Sprint: How to Solve Big Problems and Test New Ideas in Just Five Days
Tags: #business #design #innovation #technology #problem-solving #teams #product development
Authors: Jake Knapp, John Zeratsky, Braden Kowitz
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Overview
In ‘Sprint’, we, your trusty guides to rapid innovation, lay out a clear, actionable process for answering critical business questions in just five days. This book is your DIY manual for tackling challenges, big or small, and making crucial decisions with confidence. It’s about learning the hard way, without the ‘hard way’. Forget endless meetings, delayed deadlines, and projects built on shaky assumptions.
We’ve distilled years of experience running sprints at Google Ventures, working with startups and established companies alike, into a practical framework that any team can use. This book isn’t just theory; it’s packed with detailed instructions, real-world examples, and insider tips to help you run your own successful sprints.
Inside, you’ll learn how to assemble the perfect sprint team, unlock the collective knowledge within your organization, and transform abstract ideas into concrete solutions. We’ll guide you through each step of the sprint, from defining your long-term goal to creating a realistic prototype and testing it with real users.
We’ll show you how to:
- Embrace the ‘prototype mindset’ - learn quickly by building ‘just enough’ to test your ideas, not a perfect product
- Master the ‘Sticky Decision’ - make efficient, decisive choices about which solutions to pursue
- Uncover hidden assumptions - transform potential problems into testable hypotheses
- Conduct insightful customer interviews - get to the ‘why’ behind customer behaviors and reactions
- Learn from both success and failure - every sprint is a win, providing valuable insights to guide your next steps
Whether you’re launching a new product, improving an existing service, or just stuck on a tough problem, this book will empower you to move faster, learn more, and make better decisions. It’s time to reclaim your time, unleash your team’s creativity, and make real progress towards the things that matter.
Book Outline
1. Challenge
When you’re facing a tough problem with limited time, a sprint can provide a rapid and effective solution. Sprints are especially suited for high-stakes situations, urgent deadlines, or when progress is stalled. It’s crucial to focus on the most important aspects of the challenge, not small wins or secondary features.
Key concept: The bigger the challenge, the better the sprint. Sprints are designed for high-stakes decisions, urgent deadlines, or situations where progress has stalled. They’re not meant for small wins or ‘nice-to-have’ projects. Counterintuitively, even the largest, most complex problems can be tackled in a sprint by focusing on the surface - the point where the product or service meets the customer - and working backward to figure out the underlying systems.
2. Team
A sprint requires a small and diverse team, ideally seven people or fewer. Essential roles include a Decider, who has the authority to make final decisions, and a mix of experts representing finance, marketing, customer perspectives, tech/logistics, and design. Too many participants can slow down the process, but you can invite additional experts for short visits on Monday to gather insights.
Key concept: Recruit a team of seven (or fewer). A diverse team with a mix of perspectives, including the Decider, finance, marketing, customer, tech/logistics, and design experts, is essential for a successful sprint. If you have more than seven people, invite extra experts for short visits on Monday to share their knowledge.
3. Time and Space
To maintain focus and energy, dedicate five full days to the sprint, from Monday to Friday. The sprint team must clear their schedules and commit to working together without distractions from their regular work.
Key concept: Block five full days on the calendar. To maximize focus and make significant progress, the sprint team must commit to five full days, from Monday to Friday, with no distractions from their regular work. This dedicated time allows for deep immersion in the problem and the freedom to explore solutions without interruption.
4. Start at the End
Begin by defining a clear long-term goal: What do you hope to achieve with this project? Then, identify the critical questions that must be answered for the project to succeed. By imagining a future where the project fails, you can uncover hidden assumptions and turn them into testable questions for your sprint.
Key concept: Start at the End: Before diving into solutions, define a clear long-term goal. Then, identify the crucial questions that must be answered for the project to succeed. By imagining potential failure scenarios, you can turn assumptions into testable hypotheses.
