Solve big problems and test new ideas in just five days. Form a question, build a prototype, run a test! Can this be a habit in your company? Do read Sprint by Jake Knapp if that’s interesting! Below are my notes from the book.
Entrepreneurs and leaders face big questions every day: What’s the most important place to focus your effort, and how do you start? What will your idea look like in real-life? How many meetings and discussions does it take before you can be sure you have the right solution?
Now there’s a surefire way to answer these important questions: the sprint. A practical guide to answering critical business questions, Sprint is a book for teams of any size, from startup’s to Fortune 100s, from teachers to non-profits. It’s for anyone with a big opportunity, problem or idea who need to get answers today.
A summary of ideas for working faster and smarter:
- Instead of jumping right into solutions, take your time to map out the problem and agree on an initial target. Start slow so you can go fast.
- Instead of shouting out ideas, work independently to make detailed sketches of possible solutions. Group brainstorming is broken, but there is a better way.
- Instead of abstract debate and endless meetings, use voting and a Decider to make crisp decisions that reflect your team’s priorities. It’s the wisdom of the crowd without the groupthink!
- Instead of getting all the details right before testing your solution, create a facade. Adopt the “prototype mindset” so you can learn quickly.
- And instead of guessing and hoping you’re on the right track — all the while investing pools of money and months of time into your ideas — test your prototype with target customers and get their honest reactions.
INTRODUCTION
Google encourages experimentation, not only in the products, but in the methods used by individuals … and teams. Working at Google, improving team processes became a obsession for the author.
Brainstorms can generate lot of ideas. But individual generated ideas were better. Maybe, there wasn’t enough time in these sessions to think deeply.
Working on a project at Google, the author realised he worked far more effectively when:
- There was time to develop ideas independently, unlike the shouting and pitching in a group brainstorm. But not too much time. Looming deadlines forces focus.
- People. Engineers, the Product Manager, and the designer, all in the room together.
- Focus on individual work, time to prototype, and an inescapable deadline
This is a “Sprint”. The book is an adaptation after learning what was too fast, too slow, and finally, just right. Others helped integrate ideas like story centered design, customer research (real world tests). And a five day process held up after numerous trials. From investors to farmers, from oncologists to small business owners. For websites, apps, medical reports, high-tech hardware. And for prioritisation, for marketing strategy, even for naming companies.
And having fun along the way. Try one for yourself.
Working together in a sprint, you can shortcut the endless-debate cycle and compress months of time into a single week. Instead of waiting to launch a minimal product to understand if an idea is any good, you’ll get clear data from a realistic prototype. The sprint gives you a superpower: You can fast-forward into the future to see your finished product and customer reactions, before making any expensive commitments.
On Monday, you’ll map out the problem and pick an important place to focus. On Tuesday, you’ll sketch competing solutions on paper. On Wednesday, you’ll make difficult decisions and turn your ideas into a testable hypothesis. On Thursday, you’ll hammer out a high-fidelity prototype. And on Friday, you’ll test it with real live humans.
SET THE STAGE
Before the sprint begins, you’ll need to have the right challenge and the right team. You’ll also need time and space to conduct your sprint.
CHALLENGE
The bigger the challenge, the better the sprint. Go after your most important problem. Not the nice-to-have project because people won’t bring their best efforts.
TEAM
In Ocean’s Eleven, there’s a pickpocket, an explosives guy, even an acrobat. It’s excellent cinema. A sprint resembles that perfectly orchestrated heist. You are your team put your talents, time, and energy to their best use, taking on an overwhelming challenge and using your wits (and a little trickery) to overcome every obstacle that crosses your path.
DECIDER
To built the perfect sprint team, first you’re going to need someone with authority to make decisions. That person is the Decider. She is the official decision-maker for the project. Deciders generally understand the problem in depth, and they often have strong opinions and criteria to help find the right solution.
If your decider is reluctant to be involved in the sprint, emphasise:
- Rapid progress: The amount of progress you’ll make in your sprint. Almost everyone loves fast results.
- It’s an experiment. Consider your first sprint an experiment. And let Decider evaluate how effective it was. Many people who are hesitant to change the way they work are open to a one-time experiment.
- Explain the tradeoffs.
- It’s about focus. Tell the Decider that instead of doing an okay job on everything, you’ll do an excellent job on one thing.
