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

by Jake Knapp

Running a sprint requires a lot of energy and focus. Don’t go for the small win, or the nice-to-have project, because people won’t bring their best efforts. They probably won’t even clear their schedules in the first place.

If the Decider agrees to the sprint but can’t spare a full week, invite her to join you at a few key points. On Monday, she can share her perspective on the problem. On Wednesday, she can help choose the right idea to test. And on Friday, she should stop by to see how customers react to the prototype.

If she’s only going to make cameo appearances, your Decider needs to have an official delegate in the room. In many of our sprints with startups, the CEO appoints one or two people from the sprint team to act as Deciders when she’s not there.

And if your Decider doesn’t believe the sprint to be worthwhile? If she won’t even stop by for a cameo? Hold up! That’s a giant red flag. You might have the wrong project. Take your time, talk with the Decider, and figure out which big challenge would be better.

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

Choosing whom to include isn’t always easy, so we’ve created a cheat sheet. You don’t have to include each and every role listed here. And for some roles, you might choose two or three. Just remember that a mix is good. Decider Who makes decisions for your team? Perhaps it’s the CEO, or maybe it’s just the “CEO” of this particular project. If she can’t join for the whole time, make sure she makes a couple of appearances and delegates a Decider (or two) who can be in the room at all times. Examples: CEO, founder, product manager, head of design Finance expert Who can explain where the money comes from (and where it goes)? Examples: CEO, CFO, business development manager Marketing expert Who crafts your company’s messages? Examples: CMO, marketer, PR, community manager Customer expert Who regularly talks to your customers one-on-one? Examples: researcher, sales, customer support Tech/logistics expert Who best understands what your company can build and deliver? Examples: CTO, engineer Design expert Who designs the products your company makes? Examples: designer, product manager

Troublemakers see problems differently from everyone else. Their crazy idea about solving the problem might just be right. And even if it’s wrong, the presence of a dissenting view will push everyone else to do better work.

There’s a fine line between a rebel and a jerk, of course, but don’t avoid people just because they disagree with you.

The sprint team must be in the same room Monday through Thursday from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Friday’s test starts a little earlier, at 9 a.m.

Your team will take a short morning break (around 11:30 a.m.), an hour-long lunch (around 1 p.m.), and a short afternoon break (around 3:30 p.m.). These breaks are a sort of “pressure-release valve,” allowing people to rest their brains and catch up on work happening outside the sprint. Inside the sprint room, everybody will be 100 percent focused on the sprint’s challenge. The entire team must shut their laptops and put away their phones.

At minimum, you’ll need two big whiteboards.

Ideally, you should run your sprint in the same room all day, every day.

Jake likes to introduce the Time Timer with a bit of narrative, because timing people while they talk can be socially awkward. He says something like: “I’m going to use this timer to keep things moving. When it goes off, it’s a reminder to us to see if we can move on to the next topic. If you’re talking when the timer beeps, just keep talking, and I’ll add a little more time. It’s a guideline, not a fire alarm.”

Monday’s structured discussions create a path for the sprint week. In the morning, you’ll start at the end and agree to a long-term goal. Next, you’ll make a map of the challenge. In the afternoon, you’ll ask the experts at your company to share what they know. Finally, you’ll pick a target: an ambitious but manageable piece of the problem that you can solve in one week.

The clock is ticking, the team is amped up, and solutions start popping into everyone’s mind. But if you don’t first slow down, share what you know, and prioritize, you could end up wasting time and effort on the wrong part of the problem.

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?

Set a long-term goal To start the conversation, ask your team this question: “Why are we doing this project? Where do we want to be six months, a year, or even five years from now?” The discussion could take anywhere from thirty seconds to thirty minutes. If your team doesn’t quite agree about the goal or there’s any lack of clarity, don’t be embarrassed. But do have a discussion and figure it out. Slowing down might be frustrating for a moment, but the satisfaction and confidence of a clear goal will last all week.

Now it’s time to get pessimistic. Imagine you’ve gone forward in time one year, and your project was a disaster. What caused it to fail? How did your goal go wrong?

