Sprint: How to Solve Big Problems and Test New Ideas in Just Five Days

by Jake Knapp

Individuals were still thinking up ideas the same way they always had—while sitting at their desks, or waiting at a coffee shop, or taking a shower. Those individual-generated ideas were better. When the excitement of the workshop was over, the brainstorm ideas just couldn’t compete.

My best work happened when I had a big challenge and not quite enough time.

And it wasn’t just for developing products. We’ve used sprints for prioritization, for marketing strategy, even for naming companies.

We used voting and structured discussion to decide quickly, quietly, and without argument.

First, the sprint forces your team to focus on the most pressing questions. Second, the sprint allows you to learn from just the surface of a finished product.

Get that surface right, and you can work backward to figure out the underlying systems or technology. Focusing on the surface allows you to move fast and answer big questions before you commit to execution, which is why any challenge, no matter how large, can benefit from a sprint.

We’ve found the ideal size for a sprint to be seven people or fewer.

We’ve found that magic happens when we use big whiteboards to solve problems. As humans, our short-term memory is not all that good, but our spatial memory is awesome. A sprint room, plastered with notes, diagrams, printouts, and more, takes advantage of that spatial memory. The room itself becomes a sort of shared brain for the team.

Starting at the end is like being handed the keys to a time machine. If you could jump ahead to the end of your sprint, what questions would be answered? If you went six months or a year further into the future, what would have improved about your business as a result of this project?

An important part of this exercise is rephrasing assumptions and obstacles into questions.

This structure is socially awkward, but logical—if you feel like Spock from Star Trek, you’re doing it right.

But there were only so many tech companies in the world. To keep expanding, Slack needed to get better at explaining their product to all kinds of businesses.

It’s not hard for creators to make great arguments for their mediocre ideas, or give great explanations for their indecipherable ideas. But in the real world, the creators won’t be there to give sales pitches and clues. In the real world, the ideas will have to stand on their own. If they’re confusing to the experts in a sprint, chances are good they’ll be confusing to customers.

don’t try to perfect your writing as a group. Group copywriting is a recipe for bland, meandering junk, not to mention lots of wasted time.

Sometimes you can’t fit everything in. Remember that the sprint is great for testing risky solutions that might have a huge payoff. So you’ll have to reverse the way you would normally prioritize. If a small fix is so good and low-risk that you’re already planning to build it next week, then seeing it in a prototype won’t teach you much. Skip those easy wins in favor of big, bold bets.

This distinction between feedback and reaction is crucial. You want to create a prototype that evokes honest reactions from your customers.

Alice didn’t analyze Harry Potter’s potential. She didn’t think about cover art, distribution, movie rights, or a theme park. She just reacted to what she read. Those grown-ups tried to predict what children would think, and they were wrong. Alice got it right because she actually was a kid. And her father was smart enough to listen.

By the time we observe the fifth customer, we’re just confirming patterns that showed up in the first four interviews.

When all you have is statistics, you have to guess what your customers are thinking. When you’re doing an interview, you can just . . . ask.

(If you’re not in the mood to smile, prepare for the interview by listening to “Keep A-Knockin’ ” by Little Richard.)