If the Decider agrees to the sprint but can’t spare a full week, invite her to join you at a few key points. Or she can have an official delegate with the team.
If your Decider doesn’t believe the sprint to be worthwhile? Hold up! That’s a giant red flag! You might have the wrong project. Talk to your Decider, and figure out which big challenge would be better.
Ocean’s Seven
We’ve found the ideal size for a sprint to be seven people or fewer. With more, you will have to work harder to keep everyone focused and productive.
So who should you include? Do not limit your sprint team to just those who normally work together. Sprints are more successful with a mix of people: the core people who work on execution along with a few extra experts with specialised knowledge. A cheat sheet follows:
- Decider. Who makes decisions for your team.
- Finance expert. Who can explain where the money comes from (and where it goes?)
- Marketing expert. Who crafts your company’s messages?
- Customer expert. Who regularly talks to your customers one-on-one?
- Tech/Logistics expert. Who best understands what your company can build and deliver?
- Design expert. Who designs the products your company makes?
A collaborative atmosphere makes the sprint a great time to include people who don’t necessarily agree with you.
Bring the Trouble Maker
We don’t mean people who argue just for the sake of arguing. We mean that smart person who has strong, contrary opinions, and whom you might be slightly uncomfortable with including in your sprint.
Trouble makers see problems differently from everyone else. Their crazy idea about solving the problem might just be right. And even if it’s wrong, the presence of a dissenting view will push everyone else to do better work.
There’s a fine line between a rebel and a jerk, of course. But don’t avoid people just because they disagree with you.
Schedule extra experts for Monday
If you have more than seven people you think should participate in your sprint, schedule the extras to come in as “experts” for a short visit on Monday afternoon. During their visit, they can tell the rest of the team what they know and share their opinions. A half an hour for each expert. It’s an efficient way to boost the diversity of perspectives while keeping your team small and nimble.
Pick a Facilitator
She’s responsible for managing time, conversations, and the overall process. She needs to be confident leading a meeting, including summarising discussions and telling people its time to stop talking and move on. If you are reading the book, you might be a good candidate!
Its not a good idea to combine Decider and Facilitator roles in one as she needs to remain unbiased about decisions. It may even work well to bring an outsider.
With the right team in place, unexpected solutions will appear.
TIME AND SPACE
- Block five full days on the calendar. Any longer, weekends can cause loss of continuity. Distraction and procrastination can creep in. And more time to work can make us more attached to our ideas and, in turn, less willing to learn from our colleagues our our customers. Five days provide enough urgency to sharpen focus and cut out useless debate.
- Work from 10 AM to 5 PM. Every day. Have a short morning break. A n hour long lunch (around 1 PM). Short afternoon break. These breaks are a sort of “pressure-release valve.”
- No device rule. We can’t afford distractions in the room. Devices can suck the momentum out of the sprint.
- Get two big Whiteboards. Rolling whiteboards will work too. Magic happens when we use big whiteboards to solve problems. As humans, our short term memory is not all that good, but our spatial memory is awesome. A sprint room, plastered with notes, diagrams, printouts, and more, take advantage of that spatial memory. The room itself becomes a sort of shared brain for the team. The simultaneous visibility of these project materials helps us identify patterns and encourages creative synthesis to occur much more readily than when these resources are hidden away in file folders, notebooks, or Power Point decks.
- IdeaPaint. Poster-size Post-its work too.
- Run the sprint in same room all day.
- Stock up on the right supplies. Sticky notes. Markers. Pens. Time Timers. Printer Paper. Healthy snacks.
MONDAY
On Monday, you’ll kick off your sprint by sharing knowledge, understanding the problem, and choosing a target for the week’s efforts. With only five days, it might seem crazy to spend an entire day talking and writing on whiteboards. But if you don’t first slow down, share what you know, and prioritise, you could end up wasting time and effort on the wrong part of the problem.
Monday’s structured discussions create a path for the sprint week. In the morning, you’ll start at the end and agree to a long-term goal. Next, you’ll make a map of the challenge. In the afternoon, you’ll ask the experts at your company to share what they know. Finally, you’ll pick a target: an ambitious but manageable piece of the problem that you can solve in one week.
