FOCUSED SPRINT — ONE QUESTION, ONE WEEK, ONE ANSWER

Jake McMahon — ProductQuant

8+ years B2B SaaS · Behavioural Psychology + Big Data (Masters)

The decision your team has been stuck on — made this week, backed by data.

One specific question. Five business days. A data-backed answer your team acts on — not another month of debating without evidence.

Start the Sprint → See what’s included ↓

A clear answer with data behind it — or full refund · 5-day delivery

WHAT YOU HAVE AT THE END

One focused analysis Data pulled and interpreted around your specific question

One clear answer Not “it depends” — a specific finding with confidence level stated

Data visualisations Shareable charts and tables your team can use directly

One recommendation Prioritised next step with reasoning — ready to act on

45-min readout Walk-through with your team, questions answered

Fixed price · One week delivery

We build a custom dashboard to answer your urgent business question.

In one week, we turn your data into a clear, visual answer. Your team gets a dashboard they can use to make the decision and move forward.

SALES DIRECTOR

"Which of our new features should we push to our sales team first?"

We connect to your usage data and show which features your best customers actually use. You get a ranked list with clear adoption numbers. This stops the internal debate and tells sales exactly what to lead with.

MARKETING MANAGER

"Is our new ad campaign actually working, or should we pull the budget?"

We build a dashboard that tracks sign-ups and costs from that specific campaign. You see daily if it's profitable or not. This gives you the evidence to confidently continue or stop spending.

CUSTOMER SUPPORT

"What's causing the sudden spike in support tickets this week?"

We link your support tickets to recent app updates or user actions. You get a chart showing the exact cause, like a confusing new button. This lets your product team fix the real problem, not guess.

WEEKLY REPORTING

The CEO asks for last week's key metric, and you spend hours building a slide.

We build a single dashboard that automatically updates with that key number every Monday. You just open it and have the answer. This saves you hours of manual work every week.

THE SAME QUESTION KEEPS COMING UP AND NOBODY HAS ANSWERED IT

Same debate, three consecutive sprint plannings

“We’ve had the same question in three consecutive sprint plannings. Everyone has an opinion. Nobody has pulled the data. We keep deciding to ‘look into it’ and then running out of time.”

VP Product — B2B SaaS, $8M ARR

Roadmap built on gut — next planning cycle in two weeks

“We built the entire roadmap on a gut assumption about which segment retains best. Now we have data but nobody’s structured it properly. I need to know if we were right before we go into the next planning cycle.”

Head of Product — Series B

Internal analyst overloaded — one question taking three weeks

“We hired a data analyst three months ago. She’s great. But answering one specific question takes her three weeks because she has ten other things going on. I just need this one thing answered fast.”

CEO — Seed stage

Board meeting in 10 days — no structured answer ready

“The board meeting is in 10 days. They’re going to ask about retention by cohort. I have the data somewhere but I don’t have a structured answer and I don’t have the bandwidth to build it this week.”

Head of Growth — Series A

WHAT THIS TYPICALLY REVEALS

The answer is usually in the data you already have. Nobody has structured it.

The question your team is debating usually has a clear answer in the data.

Most teams argue because nobody has structured the analysis. Not because the data doesn’t exist — because pulling it and interpreting it properly keeps getting deprioritised.

The first answer often reframes the next question entirely.

Once one question is resolved with data, the follow-up question becomes more precise. You stop debating the wrong problem and start scoping the right one.

A specific question answered in one week unblocks weeks of stalled decisions.

The cost of leaving the question unanswered is rarely zero. Teams build features, adjust pricing, or allocate resources on assumptions that one analysis could confirm or correct.

Broad reports bury the answer. A focused sprint surfaces it.

When a consultant reviews your data for two weeks and hands over a 40-page report, you get a ranked list of everything that could be improved. You still have the same decision — what to do first. One question forces the answer to be useful.

WHY THIS IS DIFFERENT

The constraint is the point. One question forces the analysis to be useful rather than comprehensive.

Broad analytics engagements produce broad findings. When analysis tries to cover everything, you get a ranked list of possible improvements and the same decision you started with — what to do first.

The Focused Sprint works differently because the scope is fixed from the start. One question, agreed on the kickoff call. The analysis is pointed at that question and nothing else. The answer has to be specific because there’s only room for one. The recommendation has to be actionable because it’s the only output.

If the data genuinely doesn’t support a clear conclusion, that’s the answer — documented with what data would resolve it and what to do in the meantime. You don’t get a hedge. You get the most useful thing the data can tell you.

