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Kindle Notes & Highlights
by
Jake Knapp
Read between
November 29 - December 21, 2018
The lesson? No problem is too large for a sprint. Yes, this statement sounds absurd, but there are two big reasons why it’s true. 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.
Solve the surface first The surface is important. It’s where your product or service meets customers. Human beings are complex and fickle, so it’s impossible to predict how they’ll react to a brand-new solution. When our new ideas fail, it’s usually because we were overconfident about how well customers would understand and how much they would care. 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
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The SquidCo sprint failure was our fault. We’d tried to guess what Sam would say, and we’d failed. The Decider should have been in the room.
Get a Decider (or two)
Ocean’s Seven We’ve found the ideal size for a sprint to be seven people or fewer.
Sprints are most successful with a mix of people: the core people who work on execution along with a few extra experts with specialized knowledge.
Recruit a team of seven (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.
Bring the troublemaker
Pick a Facilitator
Brad Pitt’s character in Ocean’s Eleven, Rusty Ryan, is the logistics guy. He keeps the heist running. You need someone to be the Rusty Ryan of your sprint. This person is the Facilitator, and she’s responsible for managing time, conversations, and the overall process. She needs to be confident leading a meeting, including summarizing discussions and telling people it’s time to stop talking and move on. It’s an important job. And since you’re the one reading this book, you might be a good candidate.
Monday begins with an exercise we call Start at the End: a look ahead—
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?
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?”
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. Blue Bottle Coffee assumed they could find a way to convey their expertise through their website, but before the sprint, they weren’t sure how. It’s not difficult to find an assumption such as Blue Bottle’s and turn it into a question: Q: To reach new customers, what has to be true? A: They have to trust our
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It also creates a subtle shift from uncertainty (which is uncomfortable) to curiosity (which is exciting).
Nobody knows everything
to understand it all, you need to incorporate information from many sources. Nobody knows everything, not even the CEO.
Useful phrases are “Why?” and “Tell me more about that.”
2. ABC: Always be capturing
Work alone together We know that individuals working alone generate better solutions than groups brainstorming out loud.I Working alone offers time to do research, find inspiration, and think about the problem. And the pressure of responsibility that comes with working alone often spurs us to our best work.
Five is the magic number
These interviews are easy to do. They don’t require special expertise or equipment. You won’t need a behavioral psychologist or a laser eye-tracker—just a friendly demeanor, a sense of curiosity, and a willingness to have your assumptions proven wrong.
The Five-Act Interview This structured conversation helps the customer get comfortable, establishes some background, and ensures that the entire prototype is reviewed. Here’s how it goes: 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 to capture the customer’s overarching thoughts and impressions
DON’T ask multiple choice or “yes/no” questions. (“Would you . . . ?” “Do you . . ?” “Is it . . . ?”) DO ask “Five Ws and One H” questions. (“Who . . . ?” “What . . . ?” “Where . . . ?” “When . . . ?” “Why . . . ?” “How . . . ?”)
learned a handful of unconventional ideas about how to work faster and smarter: • Instead of jumping right into solutions, take your time to map out the problem and agree on an initial target. Start slow so you can go fast. • Instead of shouting out ideas, work independently to make detailed sketches of possible solutions. Group brainstorming is broken, but there is a better way. • Instead of abstract debate and endless meetings, use voting and a Decider to make crisp decisions that reflect your team’s priorities. It’s the wisdom of the crowd without the groupthink. • Instead of getting all
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John T. Daniels, who was present at their famous flight on December 17, 1903. “It wasn’t luck that made them fly; it was hard work and common sense,” said Daniels. He went on: “Good Lord, I’m a-wondering what all of us could do if we had faith in our ideas and put all our heart and mind and energy into them like those Wright boys did!” We’re a-wondering, too. We think you can accomplish a lot, and we know just how you should start.