10 A.M.
Introductions. If some people don’t know one another, do a round of introductions. Point out the Facilitator and the Decider and describe their roles.
Explain the sprint. Introduce the five-day sprint process (you can use the slide deck on thesprintbook.com). Run through this checklist and briefly describe each activity.
10:15-ISH
Set a long-term goal. Get optimistic. Ask: Why are we doing this project? Where do we want to be in six months, a year, or even five years from now? Write the long-term goal on a whiteboard.
When a big problem comes along, it’s natural to want to solve it right away. Clock is ticking, and solutions start popping into everyone’s mind. But if you don’t first slow down, share what you know, and prioritise, you could end up wasting time and effort on the wrong part of the problem.
This exercise is called Start at the End: a look ahead — to the end of the sprint week and beyond. Its 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? Six months into the future, what would have improved about your business as a result of this project?
Ask your team this question: “Why are we doing this project? Where do we want to be six months, a year, or even five years from now?” Discussion can be long or even embarrassing if there’s no clarity. Slowing down might be frustrating for a moment, but the satisfaction and confidence of a clear goal will last all week.
Your goal should reflect your team’s principles and aspirations. Once you’ve settled on a long-term goal, write it at the top of the whiteboard. It’ll stay there throughout the sprint as a beacon to keep everyone moving in the same direction.
List sprint questions. Get pessimistic. Ask: How could we fail? Turn these fears into questions you could answer this week. List them on a whiteboard.
Lurking beneath every goal are dangerous assumptions. The longer these assumptions remain unexamined, the greater the risk. Your sprint is a golden opportunity to ferret out assumptions, turn them into questions, and find more answers.
A few prompts for getting teams to think about assumptions and questions: What questions do we want to answer in this sprint? To meet our long-term goal, what has to be true? Imagine we travelled into the future and our project failed — what might have caused this?
An important part of this exercise is rephrasing assumptions and obstacles into questions. It also creates a subtle shift from un-certainty (which is uncomfortable) to curiosity (which is exciting).
By starting at the end with these questions, you’ll face your fears. Big questions and unknowns can be discomforting, but you’ll feel relieved to see them all listed in one place. You’ll know where you’re headed and what you’re up against.
11:30-ISH
Make a map. List customers and key players on the left. Draw the ending, with your completed goal, on the right. Finally, make a flowchart in between showing how customers interact with your product. Keep it simple: five to fifteen steps.
Your map will show customers moving through your service or product. Later in the week, the map will provide structure for your solution sketches and prototype.
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, and a few boxes.
Your map should have from five to around fifteen steps. If there are more than twenty, it’s probably too complicated. By keeping the map simple, the team can agree on the structure of the problem without getting tied up in competing solutions.
1 P.M.
Lunch break. Eat together if you can (it’s fun). Remind your team to choose a light lunch to maintain energy in the afternoon. There are snacks if you get hungry later.
2 P.M.
Ask the Experts. Nobody knows everything. Interview experts on your sprint team and guests from the outside. Aim for fifteen to thirty minutes each. Ask about the vision, customer research, how things work, and previous efforts. Pretend you’re a reporter. Update long-term goal, questions, and map as you go.
Deciding who to talk to is a bit of an art. It is useful to have at least one expert who can talk about each of these topics.
Strategy. What will make this project a success? What’s our unique advantage or opportunity? What’s the biggest risk?
Voice of the Customer. Who talks to your customers more than anyone else? Who can explain the world from their perspective?
How things work. Who understands the mechanics of your product? The designer, the engineer, the marketer. Think about bringing in the money expert, the tech/logistics expert, and the marketing expert as well.
Previous Efforts. A failed experiment, or even some work in progress. Examine those preexisting solutions.
Ask questions. Sprint team should act like a bunch of reporters digging for a story. Useful phrases are “Why?” and “Tell me more about that.”
Talking to these experts reminds the team of things they knew but may have forgotten. It always yields a few surprising insights. Also, by asking people for their input early in the process, you help them feel invested in the outcome.
Let each member of your team take notes individually.
Explain How Might We notes. Distribute whiteboard markers and sticky notes. Reframe problems as opportunities. Start with the letters “HMW” on the top left corner. Write one idea per sticky note. Make a stack as you go.
