What is a Sprint? A practical guide to commissioning a two-week advisory engagement.

A Sprint is a two-week fixed-scope advisory engagement. One question, agreed at intake. One written answer, sized for a board reader. One board pack. One hand-off call. Ten working days from kick-off to hand-off.

The Sprint exists because growth-stage boards and CEOs regularly need a defensible answer to a specific commercial or operating question, and the question arrives with a deadline the executive team cannot credibly meet from inside the business. Fresh eyes on the problem. A named, senior operator's read. Written down.

This guide is for CEOs, Chairs and PE operating partners of growth-stage B2B SaaS, life sciences and AI SaaS companies deciding whether a Sprint is the right shape for the question on the table.

What a Sprint actually is

A Sprint is an advisory instrument. Not an operating engagement. Andrew does not join the executive team, sit in weekly stand-ups, or run programmes during a Sprint. He researches, interviews, structures, and writes. The output is a written answer, not a slide deck of activity.

The engagement is designed for the moment where a board is asking a specific question the executive team cannot answer credibly from inside the business. Sometimes the question is too close for the team to see cleanly. Sometimes it needs an outside operator who has been in the same seat at the same stage. Sometimes it needs a written verdict with no political weight attached to it. A Sprint provides that.

The shape is fixed. Ten working days. One question, agreed on the intake call and written down before the work starts. One written answer, sized for the audience. One board pack drawn from the written answer. One hand-off call.

A Sprint sells a written answer. Everything else is around it.

What a Sprint is not

The engagement is misunderstood often enough to need a definition by exclusion.

1. Not a rebuild. A Sprint answers a question. It does not install a programme or rewrite an operating model. When the answer says the rebuild is needed, the follow-up engagement is a 90-day Diagnostic or a Fractional CGO.
2. Not open-ended strategy work. The scope is written down before kick-off. If the question is "what is our commercial strategy for the next three years", that is a Diagnostic, not a Sprint. If the question is "should the partner programme be rebuilt now or given two more quarters", that is a Sprint.
3. Not a listening exercise. Andrew comes with a working hypothesis by day three. The board is paying for a read, not a report of everyone else's views.
4. Not a management consulting deck. The primary artefact is a written answer of fifteen to thirty pages, structured for a board reader. The slide pack is a secondary distillation, not the point.
5. Not a substitute for hiring. If the question is really "we need a senior commercial hire and cannot afford one", the honest answer is Fractional CGO, not a Sprint.

When to commission a Sprint

Five patterns show up in practice.

1. The next board meeting needs an answer. Chair or CEO knows the room will ask a question the current executive team cannot answer from evidence. A Sprint produces the paper the board reads before the meeting and the slide the CEO takes into the room.
2. Two credible options and one call to make. Direct sales or partner-led. Vertical focus or horizontal expansion. Build or buy. Series C now or hold for one more quarter. A Sprint pressure-tests both options against evidence and recommends one, with the risks the recommendation sits on written down.
3. Pre-diligence stress test. Fund raise or exit process approaching. The commercial story needs an outside read before it lands in front of a buyer, a lead investor, or the CFO of the acquirer. A Sprint reads the story cold, flags where a diligence team will push, and rewrites the pieces that will not survive contact.
4. New CEO in first thirty days. A specific question that arrived on day one and cannot wait for a full Diagnostic. Often "is the partner motion actually working" or "what is the pricing story missing". A Sprint delivers the answer while the CEO is still building their own read of the business.
5. PE ops partner running a portfolio scan. One asset in the portfolio has a single question that would otherwise sit unresolved for a quarter. A Sprint clears it and returns the answer to the operating partner ready to fold into the portfolio review.

When not to commission a Sprint

Three cases, all real.

1. When the real work is a rebuild, not a decision. If the executive team already knows the answer and the question is really "how do we install this", commission a 90-day Diagnostic or a Fractional CGO. A Sprint answers a question. It does not deliver a programme.
2. When the question does not have a shape. "How should we think about growth" is not a Sprint question. "Should we consolidate the three GTM motions into one" is. If the question cannot be written down in a single sentence at intake, it is not ready for a Sprint yet. Sometimes the honest first step is a longer conversation to sharpen the question.
3. When the CEO wants the answer to be a specific pre-decided outcome. A Sprint produces an independent read. If the CEO has already made the decision and is looking for external validation to present to the board, the engagement will fail on delivery. The answer might not be the one the CEO wanted, and boards notice the smell of a rubber-stamp exercise.

How a Sprint is structured

Ten working days on a fixed calendar.

