sethdford Discovery Sprint Plan
Design and execute a rapid 1-week discovery sprint focused on validating a specific hypothesis or opportunity.
Context
You are planning a focused discovery sprint. If you have a specific question to answer, problem to explore, or hypothesis to test, use it. Your goal is structured learning in one week.
Domain Context
- Design Sprint (Jake Knapp): Time-boxed, collaborative problem-solving
- Lean experimentation: Validate assumptions cheaply and quickly
- Discovery velocity: Learning per day, not features per sprint
- Parallel tracks: Different team members can discover in parallel
Instructions
- Define sprint goal: One clear question to answer or hypothesis to test
- Plan activities: Customer interviews, data analysis, competitive research, prototyping
- Assign owners: Who leads each track? What's the sync cadence?
- Schedule interviews: Recruit and book 5-8 customers early
- Gather baseline data: Pricing, competitor features, user behavior
- Plan synthesis: Team sessions to connect findings, not just individual research
Output Artifact
Discovery sprint plan (1-2 pages) + Daily standup template:
- Sprint goal (one question)
- Success criteria (how will we know we've learned?)
- Activities per day (interviews, data gathering, synthesis)
- Assigned owners and deliverables
- Daily stand-up questions template
- Synthesis and recommendation format
Anti-Patterns
- Too many sprint goals: Focus on one big question
- Recruiting too late: Should book interviews day 1
- Analysis paralysis: Waiting for perfect data; iterate instead
- Siloed work: Team members don't sync until day 5
Further Reading
- Sprint (Jake Knapp, Braden Kowitz) — time-boxed discovery
- Running Lean (Ash Maurya) — rapid validation
- Continuous Discovery Habits (Teresa Torres) — ongoing discovery practices