Your experts will provide a ton of information. So how are you going to keep track of it all? Use the HMW technique. Ex: phrases like “How Might We ensure coffee arrives fresh?”
When you try this technique, you will appreciate how the open-ended, optimistic phrasing forced us to look for opportunities and challenges rather than getting bogged down by problems or, almost worse, jumping to solutions too soon.
Put the letters HMW on a post-it note. When you hear something interesting, convert it into a question (quietly). Write it on the note. Put it aside.
4-ISH
Organise How Might We notes. Stick all the How Might We notes onto a wall in any order. Move similar ideas next to one another. Label themes as they emerge. Don’t perfect it. Stop after about ten minutes.
It is exciting when the interviews ended and we see each others notes on the wall. Each HMW note captured a problem and converted it into an opportunity.
Physically group together HMW notes in groups on a wall. Themes will emerge as you go. To prioritise the notes, use dot voting.
Vote on How Might We notes. Each person has two votes, can vote on his or her own notes, or even the same note twice. Move winners onto your map.
4:30-ISH
Pick a target. Circle your most important customer and one target moment on the map. The team can weigh in, but the Decider makes the call.
The rest of the sprint will flow from this decision. Throughout the week, you’ll be focussed on that target — sketching solutions, making a plan, and building a prototype of that moment and the events around it.
Once you’ve selected the target, take a look back at your sprint questions. You usually can’t answer all those questions in one sprint, but one or more should line up with the target.
By Monday afternoon, you have clarity about the challenge, the opportunity, and the risk.
Key Ideas
- Start at the end. Start by imagining your end result and risks along the way. Then work backward to figure out the steps you’ll need to get there.
- Nobody knows everything. Not even the Decider. All the knowledge on your sprint team is locked away in each person’s brain. To solve your big problem, you’ll need to unlock that knowledge and build a shared understanding.
- Reframe problems as opportunities. Listen carefully for problems and use “How might we” phrasing to turn them into opportunities.
Facilitator Tips
- Ask for permission. Ask the group for permission to facilitate. Explain that you’ll try to keep things moving, which will make the sprint more efficient for everyone.
- ABC: Always be capturing. Synthesise the team’s discussion into notes on the whiteboard. Improvise when needed. Keep asking, “How should I capture that?”
- Ask obvious questions. Pretend to be naive. Ask “Why?” a lot.
- Take care of the humans. Keep your team energised. Take breaks every sixty to ninety minutes. Remind people to snack and to eat a light lunch.
- Decide and move on. Slow decisions sap energy and threaten the sprint timeline. If the group sinks into a long debate, ask the Decider to make a call.
TUESDAY
After a full day of understanding the problem and choosing a target for your sprint, on Tuesday, you get to focus on solutions. The day starts with inspiration: a review of existing ideas to remix and improve. Then, in the afternoon, each person will sketch, following a four-step process that emphasises critical thinking over artistry. You’ll also begin planning Friday’s customer test by recruiting customers that fit your target profile.
10 a.m.
Lightning Demos. Look at great solutions from a range of companies, including yours. Three minutes per demo. Capture good ideas with a quick drawing on the whiteboard.
Great innovation is built on existing ideas, repurposed with vision. It’s like playing with Lego bricks: first gather useful components, then convert them into something original and new.
Do not just look at products from the same industry. Time and time again, the ideas that spark the best solutions come from similar problems in different environments.
And don’t forget to look inside your own organisation. Great solutions often come along at the wrong time, and the sprint can be a perfect opportunity to rejuvenate them. Look for unfinished, abandoned ideas.
Here’s how Lightning Demos work.
Make a list: Ask everyone on your team to come up with a list of products or services to review for inspiring solutions. Remind people to think outside of your industry or field, and to consider inspiration from within the company. Write the collected list on the whiteboard. It’s time to begin the demos.
Give three-minute demos: One at a time, the person who suggested each product gives a tour — showing the whole team what’s so cool about it.
Capture big ideas as you go: Remember the “always be capturing” mantra and take notes on the whiteboard as you go. Start by asking the person who’s giving the tour, “What’s the big idea here that might be useful?” Then make a quick drawing of that inspiring component, write a simple headline above it, and note the source underneath.
You may end up with a whiteboard full of ideas, such as this one.
