How do you lead innovation sprints with your team?

1 Define the challenge

Before you start your innovation sprint, you need to have a clear and specific problem statement that guides your team's efforts. The challenge should be relevant, meaningful, and actionable for your team and your stakeholders. You can use tools like the How Might We (HMW) method, the Five Whys, or the Problem Tree to frame your challenge in a way that invites creative solutions.

2 Set the goals and agenda

Once you have your challenge, you need to define the goals and agenda for your innovation sprint. The goals should be SMART: specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound. The agenda should outline the activities, timings, roles, and deliverables for each stage of the sprint. You can use frameworks like the Design Sprint, the Lean Sprint, or the Agile Sprint to structure your agenda according to your needs and resources.

3 Facilitate the activities

During the innovation sprint, your role as a facilitator is to guide your team through the different activities, such as brainstorming, prototyping, testing, and presenting. You need to create a safe and supportive environment where your team can share their ideas, feedback, and opinions openly and constructively. You also need to manage the time, energy, and focus of your team, and ensure that they follow the rules and objectives of each activity.

4 Capture the outcomes

After the innovation sprint, you need to capture and document the outcomes of your team's work. This includes the insights, ideas, prototypes, tests, and feedback that your team generated and collected during the sprint. You need to organize and summarize the outcomes in a way that is clear, concise, and actionable for your team and your stakeholders. You can use tools like the Sprint Storyboard, the Sprint Report, or the Sprint Summary to communicate your outcomes effectively.

5 Evaluate and iterate

Finally, you need to evaluate and iterate on your innovation sprint process and results. You need to collect and analyze the data, feedback, and learnings that your team gathered during the sprint. You need to identify what worked well, what didn't work well, and what can be improved for future sprints. You also need to decide on the next steps and actions for your team and your stakeholders to move forward with your innovation project.

6 Here’s what else to consider

This is a space to share examples, stories, or insights that don’t fit into any of the previous sections. What else would you like to add?