03 Apr 5 Signs That You Need to Adopt Design Sprints

You may have heard of businesses that have adopted Design Sprints as an effective way to innovate and turn their agile culture around.

It’s no secret that we also adopted this way of working, but why should you?

The Design Sprint is a process that helps businesses solve crucial business challenges, create new products, or improve existing ones quickly and effectively while also reducing risk.

In essence, it involves getting teams working closely together in an intense and productive environment over just a few days.

Unfortunately, as beneficial as Design Sprints can be, many businesses aren’t aware that adopting the process will help their company prosper.

Before Design Sprints are adopted, a company will first need to recognize that they’re necessary, but the signs are not always spotted even when they’re in clear sight.

This can leave companies not living up to their potential without even realizing it.

So, if you are a business owner, manager, or product designer and you’re considering adopting Design Sprints, here are some tell-tale signs that this way of working will help take your company to the next level.

5 Reasons to Adopt Design Sprints

1 – You’re having difficulty getting teams aligned for projects

When working on complex projects, getting your employees to work together as a team can be challenging.

However, Design Sprints may be the perfect solution because they get everybody together as a group, and everybody knows what has been discussed and planned.

Design Sprints are an intense process that aims to get a team working together in a focused, action-packed environment.

With individuals made to work closely together in such an environment, it helps to align their mindsets during the Sprint process and beyond.

2 – You need to get a diverse team on the same page

Many projects, such as solving critical business challenges, will need to draw on the skills of a diverse team.

Design Sprints get better the more perspectives you can gather. And that’s why diversity is also so important and in any case a must for every Sprint.

For example, you might have C-level executives, managers, designers, UX experts, engineers, branding experts, marketers, and more.

With such diversity in a group, getting them to read from the same page can be difficult.

However, Design Sprints can help overcome some of the issues encountered with diverse groups.

Adopting Design Sprints encourages everybody to collaborate with each other and helps the team understand everybody’s role in the project and how it ties in with their own.

The result is that even non-homogenous groups can come together and work towards a shared goal.

3 – Your projects are taking too long

A Design Sprint condenses otherwise long processes into a single week of intense exercises that answer specific business problems through prototyping and testing.

Every moment in a Design Sprint is intended to be packed with activity, maintaining momentum throughout the process.

In conventional working methods, it’s too often that it takes months, if not years, to get a product ready for launch.

And besides that, the lack of intensity means there are extended periods with little or no productivity.

Such conventional working methods make it difficult to maintain momentum, and it takes much longer to get the same amount of work done.

As such, adopting Design Sprints will help you get your projects finished faster, helping to save you money and meet deadlines.

But, whilst Design Sprints help you get things done quicker, it’s not at the cost of quality.

4 – You’re spending too much time on the wrong ideas

Not all ideas will work out, but it’s still good to explore plausible ideas that arise.

Unfortunately, many businesses spend a lot of time, energy, and resources on ideas that turn out to be duds.

However, with a Design Sprint, your risk of spending too much time on the wrong projects is reduced.

The intensity of Design Sprints helps teams to test out solutions faster.

Your team might spend a week hashing out ideas only to conclude that it’s a non-starter, but it’s still a lot of time and resources saved in comparison to conventional methods.

The momentum of the Design Sprint and the individual creativity it encourages also helps teams come to a winning idea faster.

5 – You’re struggling with Innovation

Design Sprints encourage innovation.

The method brings teams together in an environment that fosters creative problem-solving and gets different minds working toward a single goal.

It also generates momentum during sessions, meaning more ideas can be explored in a short space of time.

By using Design Sprints, your team doesn’t have to rely on creativity.

Instead, it gives you the framework that allows for creativity while developing innovative solutions more easily.

Thanks to the Design Sprint, your team will create successful products or services that answer the needs and wants of your customers quickly.

Boost Your Company’s Productivity with Design Sprints

If any of the above points can be applied to your business, you should consider adopting the Design Sprint method.

Design Sprints maximize productivity by combining teamwork, strategy, creative thinking, and prototyping, into a shorter time frame.

Compressing activities into such a shortened time frame creates motivation, excitement, and momentum that ensures every minute is used to the best effect.

Design Sprints help your team develop product ideas much faster than traditional working mindsets, but that’s not the only benefit it brings.

The method also reduces the risk of wasting too much time on misguided ideas, allowing them to spend their time and resources on more productive ideas instead.

Design Sprints also encourages teams to work together, combining their minds to encourage creativity and innovation.

The result is unique product solutions to problems that will help your business keep ahead of the competition.

Get in Touch

If you’d like to learn more, please head over to a more detailed article about the Design Sprint 2.0 process or drop me a message with any questions you may have.