Project sprints

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What is a 'project sprint'?

Short research projects (SRPs)
Intended to fill gaps between paid work
Ideally aligned with long term product goals

What was good?

Gave people a chance to suggest ideas and work on things that excite them
No pressure from customers
Utilised downtime
Explored R&D directions that led to projects

What could have been improved?

Process to clearly prioritise project ideas
Input from commerical and more strategically involved people on project directions
Impact tracking (longer-term timeframes)
Clear framework for managing non-paid work
Not clear how to handle projects that don't immediately convert to further work

Improving the process

How can we improve this process? There are three main areas that affect the impact of a 'project sprint' initiative:

Choosing areas of focus
Calibrating effort
Tracking impact

Choosing areas of focus

Need to scope and priortise projects so they align with company focus
- Upskilling people in areas we want to focus on
- Creating demos and prototypes
- Assessing feasibility of long term projects
Guiding focus should come from wider team
- Collaborative approaches to idea submission seems to work but priortitisation needs more centralised input
- Commercial team can track requests from prospective customers to give signal on areas of focus
- Strategic teams should be involved in prioritisation

Calibrating effort

How much time/effort should be spent on non-paid work?
Is there a minimum threshold below which non-paid work doesn't return benefits.
At what point does non-paid work become a distraction from paid work?

Tracking impact

Fundamentally, we are a business and we need to make money.
Important to find ways to measure impact of non-paid work.
This can help us to calibrate in two main ways:
1. What should we be focusing on?
2. How much resource should we be allocating to non-paid work?

TL;DR

Choosing what to focus on in should be driven by key members across the company.
The could be a lot of benefits from having clear processes for prioritisation of unpair work.
Quantifying the impact of non-paid work will be challenging but is important to help us calibrate and make better decisions.