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

by Jake Knapp

Making your storyboard will likely take up the entire afternoon. To make sure you finish by 5 p.m., follow these guidelines: Work with what you have. Resist inventing new ideas and just work with the good ideas you already came up with. Don’t write together. Your storyboard should include rough headlines and important phrases, but 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. Instead, use the writing from your solution sketches, or just leave it until Thursday. Include just enough detail. Put enough detail in your storyboard so that nobody has to ask questions like “What happens next?” or “What goes here?” when they are prototyping on Thursday. But don’t get too specific. You don’t need to perfect every frame or figure out every nuance. It’s okay to say: “Whoever builds this tomorrow can decide that detail.” And then move on. The Decider decides. Storyboarding is difficult because you already spent a lot of your limited decision-making energy in the morning. To make it easier, continue to rely on the Decider. In the Slack sprint, Braden was the “artist” drawing the storyboard, but Merci made the decisions. It was extra work for her, but it kept us fast and opinionated. You won’t be able to fit in every good idea and still have a storyboard that makes sense. And you can’t spend all day arguing about what to include. The Decider can ask for advice or defer to experts for some parts—...