Sprint

by Jake Knapp

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

By Monday afternoon, you’ve identified a long-term goal and the questions to answer along the way.

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.

Don’t let the group dissolve into unproductive debates that aren’t moving you toward a decision.

Then, in the afternoon, each person will sketch, following a four-step process that emphasizes critical thinking over artistry.

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

remix and improve – but never blindly copy.

Your team will take turns giving three-minute tours of their favorite solutions: from other products, from different domains, and from within your own company.

Make a list

Everything you review should contain something good you can learn from. It’s not helpful to review crummy products. After a few minutes of thinking, everyone should narrow down to his or her top one or two products. Write the collected list on the whiteboard. It’s time to begin the demos.

Capture big ideas as you go

If you look hard enough, you can usually find your blotting paper.

When your team evaluates these sketches on Wednesday to decide which are best, and when you test your prototype on Friday, it will be the quality of the solutions that matters, not the artistry of the drawings from which they came.

Working alone offers time to do research, find inspiration, and

It’s all designed to get the most out of the team’s expertise, accommodate for our human strengths and shortcomings, and make it as easy as possible to come to a great decision.

Well, democracy is a fine system for governing nations, but it has no place in your sprint.

The lesson of OstrichCo is to make honest decisions.

When you have two good, conflicting ideas, you don’t have to choose between them at all. Instead, you can prototype both, and in Friday’s test, you’ll be able to see how each one fares with your customers. Your prototypes will battle head-to-head, like professional wrestlers whacking each other with folding chairs. We call this kind of test a Rumble.

This kind of long-form storyboarding is a common practice in movie production.

You’ll use your storyboard to imagine your finished prototype, so you can spot problems and points of confusion before the prototype is built.

You’ll start drawing your storyboard in the top left box of the grid. This frame will be the first moment that customers experience on Friday. So . . . what should it be? What’s the best opening scene for your prototype?

How do customers find out your company exists? Where are they and what are they doing just before they use your product?

Every decision you make now is something you won’t have to think about when you build your prototypes.

Work with what you have.

Don’t write together.

Sticking to fifteen minutes will ensure that you focus on the most important solutions – and don’t bite off more than you can prototype.

And you’ve finished with the hardest part of the sprint. The decisions are made, the plan for your prototype is ready, and Wednesday is a wrap.

Decisions take willpower, and you only have so much to spend each day.

On Thursday, you’ll adopt a “fake it” philosophy to turn that storyboard into a realistic prototype.