Design Sprint revisited: Learnings for today's Product teams

Amid remote tools and AI hype, a familiar framework reminded me what good product practice looks like - momentum, real user insight and a space to think.

When I first started in Product back in 2016, there was one book you could find in every office - Jake Knapp’s Sprint. It was the go-to for teams wanting to test ideas at pace without months of planning. But in 2025, Sprint feels like a relic from a different working world - one where we were all in the same room and Post-its covered the walls (or the floor if you bought the cheap non-sticky ones!) While it’s rare to see teams running Design Sprints by the book these days, the framework has stood the test of time.

At a glance: The Design Sprint is a five-day process developed at Google Ventures to help teams solve critical business problems through design, prototyping and user testing. It brings together strategy, innovation and design thinking to compress months of work into a single week - offering a clear, structured path from idea to insight, without writing a single line of code.

Having spent much of my career building 0–1 products, I still borrow from the process regularly. So when the opportunity to take part in a by-the-book Sprint arose, I leapt at the chance. Faced with a complex business challenge, we needed something time-bound, structured and fast, so we dusted off our blue books and (aside from stretching it from five to ten days) followed the process as written. Statuses were set to unavailable, snacks were ordered in bulk, and for the first time in a long time, we blocked out ten days of uninterrupted focus together in our King’s Cross office.

The reflections that follow aren’t radical. But in a world of hybrid calendars, always-on conversations and meetings about meetings, they’re easy to forget. So, if nothing else, I hope this post helps you spot where these principles might show up, or be missing, from your day-to-day.

Decision-making needs ownership

In a Design Sprint, all roles are equal… except one: the Decider. This role isn’t about hierarchy - it’s about providing focus and clarity. The Decider doesn’t overpower the team, but they do have the authority to make final calls, especially when choosing what to test. Without that clarity, teams risk falling into endless debate or settling for watered-down ideas designed to please everyone. The Decider brings direction and helps the team move forward with conviction.

That felt like a sharp contrast to how we work today. My biggest reflection was just how long it takes to make decisions. As stakeholder lists grow and informal office moments disappear, we fill the gaps with meetings to align, inform and the dreaded ‘circle back’. Progress inevitably slows. The Sprint was a reminder that having the right people in the room, with shared context and in-the-moment decision-making, helped us work at pace. Not every team needs a formal Decider, but someone has to be empowered to make the call. Without that, teams quickly drift and momentum falters.

Meetings need structure

The Design Sprint is a five-day process that constrains time and focus to unlock better thinking. Each day has a clear purpose - from mapping the problem to testing solutions. This structure reduces cognitive load and keeps teams from going round in circles on opinions or planning. Ironically, it’s the constraint that creates space for sharper decisions, deeper collaboration and faster progress.

That felt like a breath of fresh air from how we work today. In a hybrid world, we’ve become reliant on scheduled time. Without chats around a desk or coffee machine, we default to meetings. Finding time in colleagues’ diaries resembles a game of Tetris, and by the time they arrive, no one’s sure why we’re meeting. I often suggest “workshops” with the teams I work with and watch as people recoil at the idea of a full-day event. That’s rarely what’s needed. With the right structure or framework, 30 minutes in the diary can unlock more than a week of scattered meetings.

Creativity shouldn’t be confined to discovery

One of the Sprint’s greatest strengths is how it opens up space in a team for creativity. Exercises like How Might We statements and Crazy 8s are designed to make everyone a contributor. How Might We reframes problems into possibilities, while Crazy 8s encourages rapid idea generation from everyone in the team (even those who insist they can’t draw!).

Creativity often gets boxed into the discovery phase or handed off to the Designer, but in a Sprint - or any high performing team - it’s a shared effort. I once worked with a brilliant designer at a venture studio who said, “I’m not the designer - we all are. I just happen to be the person who has the skills to visualise the end product” and that’s always stuck with me. The best ideas come from diverse perspectives, not job titles. You don’t need a Sprint to unlock that: reframing a tricky backlog item as a How Might We, or carving out twenty minutes for quick ideation can shift the course of a conversation. Creativity works best when it’s part of how we work, not just saved for lengthy discoveries.

Research doesn’t need to be heavy to be impactful

While much of this post reflects on how remote work has challenged our efficiency, research was one area where the benefits really stood out. When I first started in Product, qualitative research sat at two extremes: lab sessions that took weeks to coordinate and could fall apart with a single cancellation, or guerrilla testing with whoever happened to walk by. Labs gave us rigour but lacked pace; guerrilla testing was fast but often missed the mark on relevance.

Remote working has opened up new possibilities. With tools built for distributed teams, we recruited real users from our target audience and observed their behaviour within hours. The Sprint gave the full team the space to join the sessions live and reflect in the moment. Hearing directly from users (not just via summary slides) challenged our assumptions and gave everyone clarity on what to do next.

AI can help - but it doesn’t replace product thinking

AI tools are everywhere, and it’s fair to question what that means for our roles. Using them during the Sprint only reinforced what I already suspected: AI can help us move faster, but it can’t replace human thinking. We used it to speed up tasks like summarising research, drafting scripts and drawing out insights, allowing us to free up time to work together. While we didn’t use AI for prototyping, it’s another growing area that could take Sprints even further in the future.

However, when it came to making decisions, that still relied on human judgment. AI can automate the busy work, but it can’t replace the core of product management: understanding real user needs, navigating messy trade-offs, aligning stakeholders and setting a vision that people believe in. Used well, AI enhances our efficiency, but it doesn’t replace our thinking.

In summary

The Sprint was a reminder that while the way we work has changed, the foundations of good product practice haven’t. Rolling up our sleeves, making fast decisions and hearing directly from users gave us a clarity that’s hard to find in a diary full of fragmented meetings and messages.

It was intense, and honestly, quite exhausting! By day five, we were questioning how we ever did this every day and still made it to the pub afterwards! But more than anything, it was energising. It reminded me what first drew me to Product: working side by side with brilliant people to solve real problems with purpose and pace. That spirit still holds true, even if the way we work has evolved. Not everything fits anymore, but revisiting the Sprint reminded me that some things matter more than ever.

If you get the chance to carve out time for a Sprint - take it. You don’t need to be in the office every day to make it work; Jake Knapp has a fantastic suite of resources (which can be found here) for running Sprints remotely. And if diaries won’t allow for five days of uninterrupted focus, revisit the book and look for small ways to bring the principles into your everyday work.

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