Design Sprints in Learning

In recent years, organizations have been forced to adapt to unprecedented changes to the way they work. This transformation has highlighted the importance of learning and development teams as critical partners for organizations looking to upskill and reskill their staff for the new world of work. In this paper, we consider how we can incorporate agile methods into our learning design to keep pace with this demand and respond to increasing uncertainty. We suggest an approach for using design sprints to blur the boundaries between the phases of ADDIE and significantly compress timelines by incorporating collaborative working sessions with designers, learning strategists, SMEs, stakeholders, and learners. We highlight how this approach can ensure better business and learner outcomes in situations where the:

- The challenge is complicated and requires a cross-functional team to solve it.
- There is a high degree of uncertainty.
- There is a need for innovation.

We also provide some advice for key considerations to set you up for success when you planning and executing learning design sprints.