How to Run a Design Sprint: The Ultimate Guide for Product Managers + Free Templates
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As a product manager, you know that moving fast and testing ideas is critical. You need to rapidly validate concepts to ensure you are delivering value to your customers. But how can you speed up the design and development process without compromising quality? Enter the design sprint. 🏃🏽
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Design sprints allow product teams to quickly align, ideate, prototype, and test new concepts in just 5 days. This accelerated process enables you to gather insights, make decisions, and bring ideas to life at startup speed. ⚡
In this comprehensive guide, we’ll cover everything you need to run an effective design sprint as a product manager. You’ll learn:
What a design sprint is and why it's valuable for PMs 💡
How to pitch a design sprint to stakeholders 📈
Tips for assembling the right team 👥
A step-by-step guide to running a 5-day sprint ⏱
Tools and templates to facilitate each phase 🛠
Remote design sprint tips 💻
How to maximize results after the sprint 🚀
What is a Design Sprint?
A design sprint is a time-constrained, five-day process for rapidly solving problems through design, prototyping, and testing ideas. It was created by Jake Knapp while working at Google Ventures. 🏢
The sprint brings together key team members in a series of facilitated sessions to align on the problem, ideate solutions, decide on the best path forward, prototype concepts, and validate them with real users. 🤝
The five phases of the design sprint are:
1. Understand 💭
Map out the problem and pick an important area of focus.
2. Diverge 💡
Individually brainstorm solutions.
3. Converge ✅
Decide on the best ideas.
4. Prototype 📱
Build a realistic prototype of the concept.
5. Validate 👍
Test the prototype with real users.
At the end of the sprint, you’ll have rich insights from target customers, a tangible prototype or solution, and alignment across your team on the next steps. 🎯
For product managers, design sprints offer an invaluable opportunity to rapidly explore new ideas, gather user feedback, rally your team around solutions, and accelerate development timelines. ⏩
You can run a sprint to:
Quickly validate new product or feature ideas 💡
Design a new user flow or experience 📲
Make decisions on what to build next 🤔
Improve conversion on a landing page 📈
Test a new go-to-market strategy 🎇
Explore solutions to usability issues or bug fixes 🐛
The condensed timeline forces decisions to be made quickly, while the prototype tests whether you’re solving real customer problems. 🕵️♂️ This enables your team to align on building the right things, reducing costly rework down the line. 💸
According to research by IBM, teams that use design sprints report a 300% boost in productivity and ROI. 📈 They enable faster innovation cycles, improved collaboration, and a sharper focus on customer needs. 🎯
For product managers looking to build solutions users love – and do it quickly - design sprints are a game changer. ⚡
How to Pitch a Design Sprint
Before you can start planning a design sprint, you need buy-in from stakeholders. Here are some tips for getting leadership and colleagues excited about running a sprint:
Focus on the Business Objective 🎯
Don’t pitch the design sprint itself – sell the outcome. Explain the concrete business goal it will help you achieve. For example:
“By running a design sprint, we can rapidly prototype and validate the new user onboarding flow to see if it improves our 30-day retention rate.”
Making the end goal clear allows stakeholders to see the tangible benefits of participating in the sprint.
Emphasize the ROI 💰
Research shows design sprints can increase productivity by 300%. The time and cost of running a sprint pale in comparison to the potential savings from accelerating development and reducing product risks.
Paint a clear picture of how the sprint will pay off – whether it's through higher customer conversion, faster time-to-market for a new feature, or savings from not developing unused product capabilities.
Start Small 🏃🏾
If your team is new to design sprints, propose a pilot focused on a smaller problem or project. Highlight that it’s a low-risk way to try this new process for achieving [x business objective].
A design sprint pilot creates an opportunity to demonstrate results and gain buy-in for scaling the approach more widely.
Sell the Broader Benefits 🤝
Design sprints do more than produce great solutions. Explain how bringing together different disciplines for a focused sprint can:
Create stronger alignment on product priorities 🎯
Break down silos and improve teamwork 👥
Energize employees and spark creativity 💡
Level-up facilitation, collaboration, and ideation skills ⚡
This generates excitement beyond just the immediate sprint output.
