Design Sprints in 5 Days Boosts Product Direction

The cost of a bad discovery sprint isn't the sprint itself. It's the three months of development work you build on top of wrong assumptions. We've seen this pattern more than once. A startup comes to us after burning through an earlier agency. The product exists. The code is clean. But the thing they built doesn't match how their users actually behave. The discovery phase was a series of internal assumption workshops. No prototypes tested on real users. No friction mapping. No divergence between what stakeholders believed and what evidence showed. So the build was precise. And precisely wrong. Here's where it gets expensive: - A mobile app rebuilt from scratch after launch costs 4–6x more than a corrected prototype before development starts. - Backend architecture decisions made in week one are often irreversible by week eight.. - Every sprint built on a false assumption compounds the cost of fixing it later. The discovery sprint isn't documentation prep. It's the part where you earn the right to write the first line of code. What we do in discovery at AvyaTech isn't a workshop series. We prototype, stress-test the core user flows with real tooling like Figma and v0.app, and surface the architectural constraints before a single API route gets designed. The output isn't a slide deck. It's a decision log — what we validated, what we killed, and why. One client came to us mid-project. Their original vendor had delivered 14 weeks of sprints. No working prototype. No validated flows. Just wireframes and assumptions dressed up as a roadmap. We ran a compressed 2-week discovery and found five core assumptions baked into the architecture that users had already rejected in informal tests. The client redirected the build before the backend was locked. That 2-week sprint saved an estimated 3 months of rework. Discovery isn't a phase you complete. It's a filter that decides whether everything after it is worth building. If you're heading into a build and haven't pressure-tested your core flows with real tooling yet, drop a comment or DM me. I'll have the team take a look — no pitch involved. #DiscoverySprint #ProductDevelopment #StartupLessons #ProductStrategy #UXResearch

#Product Development #Prototypes are the new #PRDs - Product Requirements Documents - A growing number of product managers are finding that the fastest way to clarity is to build. Inside Figma Make, they’re pressure-testing assumptions early, building momentum, and rallying teams around something tangible. https://lnkd.in/giyTmVap

𝐒𝐡𝐢𝐩𝐩𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐟𝐚𝐬𝐭 𝐯𝐬 𝐬𝐡𝐢𝐩𝐩𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐫𝐢𝐠𝐡𝐭, 𝐢𝐭'𝐬 𝐧𝐨𝐭 𝐚𝐜𝐭𝐮𝐚𝐥𝐥𝐲 𝐚 𝐜𝐡𝐨𝐢𝐜𝐞. Teams that say "we ship fast" are often teams that haven't experienced the full cost of shipping wrong. And teams that obsess over "shipping right" are often teams that haven't shipped anything meaningful in six months. The tension is real. But framing it as either/or is a trap. think about it althis way: Fast shipping is a strategy. Right shipping is a standard. You need both, calibrated to the moment. In early discovery, speed matters more. You need signal. Imperfect things in front of users are more valuable than perfect things in a Figma file. In late-stage releases for critical flows ... payments, security, compliance, data handling, quality is non-negotiable. Speed does not outrank correctness here. The teams that do this well have a clear internal language: "Is this a discovery ship or a production ship?" They apply different standards to each. The problem isn't the tension. The problem is when teams use "we ship fast" as cover for not caring about quality, or use "we ship right" as cover for not making decisions. Both can be true. Both can also be excuses. Where does your team fall on this spectrum? #ProductManagement #ProductStrategy #BuildInPublic #ProductDevelopment #AgileTeams #TechLeadership #StartupGrowth #ProductThinking #Innovation #TeamCollaboration

