Design sprints – Annual report design process
In the world of web design and build, you may hear the phrase ‘sprint’ often associated with ‘scrum’ or ‘agile’ approaches to project management and delivery.
These are not the terms you hear when discussing the delivery of annual reports and accounts. But behind the delivery schedule, the delivery team will employ many of the delivery techniques a web development team uses, notably sprints and an agile approach.
These approaches may seem abstract, but they are vital in delivering an annual report that requires a flexible, fast approach in an often-changing landscape.
We’d all like to have a delivery plan where stakeholders, marketing, the CEO and CFO deliver on schedule and the auditors don’t throw a spanner in the works at the last minute.
Life isn’t like that.
So behind the scenes, the Navig8 team employs sprints and an agile approach when the project demands it.
Let me explain.
On a basic level, our first sprint comes after the content and data analysis.
After the briefing process, we review the content and data. This gives us the ‘ingredients’ for the communication and design solutions.
We will advise and consult with the client to draw out the top-level data and key messaging.
With this deep understanding, we can build a ‘picture’ and a ‘purpose’ that the report needs to achieve.
This is when the first sprint begins: the creative.
Typically, we take two weeks to develop creative concepts, our first sprint.
In the meantime, the client delivery team are working away adjusting the content ready for the first proof.
In an ideal world, the client approves the content, document structure, grids, type styles and approach to imagery. Happy days. We just wait for the content that slots beautifully into our template, and a few days later, there you go, an annual report.
Life isn't like that.
This is where the agile approach comes into play.
When the content is finally delivered, you can bet your trousers that things will have changed and they are likely to change again.
We seek approval of our design concept, page design and styles during the creative concept stage. Once we have approval, this concept will form a template.
A report Navig8 delivered for a large company in the automotive industry. Everything was going swimmingly. The design was approved by the finance and delivery team. The marketing team were happy, so we produced the first full proof of the report, based on our lovely approved design.
The CEO was sent the proof, and hated it.
Unfortunately, the CEO’s opinion is the one that counts, and despite the remonstrations of the team, his opinion was negative.
So, as I say, we had a full proof, with all the content in, design, infographics, you name it.
This is where an agile approach comes into play.
We tasked the client with revising the content only, turning a blind eye to the design. We embarked on a fresh round of creative and re-presented.
This time, the CEO was on the selection panel. In an ideal world, the CEO should always be part of the initial stages, but with the bigger organisations, that rarely happens.
Anyway, the CEO loved concept 2.0 and we prepared new templates. Meanwhile, the client had revised the content in the old design. We took in the revision, and because we use stylesheets, we edited them to turn all the content into the new styles in a jiffy.
That is not to say there wasn’t a lot of redesigning to do; there was. And so from this agile position, we now embarked on a sprint to deliver proof 02 in the new design.
At this stage, once the new proof had been delivered, we were back on track and comfortably in our normal delivery process.
What this example demonstrates is the need for a design agency to be flexible, be ready to change and move at pace, be agile and be able to put in place, at a moment's notice, extra resources to sprint to the finish.