To sprint or not to sprint

Sprints are amazing. In just a week, you can go from problem to a tested solution. But sprints are intensive and extensive and you can't run a sprint for every problem. So when should you run a sprint? To answer that, ask yourself three questions:

Is novelty important?

Sprints are designed to help people think outside the box and come up with novel solutions. This is helpful if you’re entering a new category or trying to disrupt the market and staying ahead of the competition. But if you just need to be at par with an existing solution, you don't need a sprint.

Is the problem core to your business?

Sprints help solve a problem really well and it makes sense to run a sprint if the problem you’re solving is core to your business. Let’s say you’re a fintech company. Sprints can help you rethink how rewards work in your product or they can help you design a new financial product for teenagers.

But say you want to offer better support to your customers. Chances are that there are fantastic customer support tools with state-of-the-art capabilities that you can integrate in your product. You don’t need to run a sprint because you don't need to reinvent customer support as a fintech business.

Are you making a pivotal shift?

Sometimes businesses need to make big changes to their product and this requires aligning key decision makers. Since sprints bring together people from different teams and the ideas are tested with real users, they can create a lot of clarity which helps with the overall alignment. But if you’re only making incremental changes to the product that are not ambiguous, a sprint would just be time-consuming and expensive.

If the answer to all three questions is yes, a sprint is the quickest path to clarity. But if you answered no for 2 out of 3 questions, you probably just need hardcore execution and teamwork.

---

Here are some interesting sprint stories:

1. ​Gimlet used a sprint to decide whether to build an app or not​

2. ​Blue Bottle used a sprint to redesign their website to boost sales​

3. ​Share Foods used a sprint to launch a new food product​

If you’d like to run a sprint, we have some resources for you:

🗺️ How to define sprint goals & outcomes

📕Get a Pocket Guide for your next sprint

🚄 How sprints help you move with velocity

Until next time!