Sprint - by Jake Knapp, John Zeratsky and Braden Kowitz

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'Sprint' is a guide for "solving big problems and testing new ideas in five days". The book is a perfect read for entrepreneurs who have plenty of ideas they want to test. The authors have put together a check-list that will assist anyone on problem solving and testing ideas.

'Sprint' is written by Jake Knapp with the help from John Zeratsky and Braden Kowitz. All 3 authors have played a big part of Google Ventures (GV). GV is the venture capital investment arm of Alphabet which seeks to invest in startup companies. Knapp worked with Google for over 10 years and was a big part of developing Gmail and Google Hangouts. At Google Ventures, Knapp developed the Design Sprint Process which is adopted all around the world by prominent technology companies like Slack and Nest.




Summary and Key Learnings

The book takes you through the 5-day process of solving problems and testing ideas. Before diving into the day by day explanation, a few essentials are covered such as:


  • Deciding on the team.
  • Tools that you'll need.
  • The space that you want to work in.


5 Day process

  1.  Monday - focus on mapping out the problem you want to solve and selecting your main focus.
  2. Tuesday - sketching out solutions.
  3. Wednesday - decisions need to be made and your idea is transformed into a hypothesis.
  4. Thursday - create a prototype.
  5. Friday - testing your prototype with real people.




Getting Started

Before you even consider beginning a sprint, you need to ensure that you have the perfect challenge and the right team to carry this out. You need to establish a block of 5 days that you can complete your sprint in and pick a large space you can work in.


The Team
You do not want to more than 7 people in your sprint team. Too many people add confusion and slow the sprint down. Knapp emphasises the importance of having a diverse range of people, don’t have more than 1 or 2 people with the same specialty. Having a diverse range of people will open your mind up to things you haven’t considered and see options from a different point of view.


Decider
The decider is the first person you should recruit as their role is critical. A decider has all of the authority to make all of the decisions. Knapp explains that a decider needs to have a thorough understanding of the problem you are trying to solve and needs to be opinionated and well educated. They need to be involved from beginning to end of the sprint and therefore must commit to a whole week. They need to be dedicated and determined to find the right solution.


Facilitator
A facilitator has the tricky role of keeping the sprint moving forwards and managing everyone involved. They need to manage the team, time, conversations and the process as a whole. A good facilitator is someone who is confident when talking in front of the group and leading discussions, they need to be able to summarise whats been said and relay information to the team. It’s important that they understand when something needs to be put to bed and the team needs to move on. Knapp emphasises the importance of a facilitator being unbiased and therefore the facilitator cannot be the same person as the decider.


Extra for experts
‘Experts’ should be invited, on top of your team members on Monday. Experts can be used for interviews and information. They do not need to be available for the entire sprint and are only necessary for the Monday.


Keeping time
A sprint day is slightly shorter than a working day, it's recommended to start from 10am - 5pm.
This also includes an hour break for lunch. Knapp emphasises the idea that working more hours isn’t going to result in a better outcome. It’s much better to work productively for fewer hours and you’ll get more done. The process is designed to be fast and the schedule should not be ignored.


One working week
Knapp explains that all you need is one working week to complete your sprint. 
"Five days provide enough urgency to sharpen focus and cut out useless debate, but enough breathing room to build and test a prototype without working to exhaustion.”
It’s absolutely critical that the sprint room is distraction free, every team member needs to be 100% committed and focused on the task at hand.


Tools
Couple of tools that are essential include 2 large whiteboards or more. If you cannot get whiteboards, then get large sheets of paper. Have plenty of pens, coloured markers and post-it notes.




Day 1 - Monday

Monday involves:

  • Start with defining the goal.
  • Make a map of the challenge.
  • Ask the experts to share what they know.
  • Pick a target, an ambitious but manageable piece of the problem that you can solve in one week.


Start with the goal
The first task is to set a long-term goal. You can’t begin a sprint without knowing where you intend to be at the end. Ask yourself why your focusing on the project and where you want this to take you in six months, a year and five years from now.You need to consider the principles and aspirations of the team as a whole, how do they tie in with the long-term goal. Be as specific as you need to be. As soon as you’ve committed to your long-term goal as a team, write it down as big as you can at the top of one of your whiteboards and don’t remove it for the entire week. Revisit the goal regularly throughout the sprint to ensure that you are working in the right direction.


Questions to ask
The team should discuss the following questions:
  • What are the questions you want to be answered in the sprint?
  • How do you plan to meet the long-term goal? How will you know it has been reached? 
  • If you somehow knew that in the future your project had failed, why do you think that might be? What are the potential hurdles you need to overcome to ensure success?


Mapping
In order to map out your project, follow these key steps:

  • On the left-hand-side, write down all actors involved. These are the people that are crucial to the project, most commonly the customers. 
  • Use the right-hand-side to write out the ending, the long-term-goal. 
  • Use a variety of words and arrows in between to visually explain what is needed to get the actors to the ending. 
  • Ensure that the map is simple, straightforward and easy to understand. 
  • Make sure that the whole team is involved in the mapping process and everyone understands each point. 