5. Map
Create a simple map that visually represents the customer’s journey through your product or service. This map helps the team understand the problem space and identify the critical moments where your solution can have the biggest impact. It also serves as a roadmap for the sprint, ensuring that everyone stays aligned.
Key concept: Make a map. Create a simple, visual representation of the customer’s journey through your product or service. This map will serve as a guide throughout the sprint, helping you stay focused on the target customer and the critical moments in their experience.
6. Ask the Experts
No single person possesses all the knowledge needed to solve a complex problem. To gain a comprehensive understanding, interview experts from across your company and beyond, including those who can speak to customer needs, market trends, and the technological landscape. During these interviews, use ‘How Might We’ notes to reframe problems as opportunities for design.
Key concept: Nobody knows everything. To gain a deep understanding of the challenge, interview experts from various departments within your company, as well as external experts who can provide unique perspectives on the customer, the market, and the technology. Capture their insights using ‘How Might We’ notes, turning problems into opportunities for design.
7. Target
After gathering information from experts, choose a specific target customer and a critical moment in their interaction with your product or service. This target will serve as the focal point for the rest of the sprint, ensuring that your team’s efforts are aligned and focused.
Key concept: Pick a target: At the end of Monday, choose a specific target customer and a critical moment in their experience with your product or service. This focused target will guide your team’s efforts throughout the rest of the sprint.
8. Remix and Improve
Before diving into designing new solutions, gather inspiration from a diverse range of sources, including products and services outside your immediate industry. This exercise helps you identify existing solutions to similar problems in different contexts, which can spark fresh ideas for your sprint.
Key concept: Lightning Demos: Gather inspiration from a range of sources, including products and services outside of your immediate industry. Look for solutions to similar problems in different contexts. This cross-pollination of ideas can spark surprising and innovative solutions.
9. Sketch
When it’s time to generate solutions, encourage each team member to sketch their ideas independently. This ‘work alone together’ approach avoids groupthink, fosters individual creativity, and allows for a wider range of solutions to be explored.
Key concept: Work alone together: Encourage individual ideation by having each team member sketch solutions independently. This approach avoids groupthink and allows everyone to fully explore their own ideas before sharing them with the group.
10. Decide
To make efficient decisions about which solutions to prototype, use a structured decision-making process called the ‘Sticky Decision’. This method involves creating a ‘heat map’ to identify promising ideas, conducting a ‘speed critique’ to discuss the strengths and weaknesses of each solution, holding a ‘straw poll’ for the team to vote, and finally, giving the Decider a ‘supervote’ to make the final call. This process balances the team’s input with the authority of the Decider.
Key concept: The Sticky Decision: Make efficient and decisive choices about which solutions to prototype using a structured decision-making process that includes a ‘heat map’, speed critique, straw poll, and supervote. This approach balances individual opinions with the authority of the Decider.
11. Rumble
When faced with multiple winning solutions that can’t be easily combined, don’t choose between them prematurely. Instead, create separate prototypes for each solution and test them head-to-head in a ‘Rumble’. This parallel testing allows you to gather real-world data on how customers respond to each approach, providing valuable insights for making the final decision.
Key concept: Rumble: When you have multiple promising solutions that can’t be combined into one prototype, test them head-to-head in a ‘Rumble’. Create distinct prototypes for each solution and let customers experience them side-by-side, gathering real-world data to determine which approach is most effective.
12. Storyboard
After deciding on your solution(s), create a detailed storyboard that illustrates the customer’s journey through your prototype. This visual plan will guide your team on Thursday as you build the prototype, ensuring that all the pieces fit together and that you’re ready for Friday’s customer testing.
Key concept: Storyboard: Create a step-by-step plan for your prototype by arranging the winning sketches into a sequence that tells a cohesive story of the customer’s experience. This storyboard will serve as a blueprint for Thursday’s prototyping efforts.
