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

by Jake Knapp

By late afternoon, the snowfall had thickened and everyone had a cup of coffee in hand. We were all gathered around a whiteboard, where the team had drawn and redrawn (and re-redrawn) the map.

In all of our sprints with startups, we’ve never encountered anything more convoluted than clinical trial enrollment. Yet for Amy, the target was as obvious as the Mid-Ocean Ridge. It jumped right out of the map. And the rest of the team found it easy to commit to her decision.

Of course, we shouldn’t have been surprised. Amy wasn’t the Decider by accident. She had deep expertise and a strong vision. As for the rest of the team? Throughout the day, they had all heard the same information, seen the same notes, and agreed to the same map.

Once you’ve clustered your team’s How Might We notes, the decision about where to focus your sprint will likely be easy.

It’s the place on your map where you have the biggest opportunity to do something great (and also, perhaps, the greatest risk of failure).

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,...

2. ABC: Always be capturing We don’t want to freak you out, but if you’re playing the role of Facilitator, Monday is your busiest day. In addition to leading the group through all of the activities, you’re responsible for something simple but important: recording key ideas on the whiteboard.

As Facilitator, you’re not only running the sprint—you’ve got to keep your sprint team focused and energized.

Eat light and often Provide good, nutritious snacks in the morning and throughout the day. And be careful of eating a heavy lunch.

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.

8 Remix and Improve

The lesson of Melitta Bentz is that great innovation is built on existing ideas, repurposed with vision.

Like Savioke, you and your team should look far afield and close to home in your search for existing solutions. If you do, you’re sure to uncover surprising and useful ideas.

Lightning Demos Lightning Demos are pretty informal. Here’s how they work:

Ask everyone on your team to come up with a list of products or services to review...

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

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 example, someone from the Flatiron team thought it would be interesting to see how comments worked in Google spreadsheets, in case we wanted to add commenting to our clinical trial matching tool.

9 Sketch

On Friday, when shown to real customers, “The Mind Reader” was remarkably effective. Customers grew confident in the quality of the coffee as they clicked through the website.

“clearly, these people know coffee.” It was the big winner of Friday’s test, and it became the foundation for Blue Bottle’s new website.

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.

We know that individuals working alone generate better solutions than groups brainstorming out loud.

And the pressure of responsibility that comes with working alone often spurs us to our best work.

working alone isn’t easy. The individual has to not only solve the problem, but also invent a strategy for solving the problem.

In our sprints, we work alone, but we follow specific steps to help everyone focus and make progress.

When each person sketches alone, he or she will have time for deep thought.

1. Notes This first step is super-easy. You and your team will walk around the room, look at the whiteboards, and take notes. These notes are a “greatest hits” from the past twenty-four hours of the sprint.

First, copy down the long-term goal. Next, look at the map, the How Might We questions, and the notes from your Lightning Demos.

2. Ideas 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.

Take twenty minutes for idea generation. When you’re finished, spend an extra three minutes to review and circle your favorite ideas. In the next step, you’ll refine those promising elements.

3. Crazy 8s 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.

the “crazy” in Crazy 8s refers to the pace, not the na...

We want you to focus on good ideas—the ones you believe will work and help you hit your goals—and use Crazy 8s to twe...

Sometimes Crazy 8s leads to a revelation. You might come away with several new ways of looking at your ideas. Other times, it feels less productive.

4. Solution sketch Remember how we kept saying, “Don’t worry, nobody’s going to look at this”? That time is over. The solution sketch is each person’s best idea, put down on paper in detail.

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.

1. Make it self-explanatory On Wednesday morning, you’ll post your sketch on the wall for everyone to see. It needs to explain itself.

first test for your idea. If no one can understand it in sketch form, it’s not likely to do any better when it’s polished.

2. Keep it anonymous Don’t put your name on your sketch, and be sure that everyone uses the same p...

3. Ugly is okay Your sketch does not have to be fancy (boxes, stick figures, and words are fine), but it does have to be detailed, thoughtful, and complete.

4. Words matter We’ve used sprints with startups in all kinds of industries. One surprising constant: the importance of writing. Strong writing is especially necessary for software and marketing, where words often make up most of the screen.

So pay extra close attention to the writing in your sketch. Don’t use “lorem ipsum”

5. Give it a catchy title Since your name won’t be on your sketch, give it a title. Later, these titles will help you keep track of the different solutions

FACILITATOR NOTES Find Customers for Friday On Monday or Tuesday, we start the process of finding customers for Friday’s test. That means one person needs to do some extra work outside of the sprint. It takes all week—but only an hour or two a day—to screen, select, and recruit the best matches.

Ideally, someone besides the Facilitator should take responsibility for recruiting, since the Facilitator will be busy enough as it is.