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

by Jake Knapp

That person is the Decider, a role so important we went ahead and capitalized it.

These Deciders generally understand the problem in depth, and they often have strong opinions and criteria to help find the right solution.

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

Who might cause trouble if he or she isn’t included? We don’t mean people who argue just

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?

“Why are we doing this project? Where do we want to be six months, a year, or even five years from now?”

Once the illusion is broken, customers switch into feedback mode. They’ll try to be helpful and think up suggestions. In Friday’s test, customer reactions are solid gold, but their feedback is worth pennies on the dollar.

One Medical was off to a great start on a bold mission: to offer better health care to everyone. They’d established a network of primary care clinics with locations across the United States—in San Francisco; New York; Boston; Chicago; Washington, D.C.; Phoenix; and Los Angeles. Same-day appointments, treatment via mobile app, more time with patients, and beautiful office interiors had earned them thousands of dedicated patients.

So Nielsen analyzed eighty-three of his own product studies.II He plotted how many problems were discovered after ten interviews, twenty interviews, and so on. The results were both consistent and surprising: 85 percent of the problems were observed after just five people.

Sometimes the Interviewer or the customer are in another building, another city, or out in the field (Michael has conducted interviews at hospitals, hotels, and truck stops), but since the sprint team is watching over video, that doesn’t matter. What does matter is that the Interviewer and the customer are sitting side by side, talking comfortably.

“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!”