In 2016, Jake Knapp’s book Sprint: How to Solve Big Problems and Test New Ideas in Just Five Days debuted—and completely transformed how organizations around the world solve problems. Since then, the book has become a New York Times best seller and design sprints are a staple of the collaborative process.
Learning more about design sprints will help you understand how to apply it to your organization’s strategic challenges.
A design sprint is a five-day process that solves strategic challenges associated with releasing a new product, feature, or service using design thinking principles, rapid prototyping, and user testing.
Design sprints came out of the work that Jake Knapp did at GV (formerly Google Ventures), which defines the sprint as:
a ‘greatest hits’ of business strategy, innovation, behavior science, design thinking, and more—packaged into a battle-tested process that any team can use.
One of the best things about a design sprint is the environment it creates. During that one week, you get to work shoulder-to-shoulder with people you probably only see when you walk past each other in the hall.
Because everyone that’s part of a design sprint is called an Expert (other than the Decider), it levels the playing field and dissolves any sense of hierarchy. This opens the door to transparent, collaborative discussion that’s focused on finding the best way to solve complex challenges.
The intimacy and speed of the design sprint allow larger companies to be agile. It sidesteps the bloated, slow-moving tendencies that become more common as organizations grow.