With the right framing and objective, pitching a design sprint is fairly straightforward. Focus on how it solves pressing business goals and you’ll get stakeholders on board. 🙌
Assembling Your Design Sprint Team
A core part of planning your design sprint is bringing together the right people. While you can run a sprint with just 2-3 team members, 5-7 people is ideal. Any more can slow down the process. 🐢
Aim to include people with diverse skill sets and viewpoints. Here are some key roles to fill:
Product Manager 👩🏻💼
As the product lead, your core responsibilities during the sprint include:
Sharing customer and market insights 📊
Framing the challenge and goals 🎯
Ensuring solutions align with product strategy 📈
Advocating for customers' needs 🙋🏽♂️
Guiding decision-making as the “Decider” ✅
Designer 👨🏾🎨
Designers bring critical experience with design thinking approaches and UI/UX best practices. They lead ideation and prototyping and facilitate collaboration and creativity across the team. 💡
Engineer 👩🏿💻
Engineers provide the technical perspective on the feasibility and viability of proposed solutions. This ensures you don’t waste time prototyping concepts that aren’t possible with your tech stack. 🛠
Customers 🙋🏼♀️
Including real customers is invaluable for testing prototypes and getting unbiased feedback on potential solutions. If you can’t directly engage customers, at least recruit user proxies – support agents or account managers who have day-to-day interactions with customers. 👥
Facilitator 🧑🏻🏫
While it’s possible to self-facilitate your design sprint, having an experienced, neutral facilitator leads to much better results. They focus on guiding the process so you can fully participate. ✨
Decider 👨🏾💼
The person who makes decisions for your team can be the CEO, founder, product manager, etc
Additional Roles
Consider including a growth specialist, sales representative, customer success manager, developer, copywriter, or other relevant roles depending on your focus area.
A diversity of skills, experiences, and perspectives is crucial for exploring challenges thoroughly and ideating creative solutions. Take the time to carefully assemble your dream team. 😎
Step-by-Step Guide to Running a Design Sprint
Once you have buy-in and your team assembled, it’s time to run the sprint. Here is an in-depth look at how to facilitate each of the five phases:
Step 1: Understand the Problem (Day 1)
On Monday, your goal is to build a shared understanding of the problem and frame your challenge statement.
Kickoff Meeting 📅
Start with a kickoff meeting where you’ll:
Set expectations upfront for the intense week ahead 💪
Review the design sprint methodology and process 📝
Align on roles and ground rules 🤝
Ensure the core challenge or question is clear 🎯
Tips for an effective kickoff meeting:
📅 Schedule for multiple 60-90 minutes blocks
👥 Include the full team plus key stakeholders
✅ Secure commitment and buy-in before diving in
📝 Take detailed notes on goals and decisions
Lightning Talks ⚡
Next, relevant team members will give “lightning talks” – short 10-minute presentations on topics related to your focus area. For example:
Marketing can recap customer research insights 📊
Sales can share common pain points they hear 🗣
Support can review frequently asked questions ❔
Lightning talks efficiently build collective knowledge and get everyone on the same page. 💡
User Journey Mapping 🗺
A user journey map illustrates the end-to-end experience a customer has with your product or service. As a team, sketch out the key phases and steps customers go through from initial awareness to becoming loyal users.
Identify pain points in the journey where improvements could boost conversions. This helps zero in on sprint focus areas. 🔍
How Might We Notes 💭
Each person should take a few minutes to individually write down “How might we...” questions on post-its that frame problems as opportunities. For example:
How might we improve our free trial signup flow? ✏️
How might we better educate customers on [x feature]? 💡
Group similar HMW notes, then vote on the priority questions. This channels the sprint toward high-impact areas. ✅
Decide on a Focus 🔎
Based on the HMW notes and user journey, decide as a team on the exact problem you’ll tackle in the sprint. Clearly define the focus in your challenge statement. For example:
“How might we improve our onboarding experience to increase 30-day retention from 35% to 50%?”
With your objective locked down, you're ready to move on to solution exploration. 🚀
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Step 2: Brainstorm Solutions (Day 2)
On Tuesday, the goal is to have each member of the sprint team individually sketch as many solutions as possible.