TIMELINE

From question to answer in one week.

DAY 1

Scope + Access

A 30-minute kickoff call. We agree on the exact question, what data is available, and what a useful answer looks like. Read-only data access set up before the call ends.

→

DAYS 2–4

Analyse + Build

The analysis runs against the agreed question and nothing else. Visualisations built as findings emerge. If the question needs reframing, that’s flagged before day 5.

→

DAY 5

Answer + Handover

45-minute readout with your team. The answer, the data behind it, the recommendation, and next questions. Everything handed over — nothing withheld.

Day 6: the debate is over. Your team acts on the answer.

WHAT YOU GET

11 deliverables that turn one stuck product decision into a clear next move.

Deliverable 01

Question Scoping and Data Requirement Analysis

Most analyses fail because they answer the wrong question. Before anything is pulled, the question is defined precisely — what data is needed to answer it, what "good enough confidence" looks like, and what decisions the answer will inform.

Deliverable 02

Specific Data Pull and Interpretation

The relevant data is pulled and interpreted in context. The raw numbers mean nothing without the surrounding signal — every finding is explained in terms of what it actually means for the decision at hand.

Deliverable 03

Confidence Level Assessment

You'll know how much to trust the answer. Every conclusion comes with an explicit confidence rating and the reasoning behind it — so you can decide how boldly to act rather than guessing at the reliability of the analysis.

Deliverable 04

Alternative Explanation Testing

The first explanation is often wrong. The leading interpretation is stress-tested against plausible alternatives so you're not building strategy on a fluke in the data or a spurious correlation.

Deliverable 05

Historical Context Research

A metric that looks alarming today might be seasonal. A trend that looks healthy might be masking decay. The historical baseline is layered in so you're reading the signal correctly — not reacting to noise.

Deliverable 06

Written Analysis Document Structured Around Your Question

An 8–12 page report built around your specific question — not a generic template. The structure follows the logic of the answer, written to be shared with your board, investors, or team leads.

Deliverable 07

Data Visualisations (Typically 3–5 Shareable Charts)

Charts designed to communicate, not to impress. Each one is built to stand alone in a slide deck or email thread, with a clear title that tells the reader what to conclude.

Deliverable 08

Clear Answer Statement with Confidence Level

A single, direct statement of what the data shows — written in plain English, with an explicit confidence rating. No hedging paragraphs. No buried conclusions. The answer is the first thing you read.

Deliverable 09

Prioritised Recommendation with Reasoning

What to do next, and why. The recommendation is grounded in the analysis and ranked by expected impact — not a generic best-practice list that could apply to any company.

Deliverable 10

Next Question Recommendations

Every answer surfaces the next important question. The questions worth investigating next are mapped out so your team doesn't lose momentum after the sprint closes.

Deliverable 11

45-Minute Readout Session (Recorded) + 15-Day Clarification Support

A live walkthrough of the findings so nothing gets misread, recorded for your team. For 15 days after delivery, email access and one follow-up call for implementation questions as they arise.

Everything above for $1,997. No hourly billing. No scope creep. Everything stays with your team.

FIT CHECK

Your team has the data. They just haven’t structured it into an answer yet.

GOOD FIT

Any B2B SaaS team with one specific question and existing event data

Question specific · data available · decision blocked

The situation

Your team has a specific analytical question it’s been debating — about retention, churn, activation, pricing, feature adoption, or expansion. The question is specific enough to write in one sentence. You have event data in an analytics tool. The debate hasn’t been resolved because nobody has pulled the analysis and called it.

What you leave with

The question answered with data in 5 business days
A written document you can share with your team or board
One prioritised recommendation and the reasoning behind it

The decision that’s been stalled for weeks gets made this week.

NOT A FIT

Questions requiring new data collection, or questions that are really 3–4 bundled together

Wrong scope or no existing data

When this sprint doesn’t apply

If answering the question requires data that doesn’t exist yet — surveys to run, events to instrument, experiments to conduct — the sprint can’t produce an answer in 5 days. Similarly, if the “question” is really 3 or 4 questions bundled together, the sprint isn’t the right format. The kickoff call surfaces this before any money changes hands.

Better starting points

Instrumentation Setup

Get your event tracking in place before running any analysis sprint.

Activation Deep Dive

Covers an entire activation funnel end-to-end when the problem is broader than one question.

The Foundation

Covers activation alongside retention, competitive, and go-to-market.