List sprint questions You’ll list out your sprint questions on a second whiteboard (if you have one). We have a few prompts for getting teams to think about assumptions and questions: • What questions do we want to answer in this sprint? • To meet our long-term goal, what has to be true? • Imagine we travel into the future and our project failed. What might have caused that? An important part of this exercise is rephrasing assumptions and obstacles into questions.

Q: To reach new customers, what has to be true? A: They have to trust our expertise. Q: How can we phrase that as a question? A: Will customers trust our expertise?

Each map is customer-centric, with a list of key actors on the left. Each map is a story, with a beginning, a middle, and an end. And, no matter the business, each map is simple. The diagrams are composed of nothing more than words, arrows, and a few boxes.

1. List the actors (on the left) The “actors” are all the important characters in your story. Most often, they’re different kinds of customers. Sometimes, people other than customers—say, your sales team or a government regulator—are important actors and should be listed as well. And sometimes, of course, there’s a robot. 2. Write the ending (on the right) It’s usually a lot easier to figure out the end than the middle of the story. Flatiron’s story ended with treatment. Savioke’s story ended with a delivery. And Blue Bottle’s story ended with buying coffee. 3. Words and arrows in between The map should be functional, not a work of art. Words and arrows and the occasional box should be enough. No drawing expertise required. 4. Keep it simple Your map should have from five to around fifteen steps. If there are more than twenty, it’s probably too complicated. By keeping the map simple, the team can agree on the structure of the problem without getting tied up in competing solutions. 5. Ask for help As you draw, you should keep asking the team, “Does this map look right?” You should be able to make the first quick draft of your map in thirty to sixty minutes. Don’t be surprised if you continue to update and correct it throughout the day as you discuss the problem. We never get ours right the first time, but you have to start somewhere.

Most of Monday afternoon is devoted to an exercise we call Ask the Experts: a series of one-at-a-time interviews with people from your sprint team, from around your company, and possibly even an outsider or two with special knowledge.

We think it’s useful to have at least one expert who can talk about each of these topics: Strategy Start by talking to the Decider. If the Decider is not going to be in the sprint the whole time, be sure she joins you on Monday afternoon. Some useful questions to ask: “What will make this project a success?” “What’s our unique advantage or opportunity?” “What’s the biggest risk?” Voice of the Customer Who talks to your customers more than anyone else? Who can explain the world from their perspective? Wendy is a prime example of a customer expert. Whether this person is in sales, customer support, research, or whatever, his or her insights will likely be crucial. How Things Work Who understands the mechanics of your product? On your sprint team, you’ve got the people building your product or delivering your idea—the designer, the engineer, the marketer. Savioke interviewed roboticists, Blue Bottle interviewed baristas, and Flatiron interviewed oncologists. Think about bringing in the money expert, the tech/logistics expert, and the marketing expert as well. We frequently talk with two, three, or four “how things work” experts to help us understand how everything fits together. Previous Efforts Often, someone on the team has already thought about the problem in detail. That person might have an idea about the solution, a failed experiment, or maybe even some work in progress. You should examine those preexisting solutions. Many sprint teams get great results by fleshing out ...

Ask the Experts Allow half an hour for each conversation, although you likely won’t use all of that time. Once the expert is ready, we follow a simple script to keep things moving. 1. Introduce the sprint If the expert isn’t part of the sprint team, tell her what the sprint is about. 2. Review the whiteboards Give the expert a two-minute tour of the long-term goal, sprint questions, and map. 3. Open the door Ask the expert to tell you everything she knows about the challenge at hand. 4. Ask questions The sprint team should act like a bunch of reporters digging for a story. Ask the expert to fill in areas where she has extra expertise. Ask her to retell you what she thinks you already know. And most important, ask the expert to tell you where you’ve got it wrong. Can she find anything on your map that’s incomplete? Would she add any sprint questions to your list? What opportunities does she see? Useful phrases are “Why?” and “Tell me more about that.” 5. Fix the whiteboards Add sprint questions. Change your map. If necessary, update your long-term goal. Your experts are here to tell you what you didn’t know (or forgot) in the morning, so don’t be shy about making revisions.

