To unleash innovation within the company, it is now essential to bring together the various stakeholders of a project around new collaborative working methods. Lean Startup, Design Thinking or agile project management: these methods have proven their worth in startups, and some teams are starting to adopt them in larger organizations.
But because their implementation often involves restructuring the organization and management models, some companies do not always dare to venture into this area.
And what if you started by organizing a design sprint?
A design.. what?
The design sprint is a design experience that takes place over a maximum period of 5 days. During these 5 days, the participants aim to prototype a new business, a product, a new feature, or even a new customer experience, and thus address a problem, test an innovation in record time.
To arrive at this final prototype, the teams follow different stages, inspired by the method Design Thinking : observation and interview of the target users, defining a customer journey, creating mockups to bring up solutions, creating a storyboard, and finally, prototyping and user testing.
For Matthieu Gioani, expert in Design Thinking and our reference Certifying training in Agile Methods, “The design sprint is mainly applied in the digital sector because it is a sector that constantly thinks about how it can improve its processes”.
But because innovation touches all parts of the company, the design sprint is not just reserved for digital teams!
“It is quite possible to organize a Design Sprint in other fields”, "That's what we explain," explains Matthieu Gioani. “I will soon be assisting a company in the pharmaceutical sector in the implementation of a design sprint. The company wants to create a new version of one of its products and redefine its positioning in the market. This means we are engaged in very strategic thinking, less focused on tools or web platforms.”
A short format to boost innovation!
Organized over a maximum of 5 days, the design sprint is therefore first and foremost a short format, as its name suggests. Borrowing from the methods of design thinking, ux design and agility, The advantage of the design sprint is that it mobilizes little while providing the necessary lessons to the teams to carry out a project successfully.
As Matthieu Gioani explains, “Thanks to this short format, after 2, 3 or 5 days, the teams participating in the design sprint know that they will produce a deliverable that they can evaluate. They will then be able to assess whether it is appropriate to continue moving forward or not. Like in agile, this is a format called “time boxing”, which forces the teams to deliver a deliverable”.
Because the deliverable is a prototype and not a product, the design sprint therefore allows a company to reduce the risks it faces when embarking on an innovation process. In fact, it is to minimize these risks that The teams from Google's Ventures branch invented the Design Sprint. Indeed, they wanted to know quickly whether the products in which they had invested were the right ones and how to improve them.
The design sprint is a springboard for initiating new collaborative practices.
The design sprint also has the advantage of mobilizing a multidisciplinary team around a project. Marketing manager, developer, designer: all the internal stakeholders of the project are brought together to think together about the problem and find the solutions to be implemented.
Specialists in their fields, the success of a design sprint lies in the intersection of the perspectives of these different professions regarding the product or project.
“Every profession has its own constraints. The design sprint, by forcing collaboration between the professions, allows all of these constraints to be brought together, whether they are technical or strategic. Collaboration then helps to achieve the best results.”, specifies Matthieu Gioani.
Because it does not require a strong mobilization of teams, the Design Sprint can therefore serve as a springboard experience for initiating collaborative practices within the company.
“The experience has shown me that the design sprint initiates collaborations and exchanges between the different departments within the company. However, this is not enough to ensure that they continue to work together over the long term”. Matthieu Gioani.
The design sprint therefore allows you to create a first connection. It’s up to you to take advantage of that initial spark to initiate a comprehensive transformation plan focused on collaboration!
To go further
[Website] Design Sprint Kit: case studies and best practices by Google
[ Video ] Sprint – explained every day by Jake Knapp of Google Ventures