Most product teams we talk to don't have a talent or strategy problem. They have a process problem that hides in plain sight. 1. Design review that happens "only when someone has bandwidth." 2. Component libraries that exist in Figma but not in code, or are outdated. 3. No shared reference to check against means what's "correct" slowly changes. 4. And more! None of this is a crisis in the moment. But it compounds, until someone says your product feels "off" and no one can say exactly why. That's the diagnosis the Product Ops Audit was built to give. More on that this week. #HumanCenteredDesign #ProductDesign #ProductOps #ProductStrategy #SeaLab

The most expensive line item in a product roadmap is the year you spend building something users don’t want. Heimdal Studio just wrapped a three month validation sprint, designed to ensure that very scenario wouldn't happen. A major games publisher came to us with a concept they believed in, a year of design and engineering on the line, but no real way to know if it was worth the investment, or not. The only way to get clarity was to collaboratively build a piece of it, for real, and watch people use it. Rooted in extensive market research, the output was strategic and thoughtful, but the way we collaborated is what really ensured impactful progress for this critical project. We didn't just run weekly status meetings. We worked as a truly embedded extension of their in-house team: → Shared Slack channels and files, facilitating workshops and cross-org alignment as needed, bringing all knowledge and skills together in a live workflow. → The senior team that pitched the project was in the room from start to finish (no B-teams at Heimdal). → That closeness let us move at their pace with contextual knowledge. It's exactly what transforms output from blue sky into something strategically grounded in the reality of both players and the organization. Together we shaped the product into a cohesive vision, through qualitative UX research and two-week iterative loops: → Each loop put a coded, playable prototype, built on live data and game mechanics, in front of players across the US and UK. → By making it real instead of relying on a participant's imagination, we uncovered raw insights, real blind spots, and opportunities we'd never have found on paper. Many ideas were killed, and a few new game changing concepts arose that have the potential to drive massive retention and revenue opportunities. Four rounds. 37 participants. Two markets. The prototype came back at an average 4.4 out of 5 likelihood to download (!), and it landed with both casual and hardcore players alike, which is rare for a single product. Ultimately our deliverable was an evidence based MVP recommendation, with a scoped roadmap, empowering stakeholders to make informed business decisions. The answer for this one was ‘Build it’ (and kill some), but could just as easily have been the opposite. That's the whole point of a validation sprint, and it's one way we build things that truly resonate instead of hoping they will. Have a great day building or killing darlings out there!

Two types of founders come to me with the same request: "I need someone to build this." The first has everything scoped. Designs approved. User flows mapped. They just need someone to take it and ship it without asking a hundred questions or drifting from the spec. The second has an idea, maybe a few rough screens, and they're trying to figure out what they're actually building before they pay someone to build the wrong thing. I work with both. And in my experience, the founders who struggle most are not in either of those groups. They're somewhere in between. They hired a developer before the design was locked. The developer started building, the product evolved, and now nothing fits together. The sequence matters more than the budget or the timeline. Design lock first. Then build. One owner across both so the handoff doesn't break anything. Whether you have a production-ready Figma file or you're still figuring out what you're building, the first conversation usually takes about 20 minutes. What stage are you at right now? #startupfounder #productdevelopment #mvp #webdevelopment

