For design sprints, there is almost always going be a surplus of ideas. Not only that, a lot of them will be good and intriguing ideas. I’ve always admired decisive people. Being able to know exactly what you want in a given moment or putting your mind to something and then having an unwavering commitment to it is a great quality. As a creative person, and someone who always has multiple ideas, the decision to go in one direction also means the rejection of other ideas. For those reasons, decisiveness can be intimidating and a challenge. 

The unique experience I’ve had from my time sprinting is that decisiveness doesn’t have a strong impact on development. The design of the sprint process is refined enough that the role of a decision-maker is placed in moments where decisiveness is required. It is important to maintain a flow and work environment that is constantly moving forward. After all, part of the sell of a design sprint is that it puts two months of work into 5-days, so constant progress is essential. To ensure this, the role of the Decider is worked into the design on sprints. The creators of design sprinting call it, “a role so important we went ahead and capitalized it.” (34) Typically, the role of the Decider will be given to a Founder, CEO, VP, product manager, or an executive in the company that has the proper depth of knowledge to make assessments. 

My experience with sprinting has been in an academic setting so I would argue that the power of the decision-maker is more pure in a sense than in a professional environment. In an academic setting, the role of the Decider is not concerned with stakeholders or personal gain, so it is truly about working with the best ideas and centered on creating the best product. ‘Working with what you have’ is a phrase that continuously pops up in sprint discussions. Only having about 5-days means you can’t exactly reinvent the wheel in that time, so finding ways to incorporate the best of what you already have is the best way to move forward. Additionally, I believe that not having a true executive in the role of the Decider allows the rest of the sprint team to freely generate ideas without concern for doing what an executive might want or think. 

I certainly don’t think that the relationship between the Decider and the rest of the sprint team will hinder the process in most cases. Rather, it was justl to highlight a difference in my personal experience. Some of the best advice from Jake Knapp’s book Sprint is, “All the knowledge on your sprint team is locked away in each person’s brain. To solve your big problem, you’ll need to unlock that knowledge and build a shared understanding.” The more that is shared and understood from multiple perspectives, the higher the shared understanding will be. Genuine discussion and consideration is required for sprinting and design sprints are best executed when there is the highest shared understanding across the sprint team.