From Ineffective to Inspired
The Challenge
In Q1 of 2021, I returned from paternity leave to a newly formed group of about 70 people. Our focus was onboarding, activation, and the Teams SKU.
A few months in, more strategic operational reviews made something clear: we were running out of valuable problems to solve. In about six months, the roadmap would hit a cliff. That gap threatened morale for roughly 25 people—including three designers—and risked stalling our momentum. Without intervention, we’d be shipping solutions that technically met goals but lacked real impact.
My Role
I wasn’t directly responsible for the roadmap, but I was accountable for my team’s performance, morale, and attrition. If we didn’t find meaningful work, it would hurt both our solutions and our people.
Creating Vision Sprints
To tackle the problem, I proposed leading a structured effort to generate new opportunities. I organized working sessions with Product Design Manager colleagues, brought in PM partners, researchers, and IC designers, and set the goal of surfacing big ideas quickly.
After a few days of collaboration and interviews, I formalized a new ritual: vision sprints. These week-long sprints reserved time for discovery methods, identifying unanswered questions, and exploring big-picture opportunities.
I operationalized the ritual by setting expectations with design leads and their partners, then delegated ownership of the sprints to them. Together, we created a detailed day-by-day process. The design leads went on to run three separate vision sprints, each generating a pipeline of ideas.
“After a few days of interviews and collaboration, I created a ‘vision sprints’ ritual.”
The Outcome
The sprints delivered a list of opportunities, each with different levels of validation. Data science, research, and PMM partners helped apply high-level sizing, which guided us in deciding which ideas to experiment with, research further, or cut.
The result was a refreshed, longer-term roadmap that restored momentum and focus. Even more, the vision sprint ritual proved valuable enough that it became part of our process—we repeated it twice yearly to keep the pipeline of opportunities alive.
Key Lessons
- Even high-performing teams can stall if the opportunity pipeline runs dry.
- Structured rituals like vision sprints create space for strategic thinking.
- Delegating ownership to design leads builds both alignment and momentum.
TL;DR (Audio-Ready Script)
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How I introduced vision sprints at Dropbox to keep teams inspired and strategic when the roadmap ran dry.