Build with clarity, confidence, and the right foundation from day one
The decisions you make before building shape everything that follows. Our Shaping Sprints help surface opportunities, align your team, and identify what’s worth building (and what isn’t). Whether you’re launching something new, tackling a significant feature, or working within the structures of a regulated industry, we’ll ensure your roadmap is grounded in user needs and business objectives.
A shaping sprint is a focused, time-boxed engagement where we prototype your idea, test it with users, and give you the clarity to move forward with confidence.
A strong foundation
Turn uncertainty into clarity and ideas into products worth building
Our team partners with you to solidify product strategy and direction in a matter of weeks. We gather insights from user research, document assumptions, and deliver clear recommendations to move forward with confidence, not guesswork. We leverage AI strategically in our sprints, moving faster without sacrificing quality, and getting testable artifacts in front of real users sooner.
When we came to thoughtbot, we just had an idea on paper. They helped us figure out this market and product together.
A proven process
What happens in a Shaping Sprint?
Understand
Align on the problem, gather context from stakeholders, surface hidden assumptions, and define what success looks like.
Diverge
Generate a wide range of possible approaches, solutions, or directions without committing to any. Quantity and variety of ideas over premature decisions.
Converge
Narrow the options, make decisions, and define one clear direction to move forward with.
Prototype
Build a testable artifact. Depending on the problem space and your needs, this could be a clickable prototype, working proof-of-concept concept, a roadmap document, or an ad experiment.
Test
Validate with real users, stakeholders, or technical constraints. Synthesize findings and define recommended next steps.
Shaping strategy for teams with something to prove
AI-accelerated sprints
We move faster without cutting corners
thoughtbot has been running sprints for over a decade. Each new tool or process change we integrate not only helps validate ideas sooner, but brings even more clarity and confidence. Now AI-assisted synthesis and prototyping allow us to test with users faster than ever with the same rigor and quality because our senior designers are guiding every step. We’re experts in helping you thoughtfully navigate the constraints, opportunities, and nuances of your project.
thoughtbot is a premiere consultant who understands the product strategy space. They work to the direction their clients give, yet are able to provide knowledge to fill in the blanks where needed. They stay in your corner and work together with your team to help reach your goals. We had strong lines of communication - it always felt like we were on the same page, they listened closely to my feedback and all Phase 1 deliverables came in to my satisfaction.
Reducing risk for regulated industries
Shaping Sprints on the blog
We document our ever-evolving processes to help you better validate your ideas
How strategic product design reduces risk before you write code
In an era where we can build faster than ever, reducing risk up front is more important than ever. In regulated industries, building products carries extra risk.
Lessons from using AI in Discovery
We tested multiple AI tools for synthesizing discovery output and found the best insights come when machines find the patterns and humans connect the dots.
Turn Any Idea Into a Validated MVP
A step-by-step path to validate your idea fast by defining the problem, testing assumptions, prototyping the critical flow, and shaping a focused MVP you can learn from.
Let's talk!
What idea are you looking to validate?
