These three guides follow a 90-day sprint from start to finish. They are written so that an owner who never hires us can still run a disciplined quarter on one problem. Read them in order: first choose the constraint, then measure it every week, then decide on day 90 what to keep.
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The day-90 review: keep, kill or scale
On day 90, compare the target figure with the baseline, trace which decisions moved it, sort every change into keep, kill or scale, and choose the next constraint.
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How to pick the one bottleneck worth a 90-day sprint
Map five stages from attention to repeat purchase, put a rough number on each, compare each against a plausible level, and pick the gap closest to the money.
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The 13-week scoreboard: how to measure a 90-day sprint
Choose one target figure, two leading figures, one guardrail and one cost line. Lay them across 13 weekly columns, read them for 30 minutes each week, and record one decision.
Guide 1: How to pick the one bottleneck worth a sprint
How to pick your bottleneck is the place to start. It walks through five stages every business moves buyers through, from attention to repeat purchase, and shows how to put a rough number on each one using records you already have.
The heart of the guide is a step most owners skip: turning each gap into dollars. A worked example shows why the stage that feels weakest, very often "not enough leads", is frequently not the one costing the most. You'll finish with a one-page charter: the constraint, the baseline, the target, and a list of good ideas parked until day 90.
Read it if: you're unsure what to work on, or you've tried several fixes at once and can't tell which helped.
Guide 2: The 13-week scoreboard
The 13-week scoreboard explains how to measure a sprint without drowning in reports. It covers the five lines that suit almost any sprint (a target, two leading figures, a guardrail and a cost line), how to define each so nobody argues, and how to lay them out across 13 weekly columns.
It also sets out a 30-minute weekly review with a fixed agenda that ends in one written decision. A worked example shows how to read noisy small-business numbers with a four-week rolling average, and when two weak weeks should prompt a change.
Read it if: you have a target but no reliable way to know each week whether it's moving.
Guide 3: The day-90 review
The day-90 review covers the most neglected week of any sprint. It shows how to compare the result honestly with the baseline, trace cause through the weekly decision log, and sort every change into keep, kill or scale.
It ends with the four sensible choices for the next quarter (consolidate, scale, move on, or stop) and the common ways gains fade once sprint attention goes away.
Read it if: your sprint is ending, or you've finished past projects without being sure what they achieved.
How the guides connect to our services
Each guide matches a part of a BusinessBooster.ca sprint:
- The bottleneck guide is the do-it-yourself version of our sprint diagnostic.
- The scoreboard guide describes the weekly scoreboard and owner rhythm we run in every sprint.
- The day-90 guide is the review we write up and hand over at the end.
The three boost lanes in between, lead flow, quote-to-sale and repeat and referral, each have their own service page with timelines, worked numbers and mistakes to avoid.
A note on the examples
The guides use invented round numbers, such as 80 enquiries a month or a $900 average sale, purely to show the arithmetic. They're not drawn from any client and they're not benchmarks. Replace them with your own figures; that's where the guides become useful.
Our published client evidence is separate and clearly labelled as results from our HVAC work on the results page.
When to bring in help
The method is simple; the discipline is the hard part. Owners usually ask for help at one of three points: when the numbers are too messy to trust, when the weekly review keeps slipping, or when the day-90 result is ambiguous. For any of those, an hourly session or a coached sprint may be enough; see pricing, or call, text or email.
Frequently asked questions
Can I run a sprint using only these guides?
Yes. They are written so a disciplined owner can run the whole cycle with their own team. Where people get stuck is usually the honesty of the numbers and the discipline of the weekly review, which is where outside help is most useful.
In what order should I read them?
In sprint order: the bottleneck guide first, then the scoreboard guide, then the day-90 review. Each one refers back to the one before it.
Do the guides apply to any industry?
The method does. The examples use service businesses because they are easy to follow, but the same five stages and weekly scoreboard work for retailers, clinics, suppliers and professional practices.