1. Intake call, before kick-off. Fifteen minutes. Agree the question, the audience for the answer, the evidence sources available, and the hand-off date. Signed intake note follows within one working day. The scope is not verbal.
2. Day one to three. Research. Existing artefacts, market context, internal data. Interviews with up to five named people inside the business, agreed at intake. Where interviews with customers, partners or investors are in scope, they are added to the calendar here.
3. Day three. Working hypothesis. A short written note goes to the CEO or Chair. Pressure-tested before the deeper work begins. If the hypothesis is wrong at day three, better to know at day three than at day nine.
4. Day four to seven. Deep work. The answer takes shape. Additional interviews land here where they were added at intake. The evidence gets triangulated.
5. Day seven to nine. Writing. The written answer and the board pack. Structure follows the audience. Argument follows the evidence.
6. Day ten. Hand-off. Ninety-minute call with the CEO or Chair, plus up to two other people the CEO wants in the room. Walk the answer. Pressure-test it. Agree what the board hears next. Written answer and board pack delivered in the same session.

A Sprint runs on a calendar the board can plan around. Kick-off Monday. Hand-off Friday the week after. Written answer in the room the same day.

What you get

Three named deliverables. No more, no less.

1. A written answer. Between fifteen and thirty pages, depending on the question. Structured for a board reader. States the question, the evidence, the working hypothesis, the answer, and the risks the answer sits on. Written in the same voice Andrew uses across the tools and the field guides. Not a management-consulting deck of activity. Not a set of bullet points. A written answer.
2. A board pack. Six to ten slides drawn from the written answer. Sized for a board deck. Speaker notes in the file. Designed to be dropped into an existing board pack template or presented standalone.
3. A hand-off call. Ninety minutes with the CEO or Chair, and up to two other people the CEO wants in the room. Walk the answer. Pressure-test it. Agree what the board hears next.

Where the question needs it, the written answer is accompanied by an appendix of the evidence base: interview notes, the market data reviewed, source documents cited. That appendix is not delivered by default; it is added when the audience needs to see the working.

How Andrew works during a Sprint

The method has three defining features.

Hypothesis-first. By day three there is a written working hypothesis. That hypothesis gets pressure-tested against the evidence over the next four days. Where the evidence contradicts the hypothesis, the hypothesis moves. Where the evidence supports it, the argument gets sharper. What does not happen is nine days of collecting other people's opinions followed by a report that says "here is what everyone thinks."

Written, not spoken. The primary artefact is a written answer, not a deck. Written answers force sharper thinking. They also survive the board meeting they were commissioned for. A slide can be misread; a written argument states its case, its evidence and its risks in one place.

Small interview set, deep interviews. Up to five named people inside the business, agreed at intake. Each interview is scheduled for ninety minutes, not thirty. Interviewing five people well produces a better read than interviewing twenty people at surface level. Where customer, partner or investor interviews are added at intake, the same rule applies.

Sprint vs 90-day Diagnostic vs Advisory

Three engagement shapes, three different answers to "what is on the table".

Sprint. Two weeks. One question, one board-ready written answer. Best when the board or the CEO has a specific decision to make and needs an evidence-based read before the meeting. Fixed scope, fixed fee.

90-day Diagnostic. One quarter. Twenty questions answered against evidence, across the four operating components of the business: Governance, Commercial, Delivery, Operating Discipline. Best when the board is asking whether the business is scale-ready at all, or when a new CEO needs a whole-business read in their first hundred days.

Advisory. Ongoing retainer. Monthly working sessions with the CEO or Chair, board-pack reviews, ad hoc calls between quarters. Best when the CEO or Chair wants standing counsel on the decisions that show up between board meetings.

Sprints and Diagnostics are one-off engagements. Advisory is a rolling relationship. In practice, a Sprint sometimes surfaces the case for a Diagnostic. A Diagnostic sometimes leads into an Advisory retainer. Neither transition is expected, but both are common and honest when the work justifies it.

Sample questions a Sprint has answered

The five patterns from earlier get concrete like this.

1. Should the partner programme be rebuilt now, or should the existing motion be given two more quarters. The board is split. The CEO needs a defensible read before the next meeting.
2. Is the pricing structure holding the business back from moving upmarket, and if so what is the minimum change that gets the enterprise deal through this quarter.
3. Which of the three GTM motions currently running in parallel is the one to consolidate around. The team is burning capacity across all three. The board wants a single motion by year end.
4. Is the commercial architecture ready to defend a Series C valuation, and what are the two or three specific pieces that need sharpening before the process starts.
5. Where does the acquired business's commercial motion collide with ours, and what is the minimum integration plan that does not slow either side.
6. Is the customer success motion actually reducing churn, or is the reported number hiding a compensating effect elsewhere in the base.
7. Should the CEO hire a permanent CGO now, or is the business six months away from being able to attract the right one.

What to look for when commissioning a Sprint

Six things a Chair or CEO should insist on when commissioning any two-week advisory engagement, from anyone.