13. Fake It
The prototype doesn’t have to be perfect, it just needs to be real enough for customers to react to honestly. Embrace the ‘prototype mindset’ by focusing on speed and learning over perfection. Build a ‘façade’ that captures the essence of your solution without getting bogged down in details.
Key concept: Fake It: Build a ‘façade’ of your product or service that appears real enough for customers to react to honestly, but doesn’t require weeks or months of development. This ‘prototype mindset’ emphasizes speed and learning over perfection.
14. Prototype
Select tools that are fast, flexible, and suited for prototyping. Your everyday tools might be too complex or time-consuming for building a quick prototype. For most software prototypes, Keynote or PowerPoint are excellent choices. For physical products, consider 3D printing, modifying existing objects, or creating a ‘Brochure Façade’ to market the product.
Key concept: Pick the right tools: Choose tools that are fast, flexible, and appropriate for the type of prototype you need to build. Don’t get bogged down using your team’s typical tools, which are often optimized for production and can be too slow for rapid prototyping.
15. Small Data
You don’t need to talk to hundreds of customers to get valuable insights. Five carefully selected target customers are enough to reveal major patterns and answer your sprint questions. Focus on gathering in-depth feedback from a small group before investing in large-scale testing.
Key concept: Five is the magic number. You can learn a great deal from a small number of carefully conducted customer interviews. Research shows that 85% of usability problems can be identified by testing with just five users. Don’t overinvest in large-scale testing before you’ve gathered insights from a small group.
16. Interview
Conduct your customer interviews using a structured five-act framework: 1) Start with a friendly welcome to put the customer at ease, 2) Ask context questions to understand their background and needs, 3) Introduce the prototype, emphasizing that it’s a work in progress, 4) Give the customer specific tasks to perform using the prototype, and 5) End with a quick debrief to gather their overall impressions.
Key concept: The Five-Act Interview: Structure your customer interviews with a clear five-act framework: 1) Friendly welcome, 2) Context questions, 3) Prototype introduction, 4) Tasks and nudges, 5) Quick debrief. This approach ensures that you gather valuable insights while keeping the customer comfortable and engaged.
17. Learn
On Friday, the entire sprint team should gather to watch the customer interviews together. This shared experience provides immediate insights, fosters a sense of shared understanding, and builds consensus around next steps.
Key concept: Watch together, learn together: Have the entire sprint team observe the Friday interviews together. Taking notes as a group allows for real-time analysis and ensures that everyone sees the customer reactions firsthand. This shared experience builds trust in the results and creates alignment on next steps.
18. Liftoff
Like the Wright brothers, you can achieve ambitious goals through a combination of focused effort, rapid experimentation, and constant learning. The sprint process provides a framework to test your ideas, learn from your mistakes, and make progress towards even the most challenging objectives. Don’t be afraid to aim high and pursue your boldest ideas.
Key concept: It wasn’t luck that made them fly; it was hard work and common sense. … Good Lord, I’m a-wondering what all of us could do if we had faith in our ideas and put all our heart and mind and energy into them like those Wright boys did!” - John T. Daniels
Essential Questions
1. What is the core framework of the ‘Sprint’ process and what are its key objectives?
The sprint process, a five-day framework, offers a structured approach to problem-solving and decision-making. It starts by defining a long-term goal, mapping the problem, gathering expert insights, and choosing a specific target. The team then sketches solutions independently, makes decisions through structured voting, and builds a realistic prototype. Finally, the prototype is tested with target customers to gather feedback and determine next steps. This process emphasizes speed, learning, and collaboration, aiming to reduce risk and make better decisions efficiently.
2. What are the main challenges ‘Sprint’ aims to address in product development and how does it achieve this?
The Sprint methodology aims to address the challenges of traditional product development, such as lengthy meetings, indecision, and the risk of building the wrong product. It provides a structured framework for rapid experimentation and user feedback, allowing teams to make informed decisions before investing significant time and resources. The goal is to move faster, learn more, and build better products by embracing a ‘prototype mindset’ and focusing on the customer experience.
