A design sprint works like cleaning a house; you have to prepare what you want to do before you tackle the problem at large. That requires proper management and clever thinking though. Who would be helping you? What supplies do you require? Will time, speed, quality, or more be a key aspect of your final piece? All of this stuff needs time to prepare. Because believe me, if you don’t prepare, the consequences could be bad. 

What Factors Have to be Included with the Early Phase of a Sprint?

There’s a shocking amount of content that goes into a design sprint, even before you get the work required. I will be focusing on two specific areas: Basics and People. So what are the fundamentals and what specific people might you need? Because if you can prepare all of that, then you’ll be ready for anything

Basics

Your basics are your factors. They are the stage before you find the people required for the sprint. All of these seem basic but if you miss even one of them, it could result in a problem later on. The Design Sprint HandBook lists in order how a person should tackle the earliest stages of the design sprint, including:

• Learning about the Team/Client
• Define the specific problem or challenge to address.
• Lock down the schedule to avoid any conflicts like location
• Materials: List all necessary materials, from markers to software tools. 
• Identify who will participate and make sure they’re available. 

People

As stated before, finding the right people must be included in design sprints. Since each person needs a specific role in the design sprint process. Overall, they all play a critical role and serve to help out your team in more ways than one. These specifics are from the book Sprint.

• The Decider: a person with the authority to make the final decisions.
• Finance/Marketing expert: Who can explain where the money comes from (and where it goes)? Examples: CEO, CFO, business development manager 
• Customer expert: Who regularly talks to your customers one-on-one? Examples: researcher, sales, customer support 
• Tech/logistics expert: Who best understands what your company can build and deliver? Examples: CTO, engineer 
• Design expert: Who designs the products your company makes? Examples: designer, product manager

Why is this Phase so Needed?

Simple. If a plan is not created at the beginning of the design sprint phase, the process will fall apart. I’m not joking either, any project can fail, not just design sprints. TeamGantt found that

“31% of projects fail due to lack of planning. Proper management techniques like charts or pre-phase studying can increase the chance of success.”

It’s just not steps that will fail either. Because each day of a design sprint focuses on a different phase of working prototyping or brainstorming, every step will be affected and will continue to ripple. An example of what could happen if, for instance, you couldn’t achieve a specific goal because it wasn’t brought up or ignored. That could lead to huge problems for the prototyping and final result of the design sprint. 

I say all this because I have seen the effects of bad planning in design. Your project feels unfinished or pushed to the side, it’s frustrating working only to realize that you missed a critical item or didn’t account for something. So, when you’re doing your design sprints, take the hint and step back before trying to cross the finish line.