Take How Might We notes Every person on the team needs his or her own pad of sticky notes (plain yellow, three by five inches) and a thick black dry-erase marker.II Using thick markers on a small surface forces everyone to write succinct, easy-to-read headlines. To take notes, follow these steps: 1. Put the letters “HMW” in the top left corner of your sticky note. 2. Wait. 3. When you hear something interesting, convert it into a question (quietly). 4. Write the question on your sticky note. 5. Peel off the note and set it aside. Each person will end up with a little stack of notes—you’ll organize them later.

Now you’ll organize the notes into groups. Working together, find How Might We questions with similar themes and physically group them together on the wall. You won’t know what themes to use ahead of time. Instead, the themes will emerge as you go.

After ten minutes, the notes will be sorted enough to move on to prioritization. Vote on How Might We notes To prioritize the notes, you’ll use dot voting. It’s one of our favorite shortcuts for skipping lengthy debate. Dot voting works pretty much the way it sounds: 1. Give two large dot stickers to each person. 2. Give four large dot stickers to the Decider because her opinion counts a little more. 3. Ask everyone to review the goal and sprint questions. 4. Ask everyone to vote in silence for the most useful How Might We questions. 5. It’s okay to vote for your own note, or to vote twice for the same note. At the end of the voting, you’ll have clusters of dots on a few How Might We notes, and the whole wall will be prioritized.

When the voting is over, take the How Might We notes with multiple votes, remove them from the wall, and find a place to stick them on your map. Most notes will probably correspond with a specific step in the story.

Your final task on Monday is to choose a target for your sprint. Who is the most important customer, and what’s the critical moment of that customer’s experience? The rest of the sprint will flow from this decision. Throughout the week, you’ll be focused on that target—sketching solutions, making a plan, and building a prototype of that moment and the events around it.

Pick a target The Decider needs to choose one target customer and one target event on the map. Whatever she chooses will become the focus of the rest of the sprint—the sketches, prototype, and test all flow from this decision. Ask the Decider to make the call It’s easiest if the Decider just makes the decision without a lot of discussion and process. After all, you’ve been discussing and processing all day. By Monday afternoon, most Deciders will be able to make the decision as easily as Amy did. But sometimes, the Decider wants input before she chooses. If that’s the case, conduct a quick, silent “straw poll” to collect opinions from the team. Straw poll (if the Decider wants help) Ask everyone on the team to choose the customer and the event each of them believes are most important and to write down those choices on a piece of paper. Once everyone has privately made a selection, register the votes on the map with a whiteboard marker. After the votes have been tallied, discuss any big differences of opinion. That should be enough input for the Decider. Turn it back over to her for the final decision. Once you’ve selected a target, take a look back at your sprint questions. You usually can’t answer all those questions in one sprint, but one or more should line up with the target.

For the biggest decisions, we’ve given you a script (like Monday’s target, or the narrowing of sketches you’ll find on Wednesday). But you’ll have to handle some smaller decisions on your own. Slow decisions sap energy and threaten the timeline of the sprint. Don’t let the group dissolve into unproductive debates that aren’t moving you toward a decision. When a decision is slow or not obvious, it’s your job as Facilitator to call on the Decider.

On Monday, you and your team defined the challenge and chose a target. On Tuesday, you’ll come up with solutions. The day starts with inspiration: a review of existing ideas to remix and improve. Then, in the afternoon, each person will sketch, following a four-step process that emphasizes critical thinking over artistry. Later in the week, the best of these sketches will form the plan for your prototype and test. We hope you had a good night’s sleep and a balanced breakfast, because Tuesday is an important day.

Lightning Demos Lightning Demos are pretty informal. Here’s how they work: Make a list Ask everyone on your team to come up with a list of products or services to review for inspiring solutions. (Coming up with these lists on the spot is easier than it sounds—but if you like, you can assign it as homework on Monday night.) Remind people to think outside of your industry or field, and to consider inspiration from within the company.

Everything you review should contain something good you can learn from. It’s not helpful to review crummy products. After a few minutes of thinking, everyone should narrow down to his or her top one or two products. Write the collected list on the whiteboard. It’s time to begin the demos.

