — often within weeks instead of months or years.
Two years ago, we started using Design Sprint and it’s now an integral part of our approach.
Try Design Sprint and your professional life will never be the same!
The Design Sprint is a proven method to drive change, thanks to the terrific recipe created by Jake Knapp.
However, not every business problem is a good fit for a Design Sprint. Qualifying which problems are suited to Design Sprints can be a puzzle on its own. We frequently found that our clients are tormented by two questions:
Is the Design Sprint the right “tool” for my challenge?
Will investing in a Design Sprint pay off, or am I setting myself up for disappointment?
We gave ourselves the challenge of creating a test to determine if Design Sprint is the best option for a given problem. We wanted to offer our customers a simple tool for deciding whether to sprint or not to sprint.
Instead of going backwards and forwards discussing the merits of Design Sprints, wouldn’t it be great to have a simple tool that can help qualify whether a problem is a good fit for a Design Sprint?
The team at KE have been brainstorming about the Design Sprint Fitness Test for months. Four weeks ago, we gathered in sunny Majorca to create the first prototype — and have some fun.
Step 1 — Visualizing the Busines Value Potential
Senior leaders do not have time to waste and can’t afford to try novel approaches when there’s no clear business value.
We began our fitness test by creating visual images for three main areas affecting the business — current progress on the problem, importance of the problem, and time constraints. We created an easy visual representation of one or several Design Sprints to facilitate decision making.
The first prototype was created using model-driven rapid prototyping using Pega. We created graphs from responses to a questionnaire that ploted the results on three axes: Sense of Progress — Just Plain Stuck [bubble size], Sense of Importance — High Stakes [y-axis], Sense of Urgency — Not Enough Time [x-axis].
Since the answer to the questions can be difficult to determine with precision and/or the answer might contain sensitive information, we simplified the questions using a slider control between two likely extremes. Clients answered the following questions:
Sense of Progress - Just Plain Stuck
How long has the problem been in existence ?
Have you already tried to solve the problem in the past ?
Sense of Importance - High Stakes
Is having a solution critical for the future of the company ?
is the problem a major concern for you personally ?
Sense of Urgency - Not Enough Time
Do you have a deadline for a solution?
How long can you continue with things the way they are now?
Step 2- Visualizing the benefits and barriers to success
The second step was to provide a “readiness” indicator that would be complementary to the three main business indicators. We initially calculated a readiness score based on a series of true/false questions.
However, the initial testing resulted in more of a “fitness” score” instead of a readiness indicator. Given the many advantages of running a Design Sprint, we tried to engineer each question to show the incremental advantages the organization would gain by running a Design Sprint for a problem.
Testing the concept
Since designing the prototype, we have continued to refine our concept. Potential customers were able to try out our latest version at the Pega Customer Engagement Summit in Munich 4–5 November, 2019.
We tested the application at our booth where conference attendees spent about 10–20 minutes answering the questionnaire. We recorded four of the participants using the test and our discussions with them. I was impressed with the results (I don’t know how we have operated without this before).
It quickly emerged that using an interactive questionnaire brings three key business and organisational benefits.
1. A simple tool structures the discussion
By using the questionnaire our clients find it easier to structure the conversation around Design Sprints, establishing the pros and cons and keeping the discussion on target. Furthermore, while discussions are just fine when people are dominantly auditive, this risks losing a segment of the audience. Visual, structured tools are a great benefit for people who prefer a visual or cognitive approach.
Keeping the question count and choices to a minimum also meant that the entire conversation is kept on point. As a result, we experience that clients are more engaged in the process — certainly more engaged compared to a boring Power-Point slide (!), never mind a paper illustration.
2. Matrix visualisation helps establish priority and urgency
I was amazed to see how the little gauges and visualisations on our matrix provoked interesting exchanges with our client. In one case the “Just Plain Stuck” and “Importance” parameters were extremely high, which was curious given the extremely low “Urgency”.
This contradiction led to an engaging discussion exploring how the client ended up in this situation, and what their organisation could do to resolve it — either with the help of a Design Sprint or using another methodology
3. A fitness score measures risk
The second part of the questionnaire was particularly helpful in guiding the discussion on the elements that can make a Design Sprint a success. As we answer questions, the score changes, and this can initiate discussions about why this answer has such a low or high impact on the resulting fitness score.
Analyzing the answers allows for a deep dive discussion into the real context of the problem.
The fitness score approach helped to qualify proper opportunities, but also as an input to set up potential engagements properly. Or, indicate, what needs to be done, to improve the fitness score.
The Google Sheet version
As we tested and evaluated our model with fellow Sprint Masters we soon understood that a downloadable Google Sheets model is the best way to share our experience and the benefits of our tool with the wider community.
There are a couple of reasons for this: first, it removes any concerns about privacy and sensitive organisational data because the file is stored on your drive. Next, you can easily change the model including answers to questions to fit the challenge you are faced with.
We believe in the power of giving and sharing. Therefore, we have transformed our initial prototype into a simple Google Sheet that can be downloaded by everyone.
We hope that you will get the same “ah ah” moments with your customers and co-workers and we look forwarding to hearing your stories!
Access the Google Sheet below (File->Make a copy, and start playing):
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1TaEXlOsWZzYi4UriulkxsS7lShYuOt3S1QZY_kFZ8GY/edit?usp=sharing
“Using the Sprintness Tool I have the immediate sensation that it can support our approach with new clients. When they don’t know exactly what to expect and when you need to show something. Even before we start with a Lightning Decision Jam to make them experience the power of a Design Sprint. In getting clearness because of the visual appearance, because of the tangible content. We will test it!”
What is next
Working on this experiment has generated many new ideas. These include creating a more detailed questionnaire complete with hints on the impact of various choices, adding multiple participants the same questionnaire, extracting variation difference as another data point for the discussion, and many more. We will be working on these ideas and releasing them to the community as they are developed. If you have ideas on how to take this to the next level and/or want to contribute to this project, please let me know!
I hope you enjoyed the reading about our Design Sprint fitness test. If you are as passionate by this topic as I am, I would love to to continue this discussion and look forward to reading about your experience in the comments below and connecting on linkedin.
Benoît
Benoît Dubouloz is the COO of Knowledge Expert, speaker and trainer in business agility and innovation, living in Zurich, Switzerland
Many thanks to Rob, Sabrina, Tom, Carsten, Raz, and all with whom I had the pleasure to work with on this concept.
Very special thanks to Steph and his crew for super rich exchanges and contributions to the Google Sheet, this article, and some tiger grrr….
Special thank also to the magic KE DSW TEAM: Alona, Fabien, Fabio, Jitesh, Priyankar, Wassim for the great time together and pulling in the initial prototype.
Special thanks also to Alex who introduced me to the Design Sprint book :-)