12:30-ish
Divide or swarm. Decide who will sketch which part of the map. If you’re targeting a big chunk of the map in your sprint, divide it up and assign someone to each section.
When you combine the ideas you just captured with Monday’s map, your sprint questions, and your HMW notes, you’ve got a wealth of raw material. In the afternoon, you will turn your raw material into solutions. But before you do, you need to form a quick strategy. Should your team split up to tackle different parts of the problem, or should you all focus on the same spot?
1 p.m.
Lunch
2 p.m.
It’s time to come up with solutions. But there will be no brainstorming, no shouting, no deferring judgements so wacky ideas can flourish. Instead, you’ll work individually, take your time, and sketch.
You should not take decisions based on abstract ideas. Because abstract ideas lack concrete details. It’s easy for them to be undervalued (like your idea) or overvalued (like the boss’s idea). Sketching is the easiest way to transform abstract ideas into concrete solutions.
Work Alone Together: Individuals working alone generate better solutions than groups brainstorming out loud. When the whole team works in parallel, they’ll generate competing ideas without the groupthink of a brainstorm.
The Four-Step Sketch. Briefly explain the four steps. Everyone sketches. When you’re done, place the sketches in a pile and save them for tomorrow.
- Notes. Twenty minutes. Silently walk around the room and gather notes.
- Ideas. Twenty minutes. Privately jot down some rough ideas. Circle the most promising ones.
- Crazy 8s. Eight minutes. Fold a sheet of paper to create eight frames. Sketch a variation of one of your best ideas in each frame. Spend one minute per sketch (Crazy refers to pace, not the nature of the idea!). Exercise works best when you frame several versions of the same idea.
- Solution sketch. Thirty to ninety minutes. Create a three-panel storyboard by sketching in three sticky notes on a sheet of paper. Make it self-explanatory. Keep it anonymous. Ugly is okay. Words matter. Give it a catchy title.
Key Ideas
- Remix and improve. Every great invention is built on existing ideas.
- Anyone can sketch. Most solution sketches are just rectangles and words.
- Concrete beats abstract. Use sketches to turn abstract ideas into concrete solutions that can be assessed by others.
- Work alone together. Group brainstorms don’t work. Instead, give each person time to develop solutions on his or her own.
Once everybody is finished, put the solution sketches in a pile, but resist the urge to look at them. Save those fresh eyes for Wednesday.
Facilitator — Recruit Customers for Friday’s Test
Put someone in charge of recruiting. It will take an extra one or two hours of work each day during the sprint.
Recruit on Craigslist. Post a generic ad that will appeal to a wide audience. Offer compensation (we use a $100 gift card). Link to the screener survey.
Write a screener survey. Ask questions that will help you identify your target customers, but don’t reveal who you’re looking for.
Recruit customers through your network. If you need experts or existing customers, use your network to find customers.
Follow up with email and phone calls. Throughout the week, make contact with each customer to make sure he or she shows up on Friday.
WEDNESDAY
By Wednesday morning, you and your team will have a stack of solutions. That’s great, but it’s also a problem. You can’t prototype and test them all — you need one solid plan. In the morning, you’ll critique each solution, and decide which ones have the best chance of achieving your long-term goal. Then, in the afternoon, you’ll take the winning scenes from your sketches and weave them into a storyboard: a step-by-step plan for your prototype.
10 a.m.
Sticky decision. Follow these five steps to choose the strongest solutions:
STEP 1: Art museum.
Tape the solution sketches to the wall in one long row. Just like paintings in a museum.
STEP 2: Heat map.
Have each person review the sketches silently and put one to three small dot stickers beside every part he or she likes.
Why silently? Explaining ideas has all kinds of downsides. If someone makes a compelling case for his or her idea or is a bit more charismatic, your opinions will be skewed. If you associate the idea with it’s creator, your opinion will be skewed. Even just by knowing what the idea is about your opinion will be skewed. So, do not let the creators explain their ideas. In the real world, ideas will have to stand on their own. The creators won’t be there to give sales pitches and clues. If they are confusing to the experts in a sprint, chances are good they’ll be confusing to customers.
Together, all those dots create a heat map on top of the sketches — showing which ideas the group finds intriguing. This heat map forms the foundation for sticky decision.
But the heat map can’t tell you why people liked an idea.
STEP 3: Speed critique.