Experts
Set aside some time dedicated to the experts to interview them and gather as much information on the problem you have defined. This process should introduce new insights and new ideas, you will likely find yourselves updating the map and even your long-term goal as you discover more about the problem. It's important for the team to take notes as the interviews are completed. You don’t want to forget critical information and you want to add more information to your map.

"Your job on Monday afternoon will be to assemble one cohesive picture from everyone’s pooled knowledge and expertise."

Take notes
Taking notes might seem like a simple task but Knapp outlines the best way to do so. He recommends that every team member has their own set of post-it-notes. Using the notes, everyone should write the letters HMW (How Might We) in the top corner. When something interesting is brought up, a team member can convert this into a question and write it on a note. Use a new note for every new point/question. Once the information is collected, arrange all of the post-it-notes on a wall and organise these into different categories. Then, everyone can vote on the notes using coloured dots, the notes with the most dots will be a top priority and should be answered first. Knapp believes that this process will help the decision-making process significantly.


Who's the target
The last thing to do is to decide on who the target of your sprint is. The target should be considered as the most important customer. You should identify who this person is and what are their needs. Consider their experience with the project and define the critical points that you need to get right. Ensure that the decider is on board to make the final decision and define the target.




Day 2 - Tuesday


Tuesday is all about developing solutions and critical thinking:
  • Begin with an analysis of all ideas that have been bought up, aim to combine these where appropriate and make improvements where possible. 
  • Every team member will then do a sketch.


Lightning Demos 

  1. Get every team member to produce a list of products/services that can be considered a solution to your problem. Have each list ready for a review. 
  2. Each team member will take a turn defining their product/service and explaining how it will solve the defined problem. For this step, use a timer set to 3 minutes for each pitch to avoid going over time. 
  3. As each person takes their turn, ensure that notes are being taken on the whiteboard to look back at later. 


Sketch
Then dedicate some time in defining the solutions. However, Knapp believes that brainstorming, shouting, talking over one another and making judgments can be detrimental to the process. For this reason, this step is an entirely individual task. You want to enable radical ideas to be introduced without fear of judgment. Each team member will have an individual sketching pad and will use this to jot down all of their ideas.


The four-step sketch

  1. Take a look at all of the notes taken over the last day and establish a list of what you consider to be the most important points. 
  2. Write down all ideas, no matter how rough. Use a large piece of paper and feel free to doodle, draw diagrams, figures or anything that you might find useful. Don’t be shy. 
  3.  Knapp’s Crazy eights is an exercise that should be used on Tuesday. The idea is that each team member picks their best idea and takes eight minutes to sketch out eight different iterations of their idea/product. This concept is designed to push everyone past the obvious solutions and consider different options. 
  4. The final step is called the solution sketch. This is where everyone jots down their very best idea in great detail. This should be an outline of how the problem will be solved and why it will work. The team will then get together and judge each sketch. Ensure that the solution sketch is the easiest to read and understand. You want the message to be clear and straightforward.




Day 3 - Wednesday


You should now have a whole pile of solutions to your defined problem as the results from the previous days. The next step is weeding through these and making decisions about what to prototype. You simply cannot prototype and test all of your options so you need to dedicate time to assessing each solution. Decide whether or not they are viable and will help you reach your long-term goal.


Decisions
First, examine all solutions at once, then go through the critique and finally make the decisions. Don’t seperate these out. By the end of Wednesday morning, you need to have decided which solutions you will be moving forward to the prototype session. You need to be as efficient as possible. 

Out line of the five-step decision-making process:

  1. Called the art museum, stick all of the solution sketches from Tuesday to a wall.
  2. Next, the ‘heat map’. Knapp explains that everyone should assess the solutions in silence and individually. Whenever anything stands out as particularly interesting, add a sticky dot. 
  3. For the speed critique step, the team should speedily discuss the best part of each solution. Write down key points on sticky notes. (We’ll discuss this step in more detail below). 
  4. Next the vote. Everyone can select their favourite solution and vote for it using a sticky dot.
  5. The decider always has the final decision, if there’s a top two or three, it’s up to the decider to commit to one solution to push forward with. 


The speed critique

  • Everyone to focus on one solution sketch
  • Set a three-minute timer
  • The facilitator can explain what the sketch is.
  • The facilitator then identifies any sections of the idea that have sticky dots, suggesting that they are ‘stand-out ideas’.
  • The team can then assess and come up with any other stand-out parts of the sketch.
  • The scribe’s role is to note down any thoughts and ideas about the sketch on sticky notes and add them to the sketch.
  • Go over any quick questions.
  • Whoever came up with the idea is to add no input during this process until completed. Once done the creator can add anything extra that could be considered important.
  • Repeat with remaining solution sketches.


