Most internal AI projects start as a backlog item and end as a slide. A sponsor asks for a copilot. A squad estimates a quarter. The quarter becomes two. The workflow you meant to change is still the old one, with a prototype in a side folder only the squad can open.
A design sprint takes a different shape. One workflow. One week. A decision to keep it, change it or stop it. A model sits in the week so you can research, draft and prototype faster. You are in the room to change the work. The AI design sprint we run follows that shape with a facilitator. You can run a thinner version inside the company if you lock the boundaries before anyone books the room.
Before Monday
The week fails in the fortnight before it, when the brief is still a theme. Write five lines and get a sponsor to sign them. The workflow, in the operator's words, and how often it happens. The person who feels the pain, and who will try the new version with you. The decision the week must produce, and the three answers you will allow: adopt, adapt or stop. The data you may touch, agreed before anyone pastes a record into a tool. The evidence that would make you end the week early rather than force a demo.
If you cannot name the operator, you are designing for a persona. If you cannot name the data rule, you are about to create an incident and call it speed. The AI governance workshop is where that rule gets written. Fix both before the calendar invite goes out.
Who is in the room
Keep it small. The operator. Someone who understands the customer or the handoff. Someone who can build a thin prototype, a script, a form or a prompt in the approved tool. A decider who can say yes or no on Friday without a committee that missed the week. A facilitator who is also free of the idea, so they can kill it. Five to seven people. Past that, the operator stops talking.
The five days
Monday, walk the current workflow with the operator. Mark time, handoffs and the step where quality usually fails. Choose one step to change. Tuesday, use a model to widen the ways that step could work, then throw out anything that breaks the data rule or the stop rule. Leave with two options. Wednesday, build the smallest thing the operator can run on a real case. A template, a checklist, a draft a human still sends. No new vendor.
Thursday, run the thin version on several real cases beside the old way. Keep both outputs. Note where the new one was faster, where it was wrong and where a person still had to step in. Friday, decide. Adopt, adapt or stop. Name the owner of next week. If you adopt, write the steps so someone who missed the week can follow them. If you stop, write why, so the idea stays dead when someone tries to rename it next month.
Use the model on Tuesday and Wednesday. On Thursday, keep the new output next to the old one. If Thursday becomes a demo to stakeholders, you have built a pitch. You came for the cases.
What shipped means
Shipping means the operator uses the new step the following week, with the Thursday check written beside it. A slide will miss that. So will a prototype only the squad can run. If the decider needs another month of business casing before anyone may try it, the week was a meeting that prepared a later meeting. Say that on Friday, while the people who did the work are still there.
A stopped idea counts if you write the stop down. Organisations get stuck when every concept stays alive because nobody wants to be the person who ended it. The useful part of the week is a kill you agreed to in the brief, while the room could still hear bad news.
After the week
Book the review when you book the sprint. Ten working days later, thirty minutes, same decider. Did the operator run the new step. What broke. Does the stop rule still hold. Fold the step into the ordinary process, or take it out. A special project is how a good Thursday becomes a rumour.
Run the next one on a different workflow, with a different operator, on the same five line brief. The method is what you can repeat. One week is enough when someone in the room can choose. It collapses when the week shows speed around a choice nobody may make. If you want that week facilitated for a Melbourne team, start with how a Melbourne team runs an AI design sprint. Write the stop where the next sponsor can find it before you leave.
