The 2-Week Cleanup Sprint (Without Burning the Calendar)

Written by: David Carneal – Digital Efficiency Consulting Group – DECG

Read Time: 3 min

If the phrase “process improvement” makes people brace for a multi-month initiative and a flood of meetings, good. That’s your early warning system.

A cleanup sprint is not a renovation. It’s a two-week, targeted fix to remove the friction that will otherwise sabotage next year’s launch.

The rule is simple: do one workflow, not ten. If you try to clean everything, you clean nothing.

Week 1: Find the top five time leaks

Start with a workflow that must function for 2027 to be real. For most teams, that’s something like order-to-cash, quote-to-ship, hiring-to-onboard, or support-ticket-to-resolution.

Do these four steps:

1. Map the real process (not the process diagram).

• Include who touches it, where it waits, and where it loops.
• Capture handoffs, approvals, rework, and the “we always have to ask Jim” moments.

2. Collect three inputs:

• Team feedback: where does it get stuck?
• Customer pain: where do they feel the seams?
• Where work sits: inboxes, queues, shared folders, “pending approval.”

3. Measure the boring stuff:

• Wait time per step
• Rework count per deliverable
• Decision latency (the time between “question asked” and “decision made”)

4. Rank the top five leaks by impact.

• Not by annoyance.
• By how much they slow the launch or create rework.

Week 2: Fix, lock in, make it stick

This week is about changing rules, not writing posters.

1. Assign single-threaded owners.

• One owner per fix.
• Not a committee. Not “shared.” One name.

2. Implement fixes as “rules of the road.” Examples:

• One definition of done.
• One handoff checklist.
• One approval rule with clear decision rights and a default path.
• One queue limit (WIP limit) to stop work from piling up.

3. Document in two minutes.

• If you can’t explain the fix in two minutes, it’s too complex for a sprint.

4. Close the loop.

• Two weeks later, review what improved, what didn’t, and adjust.
• Then repeat on the next workflow if needed.

A simple sprint agenda (so you don’t accidentally create meeting soup)

Keep it tight:

• Day 1: scope the workflow and define “done” for the sprint
• Day 2-3: map reality and collect pain points
• Day 4: identify leaks and pick top five
• Day 5: assign owners and draft fixes
• Week 2 Day 1-3: implement + train (short and practical)
• Week 2 Day 4: measure early results
• Week 2 Day 5: retro + lock the new standard

Why this works

Because it’s optimistic by design. You’re not asking people to try harder. You’re removing the friction that’s already frustrating them.

CTA: Want a guided version of this sprint that doesn’t derail operations? DECG can facilitate a cross-level working session (frontline through leadership) to identify the biggest time leaks, align owners, and launch the first two-week cleanup sprint with clear outputs.