How To Prep Your Team For A Design Sprint

While navigating the politics and personalities.

A standard Design Sprint is five expertly-planned days that provide just enough time to get everything done. To the team, five whole days may feel like an eternity, or an impossible amount of time to allocate to anything other than work (or a week of vacation). That’s why it’s so important to prep your Sprint teams: folks need to know what’s expected of them, and how they can show up feeling open and ready to engage.

Before you’re ready to Sprint, make sure you’re clear on who will participate. An ideal team size is 5–7 people. If you’ve got a product team assembled, it’s probably that team plus 1–2 others from the organization. If not, assemble the people who are best suited to work on the problem at hand. A typical team is made up of designers, product owners, content marketers, developers, and business leaders. Sometimes assembling the team and getting them to commit is easy, other times it can be tricky, especially with corporate teams (more thoughts on navigating that in a bit).

There are a few ways to get creative about including others who may not be right for the whole Sprint, like:

• Ask for input in advance: If you’ve got people who want to contribute but aren’t able to join the full Sprint, gather information from them in advance through an interview or survey, then share it with the team on Day #1.
• Invite people to weigh in during “Ask The Experts,” which occurs on Day #1. This is an excellent place for stakeholders or members from customer service to contribute and help push the thinking at an opportune time.
• Add a few reviewer checkpoints to the agenda. If I do this, I typically host a 30-min window on Day #1 (after a focus has been chosen), and again after Day #3 (when you have a solid storyboard or prototype started), so there’s something concrete to share and get feedback on. As the facilitator, I make crystal clear what the reviewers are expected to weigh in on, and that they have 3–5 mins to share feedback in the following format: “I like____. I wish____. I wonder____.” While they do this, I’ll capture feedback on the digital Mural board so everyone can access the insights afterward.
• In some cases, you may need to plan to have a larger team on Day #1 and Day #2 in order to set the course. This is okay too, just make sure it’s clear that the already-designated smaller team will be responsible for pushing forward and bringing the prototype to life on Days #3–#4.
• It’s not uncommon for corporate teams to request that more people participate than the recommended 5–7, which really isn’t ideal (it’s usually rooted in the idea of bringing people along for the journey). In addition to exercising the options above, consider using a Sprint brief to share a bit about the Sprint, the team members who will be included (and why), and what the purpose of the Sprint is. This can alleviate the pressure to have people in the room who don’t necessarily need to be there.

Once you’ve identified your core team, send an email to the participants prior to Day #1 to help level-set, and cover things like:

• Setting expectations that they’ll have their cameras on for most of the time, and will be collaborating with each other, as well as working individually.
• Getting sleep and eating a solid breakfast is highly encouraged, as obvious as it sounds. I also like to let them know that we’ll take official breaks, but it’s best to have plenty of snacks and fluids readily available to keep that blood sugar stable!
• Tech: I let them know that we’ll use Zoom and Mural for our session and that there’s no need to stress about creating accounts or downloading apps — you can have guests log in to Mural with no account setup. I recommend that they log in using their biggest monitor, with preference toward using a set-up with two monitors, if available.
• I encourage participants to have some supplies at the ready: blank paper, bold pens, and sticky notes (if they have them). This helps prevent a scramble on the spot when you’re ready to start an exercise.
• Sometimes I’ll include a light pre-read for background on Design Sprints for those who are curious about the process and want a sneak peek.

Prior to a Sprint, it’s also incredibly helpful to ask team members to clear calendars for the week, even if not all hours of the day will be dedicated to the workshop. This will help eliminate stress about missed work and keeps the team more present and engaged.

Using these approaches and navigational tools helps eliminate surprises, and aligns the team so everyone is on a similar page heading into the Sprint. Humans are creatures of habit, so taking some of the uncertainty out of this major schedule change help folks show up with positive attitudes ready to work toward an outcome.

Is there anything you like to do to prep teams for Design Sprints? Or, on the other end of the spectrum, have you participated in an intensive workshop before with clear likes/dislikes coming out of it? I’d love to hear your thoughts, so feel free to comment below!

More about me and my work as a facilitator can be found on my website, jackiecolburn.com.