A rumble vs. an all-in-one
In some situations, there will be multiple winning solutions. When this happens, everyone needs to decide whether to move forward with a rumble or alternatively to try and combine the solutions into one and create a prototype.

If you move forward with a rumble, rather than just offering your customers two prototypes and naming them A or B, get creative and come up with clear distinct fake brands and names. This will allow the customers to understand the difference and be able to clearly explain which one they prefer.


Storyboarding
Once the morning tasks have been completed, Wednesday afternoon should be dedicated to creating a storyboard. You’ll need to take the top solution sketch(s) and piece them together into a chronological storyboard. The goal of a storyboard is to create a visualisation of your final prototype. This will allow the team to identify any issues before the building is done.

It's recommended to build your storyboard with a grid system. You’ll start with a bunch of squares. Use the very first square to outline exactly how a customer will discover your company, will it be online, in the app store, facebook etc. Consider how you’ll reach your target audience. The idea is to use each new square to introduce a new stage of the company process and you’ll end up with something looking a bit like a comic. It's important to have the whole team together for this step. This step is one of the most important steps.




Day 4 - Thursday


"On Thursday, you’ll adopt a “fake it” philosophy to turn that storyboard into a realistic prototype. Instead of taking weeks, months, or, heck, even years building that solution, you’re going to fake it. In one day, you’ll make a prototype that appears real."


How to prototype
Instead of focusing on getting your prototype perfect, you will instead focus on creating something that is ‘just enough’. Prototypes cannot be about long-term quality, instead, prototypes should be temporary simulations. This mindset shift can be difficult for some but is essential when prototyping.

Remember the following points when building your prototype:

  1. ANYTHING can be made into a prototype
  2. A prototype should be disposable, they are not designed to be everlasting. 
  3. Don’t build more than you need, do the bare minimum that will allow you to learn enough. 
  4. It’s important that the prototype seems as real as possible. 

The goal is to provide potential customers with a realistic prototype on Friday so you can gauge their natural and honest reactions. It’s important that your prototype is realistic but doesn’t take too long to build, you only have one day to do this. 


The prototype
There are different ways to approach your prototype depending on what you are building. It’s important that you use the appropriate tools. If your designing something to be displayed on a screen, consider tools such as keynote and apps like square space. However, if you’re creating a service you’ll need to enlist people to act the part and have a script written. If designing a physical space, work with something that already exists. Objects are best prototyped through 3D printing or on programs. There’s also an option to modify an object that already exists.

When beginning the process, the best plan of attack is to split the team up and designate jobs. You need the following people:
  • Makers - the designers or the engineers.
  • Stitcher - goal to gather all of the components provided by the makers and smith them together.
  • A writer/asset collector - their role is to research and use the internet to get images and information. 
  • An Interviewer - prepped to conduct interviews with the customers on Friday. 

You need to do a trial run with the prototype, don’t leave this too late otherwise you may not have any time to identify and fix any issues.





Day 5 - Friday


Friday you’ll take your prototype to the pretend market and test your product. The idea is that you’ll interview your potential customers and get feedback on their feelings towards the prototype. Ensure that they are free to use and understand the prototype naturally to guarantee the best feedback.

"This test makes the entire sprint worthwhile: At the end of the day, you’ll know how far you have to go, and you’ll know just what to do next." 


Five
Five is the number of interviews you should be aiming for. Five interviews should provide adequate feedback and enough different perspectives to show you what you need to do next. Knapp emphasises the importance of one-on-one interviews for this step, it allows you to really learn as much as possible about your customer and their relationship with your potential product. This step is crucial and one you simply cannot skip. Without the interview stage, you might move forward with a product that doesn’t suit your target market.


How to interview
Here are a couple of tips from Knapp on conducting successful interviews: 

  • Open with a welcoming introduction.
  • Start with general questions that are open-ended and designed to understand the context of the customer. 
  • Explain and introduce the product prototype. 
  • Get the customer to engage with the prototype organically. 
  • Wrap up with questions surrounding the customer’s use of the prototype and their impressions.
  • Ensure that you take notes throughout the process so that you can look back and identify patterns between interviewees. 




Finishing up

The last step for your team is to re-visit the long-term goal and questions you set on Monday. See how many questions you have been able to answer over the week. You’ll be able to see that you have made clear progress in the right direction. Using all of the feedback from the interviews and the prototype the next step should become clear. The decider has the ultimate power in deciding what comes next. Essentially the sprint week has been completed. You’ve tested ideas and prototypes and hopefully, come up with a solid solution. Now it’s time to take this to the next level and start creating a product for real.


Image resource: Book Video Club


About Post Author

Hi, my name is Christine Calo and I'm a designer by trade who has an engineering background. I have an interest in design, technology and science which I like to read, watch and write about from time to time. This blog contains random ramblings of these topics and may tangent off to other topics. Want to say hello, you can contact me on: calo.christine@gmail.com

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