Who participates in Design Sprint? It is not only meant for designers
The best Design Sprints occur when there’s good representation across several different functions.
So who participates in design sprint? Even though it’s called a design sprint. It’s not just for “designers”. The best design sprint occurs when there is a good representation across several different functions. There is a ton of value of bringing together a group of people who have different perspectives, different backgrounds and diverse area of expertise. You will always want to make sure that the people who build the product are involved.
Generally, this means product, design and engineering. The most significant factor that will impact is who you want to participate in the design sprint is highly dependent on the specific challenge the sprint is trying to address. You want to identify individuals who can bring perspective and expertise for the given focus.
Likely, you already have a group of people in mind who have relevant experience. Still, we are going to walk through of few scenarios with advanced function for team members that should be involved for certain types of problems. Keep in mind though that this is not a hard and fast rule.
As I mentioned, you always want product, design and engineering involved because these are the people who end up going to build the product. Let’s figure out who else should join considering different scenario:
- New product concept: Along with product, design and engineering, it’s also important to include someone from leadership, this might be the executive sponsor for the product. Additionally, it will be helpful to add someone from research and marketing who are familiar with space and your user.
- Enhancing an existing product with the new feature: The same set of participants as new product concept but it might not be necessary to include leadership.
- Fixing the current with the current product: In addition to product, design and engineering. It’s helpful to include someone from support who understands the issue and how users encounter them as well as how the issue is currently being resolved. It’s also beneficial to include a researcher who is familiar with the target user.
- For optimizing current product: In addition to product, design and engineering, it’s helpful to include someone from data science who understands where users might be dropping off and why? It’s also useful to include a researcher who is familiar with the product.
Just remember that these are all suggestions. When you are picking your sprint teams, you want to make sure that you are bringing together a group of diverse perspective they can tackle the problem, that’s the most important thing. Thanks for reading! Let’s e-meet again in another exciting blog until then continue reading a few topics related to design sprint topic:
