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

by Jake Knapp

In our normal work routines, there are few days where we begin with a big task, follow a precise plan of action, and end the day finished. Thursday is that kind of day, and it’s pretty darn satisfying. When you’re finished with your prototype, don’t be surprised if you start to wonder when you can do it again.

Friday

Sprints begin with a big challenge, an excellent team—and not much else. By Friday of your sprint week, you’ve created promising solutions, chosen the best, and built a realistic prototype.

Friday, you’ll take it one step further as you interview customers and learn by watching them react to your prototype. This test makes the entire sprint worthwhile: At the end of the day, you’ll know how far you have to go, and you’ll know just what to do next.

Today, there are hundreds of millions of Harry Potter books in print worldwide. How did publishers get it so wrong? Eight experts in children’s publishing turned Harry Potter down—and the ninth, Newton, only printed five hundred copies.

But Alice, an eight-year-old, knew right away that it was “so much better than anything else.”

Alice didn’t analyze Harry Potter’s potential. She didn’t think about cover art, distribution, movie rights, or a theme park....

These interviews are an emotional roller coaster. When customers get confused by your prototype, you’ll be frustrated. If they don’t care about your new ideas, you’ll be disappointed.

After five interviews, the patterns will be easy to spot.

Now, we know that the idea of testing with such a small sample is unsettling to some folks. Is talking to just five customers worthwhile? Will the findings be meaningful?

Because you’ll be talking to the right people, we’re convinced you can trust what they say.

Five is the magic number Jakob Nielsen is a user research expert.

Nielsen has overseen thousands of customer interviews, and at some point he wondered: How many interviews does it take to spot the most important patterns?

The results were both consistent and surprising: 85 percent of the problems were observed after just five people.

When two or three people out of five have the same strong reaction—positive or negative—you should pay attention.

This condensed schedule allows the whole team to watch the interviews together, and analyze them firsthand. This means no waiting for results, and no second-guessing the interpretation.

One-on-one interviews are a remarkable shortcut. They allow you to test a façade of your product, long before you’ve built the real thing—and fallen in love with it.

16 Interview

Back on Tuesday, you learned his shortcuts for recruiting the perfect target customers (see pages 119–123). In this chapter, you’ll learn how to interview.

Michael uses the same basic structure: the Five-Act Interview.

The Five-Act Interview This structured conversation helps the customer get comfortable, establishes some background, and ensures that the entire prototype is reviewed.

1. A friendly welcome to start the interview 2. A series of general, open-ended context questions about the customer 3. Introduction to the prototype(s) 4. Detailed tasks to get the customer reacting to the prototype 5. A quick debrief...

Act 1: Friendly welcome People need to feel comfortable to be open, honest, and critical. So the first job of the Interviewer is to welcome the customer and put her at ease.

Act 2: Context questions After the introduction, you’ll be eager to bring out the prototype. Not so fast. Instead, start slow by asking some questions about the customer’s life, interests, and activities.

At minimum, these context questions make the customer more comfortable and forthcoming. But quite often, the answers help you understand how your product or service fits into the customer’s life

Act 3: Introduce the prototype(s) Now you’re ready to get the customer started on the prototype.

“Would you be willing to look at some prototypes?” By asking for permission, he reinforces the status relationship: The customer is doing him a favor,

“Some things may not work quite right yet—if you run into something that’s not working, I’ll let you know.”

“As we go, please think aloud. Tell me what you’re trying to do and how you think you can do it. If you get confused or don’t understand something, please tell me. If you see things you like, tell me that, too.”

Seeing where customers struggle and where they succeed with your prototype is useful—but hearing their thoughts as they go is invaluable.

Act 4: Tasks and nudges In the real world, your product will stand alone—people will find it, evaluate it, and use it without you there to guide them. Asking target customers to do realistic tasks during an interview is the best way to simulate that real-world experience.

Act 5: Quick debrief To wrap up the interview, ask a few debrief questions.

“How does this product compare to what you do now?” “What did you like about this product? What did you dislike?” “How would you describe this product to a friend?”

Throughout the session, the Interviewer should remain engaged in the conversation. He should encourage the customer to talk while remaining neutral

One of our favorite stories about the power of interviews comes from our friend, a designer named Joe Gebbia. Back in 2008, Joe and a couple of friends founded a startup.

Hoping they could turn the business around before running out of money, the founders took a somewhat desperate measure.

They stopped their engineering work, left the office, and tracked down a handful of their customers. Then they interviewed them.

Joe describes those interviews as “agonizing and enlightening.” He recalls, “We were, like, smacking our heads.” Their website was riddled with flaws. Even simple issues—such ...

Joe and his cofounders spent a week fixing the most ...

Revenue doubled to $4...

So they did another round of interviews, and another round of improvements. Revenue doubled again to $800, then $1,600, then $3,200 a week.

That startup was Airbnb.

“There’s this gap between the vision and the customer,” Joe says. “To make the two fit, you have to talk to people.”

We can’t promise that your interviews will make you as successful as Airbnb, but we can promise that the process will be enlightening.

It’s tough to do, but you should avoid asking multiple-choice questions. They’re almost always leading questions in disguise.

Michael Margolis is the master of broken questions. The idea behind a broken question is to start asking a question—but let your speech trail off before you say anything that could bias or influence the answer.

Our final bit of advice on how to be a great Interviewer is not a technique, but a state of mind. On Thursday, the team has to be in a prototype mindset. On Friday, the team, and especially the Interviewer, should work hard at adopting a curiosity mindset.

17 Learn

Friday feels like one long mystery. Throughout the day, you’ll collect clues. Some of those clues help you crack the case, but some lead you in the wrong direction.

Just like the Slack team, your sprint team will spend Friday together. While the Interviewer is testing the prototype with customers, your team will gather in the sprint room to watch and take notes.