DSA is a Berlin-based consultancy and training company. We work at the front end of innovation — helping senior leaders define the right problems, validate the right solutions, and build the internal systems to make structured decision-making a permanent capability, not a one-off engagement.
We are John Vetan and Dana Vetan — co-founders of DSA. Before this, we ran a digital agency and worked with large organizations on product and strategy. And we kept seeing the same pattern.
Smart teams. Talented leaders. Real ambition. And yet the same things kept going wrong: stakeholders misaligned before a project started. Decisions postponed for months because nobody could agree. Pilots that launched and failed — because the problem was wrong or the solution never fit the people who had to use it.
The root cause was always the same. Organizations are built for execution — but not for navigating complexity together. When the challenge is unclear and the solution is unknown, there’s no default process for collaboration. Putting people in a room doesn’t work. Collaboration needs to be designed. It needs structure.
So we built a system for it. Not just a workshop methodology. A strategic decision-making system — structured, repeatable, and designed to transfer to the teams that use it. One that works under pressure, inside complexity, and with problems that don’t have obvious answers — and gets sharper with every session.
That system is what DSA is built around. And it’s what every service we offer — from a one-day Problem Framing session to a full AI Lab operating model — is designed to install.
We help organizations make high-stakes decisions faster — and with better evidence.
We work in two modes:
The methodology is rigorous enough that Google asked DSA to teach it.
In 2018, Google invited us to teach Problem Framing to their internal Design Sprint Academy. The organization that invented the Design Sprint trusted DSA to upgrade how their own teams define problems.
We pioneer methods before the market knows it needs them.
When AI moved from experimentation to enterprise, most organizations had no structured way to decide which opportunities were worth pursuing — so we built AI Problem Framing. When teams started bolting AI onto existing workflows and discovering the problems at deployment — we built the AI Workflow Sprint. We don’t wait for the market to name the problem. We build the method when we see the gap.
Turner Construction — two years ago, when AI transformation had no playbook.
When most organizations were still figuring out what AI meant for them, DSA went into Turner Construction and built an AI operating model from the ground up. The result: 400+ custom AI applications built by Turner’s own employees, 70,000+ hours of annual capacity unlocked, and an internal AI Lab that runs on auto-pilot. From there, Turner built SafeT Coach — an AI-powered safety tool, now free to the entire construction industry, logging 25,000 interactions across eight million construction workers in the US. That engagement became the foundation for the AI Lab methodology.
There are plenty of consultancies, training providers, and facilitators out there.
Few are in the decision quality business.
Every facilitated session is built around one question: what does this room need to walk out with? Before anyone arrives, we do the work that makes the answer reachable — research reviewed, context mapped, artifacts prepared, Decider aligned. We measure success by what the room produces, not by how the day felt.
The big consultancies take months to produce a recommendation leadership can defend. We produce the same quality of output in days — because the method forces the right rigor from the start: real data, structured decision-making, and the right people in the room at the right time making the call.
Whether we facilitate or train, the goal is the same: help your organization own the process. We provide playbooks, toolkits, and templates so teams can run the work internally—without needing external support every time.
Working with Design Sprint Academy we completely unlocked the benefits of design sprints promised in the book Sprint. Design Sprints are now a cornerstone of how we work and we continue to improve them with help from the Design Sprint Academy.
DSA mastered the art of the perfect remote sprint. We had a week-long sprint and a 2-day training session with them, led by John. His expertise and efficiency in facilitating remote sprints were evident. His experience and insightful examples answered all our queries. For top-notch design sprint facilitation, choose John and his team. I highly recommend him and look forward to future collaborations.
I recently participated in a design sprint training and it was GREAT! Design Sprint Academy was professional, knowledgeable, and enthusiastic about the seminar material and helped my group feel comfortable and confident as well. The hands-on learning was excellent, and I really appreciated getting both participant and facilitator perspectives.
Everyone has an opinion on AI. Very few people have real expertise in strategy, facilitation, and systems design. The Design Sprint Academy is one of the only places I've found where those things live together, and where no matter how much you think you know, you leave knowing more. What makes it truly special is how generous they are with their knowledge and resources that are so well designed and curated. They give you every single thing you need, from a resource perspective and confidence perspective to go back and do this work with others. I say this as someone who has been using these strategies for over a decade, yet no matter how much you think you know I promise you will leave knowing more, and learning new strategies to adapt these methods for the AI era we are in now.
John and the Design Sprint Academy are a highly professional team. They helped to identify the right problems, generate a context that was needed to find the right answers, and enabled our team to have creative exchanges and take a significant step forward in our project. All this considered our needs and was tailored during the process.
The strongest outcome for me was the ability to scale capability quickly. We now deliver Problem Framing sessions in-house directly off the back of the Design Sprint Certification program.
DSA is one of the leading organizations on bringing the Design Sprint methodology to an ever-growing audience. They are great strategic collaborators and bring a wealth of experience from the facilitation of Design Sprints to scaled outreach and education of the broader Design Sprint Community. The team consistently produces great work and constantly shares their recent learnings and insights with the community.
DSA provides an amazing training experience. John and the team have developed a professional and fun experience with just the right mix of presentation content and hands-on demonstrations. I'm confident we can apply the methodologies taught to deliver impact!
DSA gave me a great grounding in facilitation techniques and design sprint methodology. The quality of their tuition and facilitation and attention to detail in how they present their approach sets them apart.
