Sprint

by Jake Knapp

Running a sprint requires a lot of energy and focus. Don’t go for the small win, or the nice-to-have project, because people won’t bring their best efforts.

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. Blue

The surface is important. It’s where your product or service meets customers. Human

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?

Each map is customer-centric, with a list of key actors on the left. Each map is a story, with a beginning, a middle, and an end. And, no matter the business, each map is simple. The diagrams are composed of nothing more than words, arrows,

How Might We. It was developed at Procter & Gamble in the 1970s,

open-ended, optimistic phrasing forced us to look for opportunities and challenges, rather than getting

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.

We note captured a problem and converted it into an opportunity. What’s more, each question could

You’ll take notes as a team, turning each problem you hear into an opportunity.

1. Give two large dot stickers to each person. 2. Give four large dot stickers to the Decider because her opinion counts a little more. 3. Ask everyone to review the goal and sprint questions. 4. Ask everyone to vote in silence for the most useful How Might We questions. 5. It’s okay to vote for your own

1. Art museum: Put the solution sketches on the wall with masking tape. 2. Heat map: Look at all the solutions in silence, and use dot stickers to mark interesting parts. 3. Speed critique: Quickly discuss the highlights of each solution, and use sticky notes to capture big ideas. 4. Straw poll: Each person chooses one solution, and votes for it with a dot sticker. 5. Supervote: The Decider makes the final decision, with – you guessed it – more stickers.

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