Sprint

by Jake Knapp

We’ve used sprints for prioritization, for marketing strategy, even for naming companies. Time and time again, the process brings teams together and brings ideas to life.

The sprint gives our startups a superpower: They can fast-forward into the future to see their finished product and customer reactions, before making any expensive commitments.

If you’re familiar with lean development or design thinking, you’ll find the sprint is a practical way to apply those philosophies. If your team uses “agile” processes, you’ll find that our definition of “sprint” is different, but complementary.

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,

Lurking beneath every goal are dangerous assumptions. The longer those assumptions remain unexamined, the greater the risk. In your sprint, you have a golden opportunity to ferret out assumptions, turn them into questions, and find some answers.

The method is called How Might We. It was developed at Procter & Gamble in the 1970s, but we learned about it from the design agency IDEO.

But perhaps the biggest problem is that the longer you spend working on something – whether it’s a prototype or a real product – the more attached you’ll become, and the less likely you’ll be to take negative test results to heart.

How real is real enough? When you test your prototype on Friday, you’ll want your customers to react naturally and honestly.

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 of our favorite shortcuts is the Brochure Façade: Instead of prototyping the device, prototype the website, video, brochure, or slide deck that will be used to sell the device.