Start by discussing existing solutions or competitors you can draw inspiration from. Then move into structured ideation exercises:
Crazy 8s 💡
Each person will use the Crazy 8s brainstorming method to sketch eight solutions in eight minutes. Fold a piece of paper into eight boxes and rapidly fill out one idea per box.
4-Step Sketching ✏️
Using the 4-step sketching process, have each person develop multiple solutions:
Notes: Capture promising ideas from your Crazy 8s (20 mins)
Ideas: Expand on ideas with quick sketches and notes (20 mins)
Crazy 8s: Iterate on your favorite solution idea through eight quick variations (8 mins)
Sketches: Create one finished sketch with annotations (60-90 mins)
Post the individual sketches on the wall. You'll evaluate these as a team on Wednesday.
Heat Map 🔥
Have each person review the solutions and place dot stickers on the ones they find most promising. Clustered dots help identify favorites to consider further.
Leave Day 2 with a gallery of solutions and a heat map of preferences. 🖼
Step 3: Decide on the Best Solution (Day 3)
On the third day, your goal is to converge on one solution idea to prototype.
Presentations 🎤
Have each person present a 2-3 minute summary of their solutions and explain why they are compelling.
Speed Critique ⏱
Facilitate a speed critique where you review each solution, and capture pros, cons, and open questions using the Capture Tool.
Straw Poll 🗳
Do an anonymous straw poll where each person votes on their top 1-2 solutions. The solution with the most votes moves forward.
Super Vote ♿️
If there are multiple ideas clustered at the top, have your Decider cast the tie-breaking “super vote” to make the final call?
You should end Day 3 with your final chosen solution. Document why it was selected to support the decision in your sprint report later. 📃
Storyboard 📹
As a team, sketch a high-level storyboard bringing your chosen solution to life and illustrating how customers will experience it. Identify any open questions or details needed to prototype it.
The storyboard becomes your guide for prototyping on Day 4. 📐
Step 4: Prototype the Solution (Day 4) 📱
On the fourth day, you’ll turn your sketches and storyboard into a realistic prototype.
Determine which prototype format makes the most sense based on your concept:
Digital: Build a clickable app or website prototype with a tool like Figma, InVision, Adobe XD or Marvel. 🖥
Physical: Create a realistic model of a physical product prototype with craft supplies and materials. 🛠
Video: Record a demo video or storyboard simulation of your concept. 🎥
Role Play: Act out scenarios for an experiential service prototype. 🎭
Wizard of Oz: One team member acts as "the computer", simulating how a service or product works behind the scenes. 🧙♂️
Build out your prototype focusing on realism over perfection. It just needs to be robust enough for users to engage with in testing.
Leave a couple of hours at the end to walk through the prototype as a team and fix any clear issues. 🛠
To learn more about prototyping check
Week 33 - 🚀 The Ultimate Guide to Prototyping for Product Managers: Mastering the Art of Reducing Uncertainty in Product Development 🎯
Step 5: Test with Customers (Day 5) 🧪
The final design sprint day is all about testing your prototype with real customers for validation.
You’ll need:
Target Users - Recruit at least 5 matched to your ideal customer profile 👥
Test Script - Write a script with tasks for customers to complete and questions to gain feedback ✍️
Recording Setup - Ensure you can record tests (videos and/or notes) 🎥
Then facilitate 30-60 minute 1:1 prototype tests with each user:
Welcome - Explain you are testing a new prototype and want their honest feedback 🙋♀️
Tasks - Have them interact with key flows and complete scripted tasks ✅
Debrief - Discuss overall impressions, stumbling points, and areas for improvement 🗣
Looking for broad themes, analyze whether your prototype effectively met the initial design sprint goal and what changes need to be made. 📈
Congratulations, you’ve completed your design sprint! 🎉 Now document the results and plan the next steps.
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Design Sprint Templates and Tools 🛠
To get the most out of your design sprint, use templates tailored for the process. Here are some of the best free and paid resources available:
Miro Design Sprint Template
Miro offers a free interactive design sprint template with pre-built boards for each day. Easily facilitate remote or in-person sprints with collaboration tools built right in.
Design Sprint Template | Miroverse
Mural Design Sprint Template
Another top facilitation platform, Mural provides design sprint templates for customer journey mapping, 4-step sketching, idea voting and more.
https://www.mural.co/templates/design-sprint
The Sprint Book 📚
Google Ventures shares free Design Sprint checklists, slide decks, and resources pulled from their book, Sprint: How to Solve Big Problems and Test New Ideas in Just Five Days.
