Why Design Sprint is a must for Stakeholders?

6 reasons why stakeholders should promote Design Sprint in their teams.

Are you a person having ownership of the product in your company?, Or a person who runs a product business, a person whose success depends highly on the success of the product or the idea your team is building but unsure about whether that idea will work or not?

Because your product/idea is just not ready to get feedback from the users and your team says it might take them a couple of months to be really tested? And that is a common problem with all the products these days. You just can’t have a guess, you need more than that.

So, good news Design Sprint framework is here to solve your problem.

Design sprint is a framework for rapidly solving big challenges, creating new products(validating new ideas), or improving existing ones.

You probably have heard of it before Google, Netflix, Slack, Facebook all use it. But, probably never explored about it in detail. But this is important for you, Design sprint is not a trend it is a framework that is here to stay.

As a Design Sprint Facilitator, I work with various teams across departments to help them with their products, new features roll out. So at the end of 4 days, we have a tangible product.

Although while the initial conversation I get asked a lot about the benefits, especially by the product owners.

Why stakeholders should invest in “Design Sprint”?

Six Reasons for stakeholders to start investing in Design Sprint:

High ROI: generate high revenue by rolling out the project faster.

Design Sprint generates a higher return on investment as compared to the traditional and agile way as you can launch the products and features faster with a small team (usually <6).

The solutions thus defined in a design sprint are high problem focused and the best part is you do not need to wait for a month, you will get the solutions in days.

Quick decision making: validate business ideas faster.

The teams in a Design Sprint has a mix of people from various departments such as Design, Technology, Business, Marketing and more so the decisions can be made faster and ensuring you haven’t missed any majors of the product.

Also, as you complete the prototype you can get feedback from the real people. If you are unsure about your idea, keeping it in front of real people could be one of the best moves.

Move faster: spend less time on aligning the teams.

In a Design Sprint, the Mapping is done on the first day so that all the members of the team have a clear understanding of goal. To ensure there is no delay in communication or the objection that might appear from any departments. The whole focus can be kept on solving the problem.

The Design Sprint process is also about having trust in the teammates that they will do their part with full efforts and dedication. Through my experiences, I feel this is one best team-bonding exercises as well.

Less money wasted: minimize the money spent on failed launches.

The traditional product building processes are only helpful when at least one version is developed. So you can’t really test whether this product that you are building with all your blood and sweat will break it or not.

You will only get an actionable insight after the product is in the market. When you have already invested so much of your time and money in planning, developing and distributing the product.

But with the Design Sprint, you can get out in the market after 1–2 weeks from the beginning and test the idea. If it works you can start with the Development process afterward also gives you plenty of time to position your product well.

Clarity in vision: better understanding of the direction in 1–2 weeks.

With a tangible solution built in a week(s) time frame. The teams better understand their situation, the chances of success, growth, the effectiveness of this solution.

The metrics of user testing help to decide the future vision regarding the product. From broad level questions such as If it solves the user problem? Is it too early for this market? Is this too late? To deeper questions regarding the usability of the product.

Better utilization of the team: the same team can work on multiple products.

The teams which have been gone through Design Sprints can work on different problems and further be divided into other teams for multiple products. Which is beneficial for both company and individuals for better at innovating effective solutions. For teams with Multiple Locations, the experienced members of the team can facilitate Sprints in different teams and location as well.

Integrating Design Sprints as a part of Problem Solving is the first step towards a building Faster and Innovative products.

Originally published at rohanmishra.design on October 16, 2018.