3. What is the ideal composition of a ‘Sprint’ team and why is this structure important for success?
The ideal Sprint team is small and diverse, consisting of 7 people or fewer. This includes the Decider, who has final decision-making authority, a Facilitator who guides the process, and a mix of experts representing key areas like finance, marketing, customer insights, technology, and design. This diversity ensures a range of perspectives and expertise, while the small size promotes focus and efficiency. Extra experts can be invited for shorter periods, but the core team remains consistent throughout the five days.
4. What is the ‘prototype mindset’ and why is it crucial for successful sprints?
The ‘prototype mindset’ prioritizes speed and learning over perfection. It emphasizes building a ‘façade’ of the product that appears real enough for customer testing, but doesn’t require weeks or months of development. Embracing this mindset allows teams to get valuable feedback early in the process, reducing the risk of building the wrong product and making it easier to adapt to user feedback. It also promotes a culture of experimentation and iteration, encouraging teams to try new ideas and learn from their mistakes.
5. What is the concept of ‘small data’ in the context of ‘Sprint’ and why is it considered sufficient for decision-making?
Small data, specifically insights gathered from testing with just five carefully selected target customers, is often enough to reveal major patterns and inform key decisions. The authors emphasize that quality feedback from the right people trumps quantity. Large-scale data can be valuable later in the development process, but during a sprint, the goal is to gather quick, actionable insights that can guide immediate next steps.
Key Takeaways
1. Embrace the ‘prototype mindset’.
The ‘prototype mindset’ encourages teams to prioritize learning over perfection. Instead of aiming for a fully functional product, build a ‘façade’ that captures the essence of the solution. This approach allows for rapid experimentation and testing, enabling you to identify critical flaws and make improvements early in the process. It’s about learning the hard way, without the ‘hard way’.
Practical Application:
Imagine you’re building a new AI chatbot. Instead of spending months developing the perfect AI with all the bells and whistles, focus on the initial interaction: the user’s first few questions and the chatbot’s responses. Build a prototype that simulates this core interaction using existing tools like Dialogflow or even pre-scripted responses. Test it with five target users to see if the interaction feels natural and helpful. You’ll learn valuable lessons about what works and what doesn’t without investing months in development.
2. Prioritize individual ideation over group brainstorms.
Individuals working alone generate better solutions than group brainstorms. ‘Sprint’ emphasizes structured individual ideation, allowing each team member to explore their ideas without the pressure of groupthink. This fosters creativity and leads to a wider range of solutions that can be evaluated more objectively.
Practical Application:
Before a design meeting, ask each team member to spend 10 minutes sketching their ideas for a new feature. This individual brainstorming, followed by a structured critique session, will lead to more diverse and innovative solutions than a traditional group brainstorm.
3. Use structured decision-making to avoid endless debates.
Decision-making in a sprint should be efficient and avoid lengthy debates. The ‘Sticky Decision’ process offers a framework for gathering the team’s input through a structured voting system and empowering the Decider to make the final call, balancing democratic input with decisive action.
Practical Application:
If your team is debating whether to focus on a feature that improves user experience or one that enhances AI accuracy, use a ‘straw poll’ to quickly gather everyone’s opinions. Then, have the Decider make the final call, considering the team’s input and the project’s overall goals. This process ensures that decisions are made efficiently and reflect the team’s collective wisdom.
4. Map the customer journey to identify key intervention points.
Mapping the problem helps you visualize the customer journey and identify critical moments where your solution can have the biggest impact. This simple diagram serves as a shared understanding of the problem space, guiding your team’s efforts throughout the sprint and ensuring that you’re focused on the most important aspects of the customer experience.
Practical Application:
When designing a new AI-powered feature for a mobile app, create a simple map that illustrates the user journey, starting from the moment they open the app to the point where they complete a task using the feature. This map will help you identify the critical moments in the user experience and pinpoint areas where your AI can make the biggest impact.
