Faculty has been a product studio for ten years. This week, we’re launching something new: a productized engagement called the Faculty Sprint.

Ten years ago, building products was slower and more expensive. Clients spent real money to refine an idea before committing to it, because the risk of taking the wrong path was enormous. We called this part of the process discovery, and we were very good at it. What people want is someone who can see the shape of an idea and distill its essence, so what gets built is something users comprehend and love. After that, building is the easy part.

A lot has changed since then. Building is faster, cheaper, and more accessible than it’s ever been. Some people think decisions matter less, because if you get it wrong, you can rebuild quickly. In practice, the opposite is true. When execution is cheap, the allure of progress carries teams forward, justifying their bad decisions instead of pausing to fix them. It doesn’t just enable bad decisions. It normalizes them. Good judgment is the differentiator now in a way it wasn’t ten years ago.

Sometimes the most important decisions are smaller than they sound. I’ve watched products reach clarity the moment the URLs got settled. URLs are the clearest expression of information architecture, and once they’re right, everything downstream gets easier. Small, early decisions tend to work like this. They look unimportant in isolation, but they compound and clarify.

This is what the Faculty Sprint is for: getting the small early decisions right.

We focus on the shape of the idea. Sometimes the decision is what not to build. Sometimes it’s how to position the product so people understand it. Sometimes it’s the details of the UI. We spend the first part of the engagement on the decisions, and the rest of it making those decisions real.

May is taken. July and September are open. Apply at faculty.com/sprint or reach out to learn more.

Chris Shiflett Boulder-based founder, designer, and developer. Co-founder of Studioworks and Schoolcase, and founder of Faculty, a product studio. Writing about building things on the web since 2000. More about Chris →