Sprint: How to Solve Big Problems and Test New Ideas in Just Five Days
Invision Design Sprint 2.0
InVision offers a free Design Sprint 2.0 book focused on conducting effective remote design sprints in 4 days instead of 5.
The Design Sprint 2.0: What is it and what does it look like? | Inside Design Blog
Sprintbase
Sprintbase has 100+ customizable design sprint templates spanning agendas, checklists, worksheets, retrospective exercises, and more.
Leverage templates to save time creating each artifact from scratch. Focus your energy on facilitation and collaboration instead. ⚡
Sprintbase - The Innovation, design thinking, learning and collaboration software
Remote Design Sprint Tips 💻
In a remote setting, extra effort is required to maintain the intensive energy and collaboration of an in-person design sprint.
Here are some best practices for running effective virtual design sprints:
⏱ Schedule Focused Work Blocks
Remote team members can be prone to distraction and multitasking. Establish meeting ground rules: cameras on, phones off, full focus. 🙅♀️
Set timers to keep activities crisp and transitions snappy. The facilitator should give 15-minute warnings before ending any activity or breaking out. ⏱
💬 Simulate In-Person Interactions
During ideation, have people present solutions live instead of just sharing screenshots.
Utilize digital whiteboarding and virtual sticky notes to capture real-time ideas. 📝
Encourage discussions via video instead of chat when possible. 💻
🧑🏽💻 Optimize Tools and Tech
Ensure everyone has access to high-speed internet, mics, webcams, and any software required for the sprint. 🖥
Test tools and connections in advance. Have a backup plan if someone loses connectivity. 📶
🏝 Virtual Icebreakers
It can take longer for remote teams to warm up. Start with a fun icebreaker activity to build relationships.
You can also facilitate virtual coffee chats before the sprint to establish connections. ☕
💆 Manage Energy and Engagement
Remote participation takes more energy. Build in screen breaks every 90 minutes and finish work by 5-6 PM local time. ⏰
Check-in on energy levels and participation. If lagging, get people moving or change up the activities. ⚡
While more orchestration is required, digital tools make high-impact design sprints possible for distributed teams. With the right facilitation, your remote sprint can be just as creative, aligned, and productive as in-person. 🎉
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How to Maximize Design Sprint Results 🚀
Your work doesn’t end once your design sprint concludes. To maximize results:
Debrief on Lessons Learned 📝
Conduct a retrospective meeting with your sprint team to discuss what worked well and where improvements could be made for next time.
Capture feedback on the overall process as well as each phase and activity. Analyze patterns to refine your design sprint approach.
Create a Summary Report 📑
Document key details in a summary report:
Challenge statement 📜
Solutions explored 💡
Prototype results 📊
Testing insights 👥
Recommendations ✅
Share the report with leadership and other stakeholders unable to join the sprint. 📧
Plan Next Steps 🗓
Have a planning session with the Decider and facilitator to decide what to do after the sprint:
Pursue prototype further through development sprints 👩💻
Run additional prototype iterations and testing 🧪
Identify follow-up areas for future sprints 📅
Do further market validation and research 🔍
Pursue an alternative solution path 🚧
Get alignment from leadership on resourcing for post-sprint plans. 🤝
Build Design Sprint Momentum ⚡
After a successful first sprint, pitch leadership on a 90-day roadmap for bi-weekly design sprints focused on high-priority initiatives.
Support teams in running their own sprints. Transform design sprints from a one-off event into an integral way of working. 📈
Following up with your team to iterate, refine, and build on your design sprint learnings is key to driving ongoing value.
So there you have it - everything you need to plan and facilitate an effective design sprint as a product manager. Leverage this collaborative, accelerated process to rapidly explore ideas, gather customer insights, and unlock innovation for your team. Let me know if you have any other questions! 🚀
📚 Book
Google Ventures shares free Design Sprint checklists, slide decks, and resources pulled from their book, Sprint: How to Solve Big Problems and Test New Ideas in Just Five Days.
Sprint: How to Solve Big Problems and Test New Ideas in Just Five Days
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