The Vision Sprint: welcome your new future vision — Part 2: Preparation

Last week, we launched an introductory article to our Vision Sprint series. In the article, we defined a vision as an ambitious and forward-looking view an organisation has on tackling problems or seizing opportunities. Creating a vision is crucial for organisations because it mobilizes and unites every member in pursuit of a clear future, helping them build successful products, services, experiences and ventures.

We help organisations create ambitious future visions through our strategic product design approach, in what is called a Vision Sprint. Vision Sprints identify and seize opportunities with a new solution that shakes up industries by challenging and seeking new ways of approaching what is out there. In turn, this solution becomes their new future vision.

The main phases of a Vision Sprint track include preparation, inspiration, an official sprint, an Acceleration Sprint and other post-sprint follow-up. Although the official sprint only lasts a week, the entire Vision Sprint track is a weeks-long marathon due to the importance of pre- and post-sprint actions. The rest of this article delves deeper into key components of the Vision Sprint’s preparation phase.

Preparation is key

You’ve heard it before and it surely applies in this case. Diving into a Vision Sprint without proper preparation will only end in chaos. The sprint will go sideways and fall apart; the facilitator will be driven off the rails into the nearest psych ward; in the worst case, you’ll want to erase the entire event from your memory. To avoid this tragic outcome, we’ll share tips and tricks we’ve picked up along the way.

Preparation begins in the first meeting with your client, whether it’s an internal or external client. It’s incredibly important to focus on understanding the client’s needs and problems. Many have the habit of talking rather than listening, let alone asking questions, to clients at this stage. But it is only by properly listening to and understanding a client that you’ll be able to estimate whether a Vision Sprint is the most suitable track. For the purpose of this article, let’s assume a Vision Sprint is the most suitable course of action.

Expert tip: If you plan on organizing Vision Sprints regularly, create templates and checklists to save time and reduce stress.

Establishing the Vision Sprint domain

Conversations in initial meetings with the client will reveal a crucial clue: the domain. Establishing the domain is essential for Vision Sprints. Although identifying the domain isn’t always very straightforward (especially for Vision Sprints), the track will lack focus and direction without it.

In initial conversations with the client, dig deeper by asking as many questions as possible. Understanding business activities that aren’t performing as they should be, challenges in the client’s business environment, technological evolutions, etc. are all factors that will influence the Vision Sprint. We recommend using the Five Whys to get the right answers. You can also use a business model canvas, value proposition canvas and business environment as an orientation to ask a large variety of questions and get a fuller picture.

With all this information, you’ll be able to narrow down the domains that will be interesting to organize a Vision Sprint around. Propose your selection to the client and confirm what they’re interested in. Even if a client comes to you with a domain, it’s still worth going through this process to ensure that they’re focusing on the right domain.

Planning and forming team members

Once you’ve established a domain, the next step is planning and forming the sprint team. Vision Sprints usually involve people with a certain level of authority and seniority in an organization. This means that the sprint plan will be directly impacted by the complex and changing agendas of the sprint team members.

The first member will be your counterpart — your champion and contact in the organization. This may be the initial person you conversed with, but isn’t always the case. Ensure that your counterpart is capable of mobilising other team members and enforcing measures if necessary.

Who else should be included in the sprint? Deciding who to include comes down to common sense and discussing it with the client.

Ask your client:

1. Which roles should be involved in this sprint?

2. Who would get in the way if they’re not involved?

3. Can they dedicate at least 3 full days to attend the sprint?

4. Are there any troublemakers or dissenting opinions within the company? Such people can be found everywhere and may dramatically increase the value, quality and outcome of the sprint.

Look at the following profiles:

1. Strategy leads

2. Innovation leads

3. Product management leads

4. Technology leads

5. Marketing leads

6. Design leads

7. Any other relevant people

We’ve written leads above, but they may be heads of departments or C-level people. Involving C-level people can be tricky: they may push their opinions on others or it may lead to inertia as other team members err on the side of caution. C-level people are also extremely busy and may be unable to commit to attending the full sprint. In this case, it’s worth pointing out that there will be a moment of validation (key decision moment) on Day 3 of the official sprint, where decision-makers will be involved. If a client doesn’t want to discuss the inclusion of a particular person, it’s a warning sign that including them may impact the quality of the Vision Sprint.

The same applies to Experts. Rather than participating throughout the sprint, we recommend including Experts elaborately during the inspiration phase and the moment of validation on Day 3 of the official sprint. Again, common sense and discussion with the client applies to this decision.

Although the sprint team mainly consists of people from the client’s organization, a few additional members from your side need to be included too. If you’re external, you’ll usually need to include a facilitator, prototype and additional participant. We recommend only including two additional members, keeping them to as few as possible. Three if you need to add a prototype, whose involvement can be limited to the strict necessary. When organizing large sprints, we recommend opting for two facilitators and two participants from your side to cover the bigger audience. A key tip is to ensure that all members understand the value and responsibilities of team members from your side (even if you’ve been clear about this, it can still cause confusion).

Kick-off the Vision Sprint

Host a kick-off to get everyone on board and introduce them to each other. Our top tip is to organize the kick-off together with your counterpart at the organization. Start with a short introduction before handing things over to your counterpart, who will introduce the topic and domain of the Vision Sprint, as well as why conducting the sprint is important to the organization. Starting in this manner will increase the buy-in of sceptical participants.

After the introduction, manage expectations by elaborating on the upcoming process. Be crystal clear about the purpose of the Vision Sprint, what activities will take place, why they need to be involved, where they’ll be involved, and what they need to do. Team members need to be made aware that at a minimum, they can expect to be involved for a total amount of 10 days (in which they’ll be giving a lot of themselves). The rest of the kick-off will facilitate the planning exercise: getting everyone on board and in agreement with the timeline and dates.

Now that preparations are complete, we can move forward to the next pre-sprint stage: the inspiration phase.