Cracking the Sprint Book by Jake Knapp

Sprint book is about how to solve big problems and test new ideas in just five days. The authors Jake John and Braden Kowitz of the book Sprint worked for Google Ventures.

Google Ventures takes 300 million dollars of Google’s money and invests that money in start-ups but they do not simply give the company’s money and walk away.

They are continually helping companies develop new products and solve big problems but because there are so many companies they invest in and so many products they can develop, needed to develop a rapid method for solving problems. So they came up with a refined Sprint method.

This is the method that you can use to solve problems that have high stakes, not enough time, or you are just completely stuck. This method can be used to test out the new business idea.

Setup

Gather some supplies, a team of fewer than seven people, whiteboard, pens, and elect a decider.

The decider is the person who is ultimately responsible for the outcome. It is commonly the product manager.

Schedule five days in a calendar from Monday to Friday 10 am to 5 pm.
Lastly, you need to set up five interviews with end-users or target customers. This will be conducted on Friday, the last day of the sprint.

Sprint Methodology

A five-day sprint starts on Monday.

The team maps out in great detail the customer journey.
Then, invites experts to provide their input.
They finally decide on one well-defined objective for the week, one thing that’s critical and can be tested.

On Tuesday

Team sketches out possible solutions without criticizing or making any decisions.
All ideas are considered as a brainstorming session.

On Wednesday

The team decides.
Each member goes around and votes with a sticker on the ideas white boarded around the room.
The winning idea gets carefully storyboarded in even greater detail.

On Thursday

The storyboard gets converted into a prototype in the most efficient way possible.
You do not need to code or manufacture anything
Figure out the absolute minimum that will give your customers an accurate representation of the idea so they could provide feedback.

On Friday

The idea in any competing versions is put to the test.
A good interviewer guides the customers through the idea without imposing any biases.
All the while the team watches the reactions through a camera, taking notes.
At the end of the day, they compare notes and break down to lessons of the sprint.

Conclusion

The five-day sprint applies to pretty much any type of project and its success is predicated on getting the right team in place identifying the right challenge so it’s not too broad and setting aside the time and effort to focus on the problem.

Obviously, you cannot run every decision through a five-day sprint because you need to run a business but it can accelerate the key decisions and set your company on the right path.