Sprint

If you ever had a big idea you wanted to test, and needed it done fast, this book shows you how. Sprints are all about working with your team to quickly go from planning to prototyping, to live user interactions, and using them can help speed up hard business decisions. You won't need a polished product, just something convincing enough for your tester (even an interactive Figma could work).

When and Why Sprint?

Use sprints when you need to answer an urgent question about your business, product, or customers. They can help you avoid things like waiting 6 months before realizing Bluetooth doesn't work (hmmm I wonder who did that...). Sprints are used in several companies and have led to incredibly cool products (like AirBnB).

Also, a sprint is requires 5 full days of undivided attention. If you can't form a team that can go through this process, it won't be as effective.

Prerequisites

• Choose an important and urgent challenge
• Assemble a diverse team of specialized people. Have 1-2 Deciders (leads)
• Prepare supplies in advance (lots of Post-Its!)

Monday: Map

The first day will be spent crafting a clear question that you'd like to address by the end of the sprint. But first, you'll need to understand your company's long-term goals. Start with a question like this: "Why are we doing this project? Where do we want to be six months, a year, or even five years from now?"

Uncover Underlying Assumptions (morning)

When creating your goal, you were probably quite optimistic about the future. But there are dangerous assumptions that you took to get there. The next step is to turn each assumption into a question, which you will then be answering by the end of the sprint. Think about the following:

• 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 this?

Create a Map

The map will show your customers moving through every step of your service or product and will help you narrow your broad challenge into a specific goal later on. It also lays out how everything fits together, so it will be easier to structure your solutions sketches and prototypes later on.

On a giant white board, create your map:

1. List the actors (on the left). The "actors" are important characters in your story
2. Write the ending (on the right). It's easier to figure this out than the middle steps
3. Words and arrows in between. It's not art, keep it functional
4. Keep it simple. There should be around 5 to 15 steps. Otherwise, it's too complicated
5. Ask for help. Keep asking your team if the map makes sense

Ask the Experts (afternoon)

Get your team to individually interview people with specialized knowledge about your solution. Information is asymmetrically distributed across the company, and you'll need people who can pick up on easily missed details.

Here's who to talk to:

Strategy: Talk with the "Decider" about questions like "What will make this project a success", "What's our unique advantage or opportunity", and "What's the biggest risk"

Voice of the Customer: Find the person who knows the customer the best and can explain their perspective

How Things Word: Who best understands the mechanics of your product? How does everything fit together?

Previous Efforts: Sometimes, people already thought about a similar problem and may have some experience with attempting to solve them.

How Might We

While listening to the experts, note any interesting concepts and create a "How Might We" note on a Post-it. These are questions that could be interesting to solve, like "HMW - Structure key info for screening patients?". Write in big markets so it forces you to be concise, and so that it can be seen easily.

1. Write a "How Might We" on a Post-it by yourself
2. Stick it onto a wall when everyone is done
3. Vote silently with sticker "dots". Each person gets two dots, while the Decider gets four dots.
4. Select the ones with multiple votes and use those targets to guide the rest of the sprint

Pick the Target

The final task for Monday is to choose the target for your sprint. Who is the most important customer, and what is the most critical experience for them? The "How Might We" notes can often make this decision obvious, but the Decider is always the one who gets the final say–this is the biggest opportunity to do something great.

If the decider wants help, use a straw poll. Everyone should write their vote on a piece of paper, and after the votes are tallied, there should be a discussion on any big differences in opinion. The decider can now make their call.

Now that you have identified a long-term goal and question to answer, everyone will be ready for the next step: it's time to come up with some solutions.

Tuesday: Sketch

Not gonna lie, I wrote everything above about 4 months ago, and I don't remember the book in as much depth.

The goal for this day is to generate a wide range of potential solutions. You start by reviewing what you did yesterday, and then each person will individually sketch, following a four-step process: notes, ideas, crazy 8s, and solution sketch.

1. Notes: Have the team walk around the room and take notes to refresh their memories before committing to a solution. Feel free to research specific details from the company's own product. This takes about twenty minutes, and then spend three minutes at the end reviewing everything.
2. Ideas: Jot rough ideas, fill a sheet of paper with doodles, diagrams, stick figures, etc. Take twenty minutes with this and then review at the end for three minutes.
3. Crazy 8s: Each person takes their strongest ideas and rapidly sketches eight variations in eight minutes. This promotes potential breakthroughs.
4. Solution Sketch: Sketch a three-panel of the final solution to be looked at and judged by others. It's the final sketch!

Wednesday: Decide

Today you'll evaluate ideas and decide on the solution that will be prototyped. There's a five-step process.

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 more stickers!

Thursday: Prototype

Now it's time to build a prototype that can be tested with real users. It's much more effective and easier to fake it rather than build the real thing. It'll emulate what your product will actually do, without needing the complex implementation and lack of polish.

Here's one way to do this.

1. Pick the right tools: Often, your usual tools are too slow. Use something like Apple's Keynote that can mimic what you want quickly. I'd probably use Figma.
2. Divide and conquer: Makers will create individual components, while Stitchers will put them together. Writers make the content reasonable (we hate lorem ipsum).
3. Stich it together: Make sure fake content is consistent throughout the app
4. Do a trial run: Do it around 3pm to give you enough time to fix it.

Friday: Test

Now it's time to learn from watching/interviewing users. There should generally be around five interviewees.

Here's how you should run them.

1. Friendly welcome: People need to feel comfortable to be honest and open, so start with something like "Thanks for coming in today! Your feedback is really important to us"
2. Context questions: Ask about the customer's background so you get a better idea on who they are and how they'd user your product
3. Introduce the prototype: "Would you like to see the prototype? I didn't design it so I won't be hurt by your feedback. Also think aloud!"
4. Tasks and nudges: "What do you expect that will do? What is this for?". Just gauge their reactions.
5. Quick debrief: "How does this product compare to what you do now? What did you wish was different?"

In general, you should be watching these interviews together and taking notes as a team (on a giant whiteboard). Look for patterns in reactions and see if they answer the questions you came up with on Monday.

The best part is that you can't lose. Either you're on the right track, or you only spent five days exploring a tangent.

Conclusion

Now you can go test your ideas quickly! I won't use this for a while since I don't have a startup nor do I have a huge team. But what I do have is a Stanford interview tomorrow, so I'm going to sleep now and then I'll have a great time talking with this guy!