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

by Jake Knapp

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

“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.

What has to be true for us to be successful?

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.

The Decider needs to choose one target customer and one target event on the map.

85 percent of the problems were observed after just five people.

we shouldn’t be embarrassed to have ambitious goals at work. Each of us has only so much time in a day, in a year, and in our lives. When you go to work in the morning, you should know that your time and effort will count. You should have confidence that you’re making a difference in real people’s lives. With the techniques in this book, you can bring focus to the work that matters.

“It wasn’t luck that made them fly; it was hard work and common sense,”

“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!”