Beck Harris Design

Building a distributed design sprint program

Conceiving of a product entirely from scratch presented a different challenge from maintaining an existing one, and required a level of collaboration and innovation across disciplines that was new for our larger organization.

Challenge

  • Hybrid remote and in person across diverse teams
  • US and Canada offices with diverse equipment
  • Limited availability from teams
  • High visibility inside company

Approach

  • Condensed traditional format into a more sustainable playbook consisting of one hour workshops over the course of a week
  • Generated backlog of HMW questions
  • Monthly cadence to focus on one at a time
  • Actionable outcomes recorded in various scrum backlogs
  • Regular readouts with executive team and stakeholders

Outcome

  • Growth in trust and visibility of design roadmap
  • Readouts laddering up into corporate and investor relations communications
  • Well-defined backlog of ideas for future sessions
  • Culture shift toward building ahead of the market

Structure

We adapted the design sprint structure to both lay the groundwork for Project Voltron, as well as foster a culture of building ahead of the market instead of in reaction to it. Not only did we emerge from our original session with a prioritized roadmap of features for the product design team to work against, but also a well defined backlog of ideas for future sessions. Our original group met back on a defined cadence to engage with new ideas.

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Outcomes

We adapted the design sprint structure to both lay the groundwork for Project Voltron, as well as foster a culture of building ahead of the market instead of in reaction to it. Not only did we emerge from our original session with a prioritized roadmap of features for the product design team to work against, but also a well defined backlog of ideas for future sessions. Our original group met back on a defined cadence to engage with new ideas.

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Beck Harris Design

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