5. Prioritize quality feedback from a small group of target users.
Testing your prototype with just five carefully selected target customers can reveal crucial insights and validate (or invalidate) your assumptions. In-depth interviews allow you to understand the ‘why’ behind customer reactions, which is often more valuable than large-scale quantitative data at the early stages of product development.
Practical Application:
Instead of surveying hundreds or thousands of users, start by conducting five in-depth interviews with carefully selected target customers. Ask open-ended questions to understand their needs, pain points, and motivations related to your AI solution. The insights you gain from these interviews can be incredibly valuable for shaping your product and validating your assumptions.
Memorable Quotes
Challenge. 28
The bigger the challenge, the better the sprint.
Fake It. 168
Prototypes are disposable. Build just enough to learn, but not more.
Remix and Improve. 107
Sometimes, the best way to broaden your search is to look inside your own organization. Great solutions often come along at the wrong time, and the sprint can be a perfect opportunity to rejuvenate them.
Small Data. 212
The number of findings quickly reaches the point of diminishing returns. There’s little additional benefit to running more than five people through the same study; ROI drops like a stone.
Learn. 219
Watch together, learn together.
Comparative Analysis
While ‘Sprint’ shares common ground with other innovation frameworks like ‘Lean Startup’ and ‘Design Thinking,’ it offers a uniquely structured and time-boxed approach. Unlike Lean Startup’s emphasis on continuous iteration, ‘Sprint’ focuses on rapid, decisive action within a single week. While Design Thinking advocates for user-centered design, ‘Sprint’ provides a concrete process for integrating user feedback into the design process. ‘Sprint’ also diverges from traditional brainstorming methods, advocating for individual ideation and structured decision-making to avoid the pitfalls of groupthink. Its strength lies in its practicality, offering a clear roadmap that teams can follow to tackle their most pressing challenges. However, its rigid time-box structure might not be suitable for every situation, and some teams might require more flexibility.
Reflection
Sprint provides a compelling, actionable framework for rapidly testing and validating ideas, a process particularly relevant in the fast-paced world of AI and technology. The book’s emphasis on user feedback, rapid prototyping, and decisive decision-making aligns well with the iterative nature of AI development. However, the book’s strength - its structured, time-boxed approach - could also be a limitation for certain AI projects which demand more open-ended exploration and experimentation.
While the book advocates for ‘faking it’ in prototyping, this approach might not be suitable for testing core AI algorithms, where real functionality is essential for meaningful feedback. Additionally, the book focuses on customer-facing products and services, but many AI applications are behind-the-scenes, requiring adaptations to the Sprint process.
Despite these limitations, ‘Sprint’ offers valuable tools and principles adaptable to the AI domain. Its emphasis on clear goal setting, understanding user needs, and mitigating risk through rapid iteration is crucial for AI product engineers. The book’s greatest strength is its practical, down-to-earth approach, making it a valuable resource for any team seeking to make faster, more informed decisions in a world increasingly driven by AI.
Flashcards
Who is the ‘Decider’ in a Sprint?
The CEO or a designated person with authority to make final decisions.
What is a ‘map’ in a Sprint?
A simple, visual representation of the customer journey through your product or service.
What is ‘the surface’ in a Sprint?
The point where your product or service meets the customer.
What is the ‘How Might We’ note-taking technique?
Turning problems into opportunities for design using the phrase ‘How Might We…’?
What is ‘faking it’ in prototyping?
Building a realistic-looking ‘façade’ of your product, good enough for user testing but not requiring full development.
What is the ‘Sticky Decision’?
A structured process of critiquing and voting on solutions, culminating in the Decider’s ‘supervote’.
What is a ‘Rumble’?
Testing multiple competing prototypes side-by-side to see which performs best with customers.
What is the ‘magic number’ of customer interviews in a Sprint?
Five.