𝐀 𝐬𝐮𝐫𝐩𝐫𝐢𝐬𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐧𝐮𝐦𝐛𝐞𝐫 𝐨𝐟 𝐩𝐫𝐨𝐝𝐮𝐜𝐭𝐬 𝐚𝐫𝐞 𝐛𝐮𝐢𝐥𝐭 𝐛𝐞𝐟𝐨𝐫𝐞 𝐝𝐞𝐦𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐢𝐬 𝐯𝐚𝐥𝐢𝐝𝐚𝐭𝐞𝐝. That's where the real risk begins. The hardest conversation is often the one that gets delayed: Talking to people who'll actually pay. The pattern is familiar. 𝐓𝐞𝐚𝐦𝐬 𝐝𝐞𝐛𝐚𝐭𝐞 𝐟𝐞𝐚𝐭𝐮𝐫𝐞𝐬. 𝐑𝐞𝐟𝐢𝐧𝐞 𝐫𝐨𝐚𝐝𝐦𝐚𝐩𝐬. 𝐏𝐨𝐥𝐢𝐬𝐡 𝐝𝐞𝐬𝐢𝐠𝐧𝐬. Meanwhile, nobody has validated demand. What changes outcomes? • Talk to customers before building. • Test willingness to pay. • Show rough prototypes early. Because product-market fit isn't discovered in Figma. It's discovered when someone is willing to pay for the problem you're solving. At AveryBit, every MVP starts with one question: "Has this been validated with real users?" 𝐖𝐡𝐚𝐭'𝐬 𝐨𝐧𝐞 𝐚𝐬𝐬𝐮𝐦𝐩𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧 𝐚𝐛𝐨𝐮𝐭 𝐲𝐨𝐮𝐫 𝐩𝐫𝐨𝐝𝐮𝐜𝐭 𝐭𝐡𝐚𝐭 𝐬𝐭𝐢𝐥𝐥 𝐡𝐚𝐬𝐧'𝐭 𝐛𝐞𝐞𝐧 𝐭𝐞𝐬𝐭𝐞𝐝? #StartupFounders #MVPDevelopment  #MVP #ProductStrategy #SaaSFounder #ProductDevelopment #MVPStrategy #AveryBitSolutions

We had a problem and a deadline. A brand deck or 40-slide pitch is not really our thing. 3 prototypes in one week means 3 teams got their first real look at their idea, not on paper, not in a Figma file, but live. Clickable. Shareable. Something you can actually put in front of a user and say: "Is this what you meant?" The fastest way to know if an idea works is to make it real. Validated by 12 stakeholder meetings. Just real enough to get a reaction. A prototype tells you more in 10 minutes of user feedback than a 3-month planning cycle ever will. Revolt Shaves is one I'm genuinely excited about. Click through. See what fast, focused building looks like when the goal isn't polish, it's clarity. Building something and not sure where to start? #validatetheidea #testyouridea #productdevelopment #saasdevelopement

Documents can spark imagination about a product, but prototypes allow for real experience. I shifted my approach by combining Figma with Claude, enabling me to create clickable prototypes in a fraction of the time it used to take to draft documents. The results have been eye-opening: - Feedback that once required a week of follow-up emails now occurs live in the first meeting. - Stakeholders focus on the screens rather than debating wording. - Alignment that previously took three review cycles is achieved in just one. Buy-in becomes automatic when people can see and feel the direction you're headed. Reflecting on my transition into product management, no skill has accelerated my progress more than rapid AI-powered prototyping. Not frameworks, not certifications—this. The key takeaway: Don’t ask people to read your vision, Let them click through it. #ProductManagement #RapidPrototyping #AITools #Figma #CareerTransition

I used to run design sprints that took weeks. A room. A wall of sticky notes. A pack of markers, the client somewhere between hopeful and impatient, and weeks of work before anyone saw a screen they could tap. This week, the Beyond The Clinic team ran the workshop before lunch. Same ritual. The team, the stickies, the argument over what our patients actually need. The next day, we fed the lot into an AI tool wired into our Figma. By the afternoon, we were tapping through a working v2 of our consumer app. Not a deck about screens. The actual thing. I expected to feel clever. I felt caught out. Because the part that collapsed was only ever the making. And the weeks were never really about the making. They were cover for the part you cannot rush. The workshop. The judgement in the room. The fight over which goal comes first. The tool can prototype in an afternoon. It cannot tell you what to prototype. So for many years, some of what was sold as craft was just the lag. Making was slow, so thinking had somewhere to hide. Making is nearly free now. Thinking costs exactly what it always did. Which makes me wonder how much of our process was ever craft, and how much was just scar tissue from when building was slow. So here is my real question, and it is for anyone sitting on an idea they have not built yet. If making it is no longer the slow part, what is actually holding yours up?