What this sprint doesn’t cover

The Focused Sprint answers one question and recommends one action. Your team does the building. If you need the full picture — including implementation — that’s a different engagement.

Implementing the recommendation — your team ships the changes
Multi-question analysis — the sprint answers one, not several
Ongoing experimentation — the sprint delivers the answer, your team runs what comes next

For full implementation → Growth LAB

Jake McMahon — ProductQuant

Jake McMahon

8+ years building retention, activation, and growth programs inside B2B SaaS · Behavioural Psychology + Big Data (Masters)

I run this sprint myself. It’s the lowest-friction way to work together — one question, one week, one answer. Not a discovery process that takes 3 weeks to scope. Not a broad audit that produces 20 recommendations of varying priority. The constraint is deliberate.

One question forces the analysis to be useful rather than comprehensive. The recommendation has to be specific because there’s only one. If the answer is “the data doesn’t support a clear conclusion,” that’s the answer — documented with what data would resolve it and what to do next. You don’t get a hedge. You get the most useful thing the data can tell you right now.

I won’t do this:

Scope a question so broad that no useful answer is possible in 5 days
Deliver a list of considerations when a specific recommendation is possible
Caveat every finding to the point where the answer is unusable
Treat “it depends” as an answer when the data can settle it

Can I scope the question myself?

Yes. Most people come in with a question already. The kickoff call confirms it’s scoped correctly — specific enough to answer in 5 days with available data, and not so narrow that the answer is obvious without analysis. If your question is too broad, we narrow it in the call. If it’s already well-scoped, we confirm it and start. The kickoff is 30 minutes, not a discovery process.

Teams Jake has worked with

PRICING

One price. One question answered. Your team moves forward.

$1,997

one-time · fixed price

5 business days

30-minute kickoff call to scope the question and confirm data access
Written analysis structured around your specific question
Data visualisations shareable with your team or board
Clear answer with confidence level stated explicitly
One prioritised recommendation with reasoning
Next question recommendations based on what the data revealed
45-minute readout call on day 5
Everything owned by your team permanently

A clear answer with data behind it — or full refund. No conditions.

Book a 30-minute call →

A clear answer backed by your data — or full refund. If the data can’t support a clear conclusion, we identify that in the kickoff call and scope what’s possible before any money changes hands. The deliverable either contains a data-backed answer or it doesn’t.

Questions.

Or book a call →

What if one week isn’t enough? +

The kickoff call is designed to prevent this. If a question can’t be answered reliably in 5 days — because the data isn’t available, the instrumentation is incomplete, or the question is too broad — we reframe it during the kickoff to something that can. If the analysis reveals a more complex picture, the deliverable documents that clearly and recommends what to do next — including whether a longer sprint would produce a better answer.

Can I scope the question myself? +

Yes. Most people come in with a question already. The kickoff call is 30 minutes — it confirms the question is scoped correctly, confirms what data is available, and agrees on what a useful answer looks like. If your question is well-scoped, the kickoff is a brief alignment session. If it needs narrowing, that happens in the same call before any analysis starts.

What do I own at the end? +

A written document: the question, the data and methodology, the answer, the confidence level, the recommendation, and next question recommendations. Structured to be shareable — you can send it to your team, present it in a board meeting, or use it as the basis for scoping a larger sprint. You own it entirely. No dependency on ProductQuant after day 5.

Is this just a diagnosis or do you fix things? +

The Focused Sprint answers one question and recommends one action — it doesn’t implement the fix. If the answer points to a specific problem that needs a full sprint to address (onboarding drop-off, churn signals, activation funnel), the recommendation will say so. The Focused Sprint is the fastest way to confirm whether a bigger sprint is worth it.

What’s the guarantee? +

If the sprint doesn’t produce a clear answer with data behind it, you get a full refund. The guarantee is straightforward: the deliverable either contains a data-backed answer or it doesn’t. If the data genuinely can’t support a clear conclusion — which we try to identify in the kickoff — that gets flagged before the sprint runs. We don’t reach day 5 and deliver something that doesn’t answer the question.

How does this lead to larger engagements? +

Most Focused Sprints reveal that the answer to the first question points at a bigger problem worth a dedicated sprint. If your question is about churn cohorts and the data shows churn is concentrated in a specific segment, the next question is why — which is a 2-week engagement, not a 5-day one. The sprint deliverable includes next question recommendations precisely because the answer usually opens the next conversation. There’s no obligation to continue.