1. A written intake note before kick-off. The question, the audience, the evidence sources, the hand-off date. If the intake is verbal, the delivery will drift.
2. A named senior operator doing the work, not a delivery team. Two weeks is not enough time for a team to onboard, delegate and hand back. The person who takes the intake call is the person who writes the answer.
3. Hypothesis by day three. Any Sprint that has not produced a written working hypothesis by day three is drifting. Ask for it explicitly.
4. Written answer, not just a slide deck. Slides can be misread. A written argument states its evidence and its risks in one place. If the deliverable is slides only, ask for the paper.
5. Small interview set, agreed at intake. Fewer interviews, deeper interviews. If the Sprint proposal says "we will interview 25 people", the two weeks will be spent taking notes rather than forming an argument.
6. Willingness to say "we do not yet know". A defensible "the evidence is not there yet" is a better board paper than a fabricated conclusion. Any advisor unwilling to write that sentence should not be commissioned.

Red flags when commissioning a Sprint

Four flags that suggest the engagement will not land.

1. The scope drifts before kick-off. If the question changes shape between the intake call and day one, the two-week clock is already broken. Ask for the intake note to be re-signed.
2. The advisor pushes for embedded time inside the executive team. That is a Fractional CGO or a Diagnostic. A Sprint operates from the outside by design. The moment it starts sitting in weekly stand-ups, the answer stops being independent.
3. The answer arrives with no risks written down. Every board-ready recommendation sits on assumptions. A Sprint answer that reads as clean and unqualified has not done the work. The risks are the argument.
4. The advisor cannot state the counter-argument. Ask, on the hand-off call, "what is the strongest case against this recommendation?". If the answer is thin, the recommendation is not board-ready. If the answer is sharp, the board can decide with confidence.

What people say

// DESIGN INSTINCT ENDORSEMENT

"Working with Andrew on the Sapio and Elsevier collaboration showed me what AI ecosystem thinking looks like in practice. He moves the conversation past 'how do we integrate?' and into 'how do our two products make each other more valuable?'. That design instinct is what separates a partnership that compounds from a logo on a slide."

Sudi Jessurun formerly Elsevier LinkedIn →

Sprint services from Ortent

Ortent Advisory is led by Andrew Wyatt. Thirty years in B2B SaaS. Four exits: Lotus to IBM ($3.5B), Paragon Software to Phone.com ($500M), Apertio to Nokia ($240M), Clearswift to Lyceum Capital ($50M). Most recently Chief Growth Officer at Sapio Sciences and Sigmatic Sciences. Before Sapio, Chief Operating Officer at Lumeon.

Ortent Sprints are commissioned by CEOs, Chairs and PE operating partners of growth-stage B2B SaaS companies, with depth in life sciences, digital health and AI SaaS. Between £5m and £30m ARR is the usual band, though earlier and later stages are workable when the question is well-shaped.

Sprints are always run by Andrew personally. There is no delivery team. The intake call, the interviews, the writing, and the hand-off are all his. That is the point.

Engagements start with a fifteen-minute call to test fit. If there is a match, the next step is a written intake note. No obligation to commission until the intake note is signed.

FAQs

How does a Sprint compare to a 90-day Diagnostic?

A Sprint answers one question in two weeks. A Diagnostic reads the whole commercial and operating model in a quarter and produces twenty answered questions across four operating components. Different shape, different price, different audience. Commission a Sprint when the board has a specific question. Commission a Diagnostic when the board is asking whether the business is scale-ready at all.

Can a Sprint run alongside an existing consulting engagement?

Yes. Sprints are designed to sit alongside, not replace, whatever else is running. The output is a written answer for the board; it does not depend on Andrew being embedded inside the executive team.

Who does Andrew interview during a Sprint?

Up to five named people inside the business, agreed at intake. Where the question needs customer, partner or investor input, those interviews are added to the scope and the calendar. External interviews add one to three days depending on availability.

What if the answer is "we do not know yet"?

The written answer says so, and states the evidence that is missing and how to collect it. A defensible "we cannot yet answer" is a better board paper than a fabricated conclusion. Boards notice the difference.

Can the output stay confidential to the CEO?

Yes. The default assumption is board-facing, but the intake note captures whether the CEO wants the output CEO-only, exec-only, or board-facing. Non-disclosure is standard.

How is a Sprint priced?

Fixed fee, agreed on the intake call. Price is not published; it depends on the shape of the question, the evidence required, and whether the work involves customer or partner interviews. Book a fifteen-minute call to scope.

What does a Sprint cost in the UK in 2026?

Fixed-fee, quoted at intake. Typical range for a two-week board-question Sprint sits between £15,000 and £30,000 depending on whether external interviews are in scope.

Can a Sprint turn into a longer engagement?

Sometimes. It is the honest next step when the Sprint answer surfaces work that needs installing rather than deciding. A Sprint has been the first two weeks of a 90-day Diagnostic. A Sprint has also been followed by an Advisory retainer. Neither transition is expected or pushed, but both happen when the work justifies it.

The bottom line

A Sprint answers one board question in two weeks. Written down. Signed off at intake. Delivered on day ten. If the board question on your table has that shape, a Sprint is the right instrument. If the question needs a whole-business read, commission a Diagnostic. If the CEO wants standing counsel across the quarters ahead, commission Advisory. The five-way router is on the Services page.