Give three-minute demos One at a time, the person who suggested each product gives a tour—showing the whole team what’s so cool about it. It’s a good idea to keep a timer going: Each tour should be around three minutes long.

Capture big ideas as you go Your three-minute Lightning Demos will go by quickly, and you don’t want to rely on short-term memory to keep track of all the good ideas. Remember the “Always be capturing” mantra and take notes on the whiteboard as you go. Start by asking the person who’s giving the tour, “What’s the big idea here that might be useful?” Then make a quick drawing of that inspiring component, write a simple headline above it, and note the source underneath.

For now, don’t make decisions and don’t debate. Just capture anything that might be useful.

When you combine the ideas you just captured with Monday’s map, your sprint questions, and your How Might We notes, you’ve got a wealth of raw material. In the afternoon, you’ll turn that raw material into solutions. But before you do, you need to form a quick strategy. Should your team split up to tackle different parts of the problem, or should you all focus on the same spot?

Divide or swarm Should you divide the problem? Take a good look at your map and have a quick team discussion. If you’ve picked a super-focused target, it might be fine to skip assignments and have the whole team swarm the same part of your problem. If there are several key pieces to cover, you should divide up.

Even though we’re total tech nerds, we’re believers in the importance of starting on paper. It’s a great equalizer. Everyone can write words, draw boxes, and express his or her ideas with the same clarity.

Ableist.

We’re asking you to sketch because we’re convinced it’s the fastest and easiest way to transform abstract ideas into concrete solutions. Once your ideas become concrete, they can be critically and fairly evaluated by the rest of the team—without any sales pitch. And, perhaps most important of all, sketching allows every person to develop those concrete ideas while working alone.

The sketches you create on Tuesday will become the fuel for the rest of the sprint. On Wednesday, you’ll critique everyone’s sketches and pick the best ones. On Thursday, you’ll turn them into a prototype. And on Friday you’ll test the ideas with customers.

You’ll start with twenty minutes to “boot up” by taking notes on the goals, opportunities, and inspiration you’ve collected around the room. Then you’ll have another twenty minutes to write down rough ideas. Next, it’s time to limber up and explore alternative ideas with a rapid sketching exercise called Crazy 8s. And finally, you’ll take thirty minutes or more to draw your solution sketch—a single well-formed concept with all the details worked out.

First, copy down the long-term goal. Next, look at the map, the How Might We questions, and the notes from your Lightning Demos. Write down anything that looks useful. Don’t

Now that everyone has a pile of notes, it’s time to switch into idea mode. In this step, each person will jot down rough ideas, filling a sheet of paper with doodles, sample headlines, diagrams, stick figures doing stuff—anything that gives form to his or her thoughts.

Crazy 8s is a fast-paced exercise. Each person takes his or her strongest ideas and rapidly sketches eight variations in eight minutes. Crazy 8s forces you to push past your first reasonable solutions and make them better, or at least consider alternatives.

We usually use the three-panel format, but there are exceptions. Sometimes, a sprint will be focused on a single part of the customer experience. For instance: the home page, the front page of a medical report, the office lobby, or even the cover of a book. If your team has a “single scene” challenge, you might want to create a full-page sketch so you can show even more detail.

Each person is responsible for creating one solution sketch. If a few folks get inspired and want to sketch more than one, that’s okay, but don’t overdo it. Each additional sketch means more work reviewing and narrowing down on Wednesday. Not only that, but we’ve noticed that the first batch tend to be the strongest and there are diminishing returns beyond ten to twelve solution sketches. Thirty minutes should be enough time for everyone to finish one sketch. Once everybody is finished, put the solution sketches in a pile, but resist the urge to look at them. You’ll only see them for the first time once, and you should save those fresh eyes for Wednesday.

By Wednesday morning, you and your team will have a stack of solutions. That’s great, but it’s also a problem. You can’t prototype and test them all—you need one solid plan. In the morning, you’ll critique each solution, and decide which ones have the best chance of achieving your long-term goal. Then, in the afternoon, you’ll take the winning scenes from your sketches and weave them into a storyboard: a step-by-step plan for your prototype.