Three minutes per sketch. As a group, discuss the highlights of each solution. Capture standout ideas and important objections. At the end, ask the sketcher if the group missed anything.
The standout ideas when written by a Scribe will give everyone a standard vocabulary to describe solutions.
The creator of the sketch should remain silent until the end. She then explains any missed ideas that the team failed to spot, and answers any questions.
This unusual practice saves time, removes redundancy, and allows for the most honest discussion. If the inventor pitched his or her idea, the rest of the team would have a harder time being critical or negative.
Remember that all you are trying to accomplish in the speed critique is to create a record of promising ideas. Don’t debate whether something should be included in the prototype. That will come later. By the end of the speed critique, everyone will understand all of the promising ideas and details.
STEP 4: Straw poll.
Each person silently chooses a favorite idea. All at once, each person places one large dot sticker to register his or her (nonbinding) vote. Think of the straw poll as a way to give your Decider some advice. Afterwards, each person will give a brief explanation of his or her vote. The Decider should listen to these explanations — because all decision making authority is about to be turned over to her.
Sometimes when people work together in groups, they start to worry about consensus and try to make decisions that everyone will approve — mostly out of good nature and a desire for group cohesion, and perhaps in part because democracy feels good. Well, democracy is a fine system for governing nations, but it has no place in your sprint. Right now, more than any other moment, you need to let the decider do her job. Of course, being the Decider isn’t easy.
STEP 5: Supervote.
Give the Decider three large dot stickers and write her initials on the sticker. Explain that you’ll prototype and test the solutions the Decider chooses.
When the Decider has placed her votes, the hardest choice of the week is complete.
11:30-ish
❏ Divide winners from “maybe-laters.” Move the sketches with super votes together.
❏ Rumble or all-in-one. Decide if the winners can fit into one prototype, or if conflicting ideas require two or three competing prototypes in a Rumble.
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. We call this kind of test a Rumble.
❏ Fake brand names. If you’re doing a Rumble, use a Note-and-Vote to choose fake brand names.
Inventing fake brand names is fun, but it is also a potential time waster. To keep the process short, we use an all-purpose brainstorm substitute that we call Note-And-Vote.
❏ Note-and-Vote. Use this technique whenever you need to quickly gather ideas from the group and narrow down to a decision. Ask people to write ideas individually, then list them on a whiteboard, vote, and let the Decider pick the winner.
By lunchtime on Wednesday, you will have decided which sketches have the best chance of answering your sprint questions and helping you reach your long term goal. You’ll also decide whether to combine those winning ideas into one prototype or build two or three and test them in a Rumble. Next, it is time to turn all these decisions into a plan of action so you can finish your prototype in time for Friday’s test.
1 p.m.
❏ Lunch
2 p.m.
❏ Make a storyboard. Use a storyboard to plan your prototype. If you start prototyping without a plan, you’ll get bogged down by small, unanswered questions. Pieces wont fit together and your prototype could fall apart.
- Draw a grid. About fifteen squares on a whiteboard.
- Choose an opening scene. Think of how customers normally encounter your product or service. Keep your opening scene simple: web search, magazine article, store shelf, etc.
- Fill out the storyboard. Move existing sketches to the storyboard when you can. Draw when you can’t, but don’t write together. Include just enough detail to help the team prototype on Thursday. When in doubt, take risks. The finished story should be five to fifteen steps.
Facilitator Tip
Don’t drain the battery. Each decision takes energy. When tough decisions appear, defer to the Decider. For small decisions, defer until tomorrow. Don’t let new abstract ideas sneak in. Work with what you have.
THURSDAY
On Wednesday, you and your team created a storyboard. On Thursday, you’ll adopt a “fake it”philosophy to turn that storyboard into a prototype. A realistic façade is all you need to test with customers, and here’s the best part: by focusing on the customer-facing surface of your product or service, you can finish your prototype in just one day. On Thursday, you’ll also make sure everything is ready for Friday’s test by confirming the schedule, reviewing the prototype, and writing an interview script.
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. After one day, you’re receptive to feedback. After three months, you are committed.
- You made all the important decisions on Wednesday and captured those in your storyboard.
- Your team can “divide and conquer” by splitting up the storyboard into smaller scenes.
- You’ll make use of all your team’s skills by assigning prototyping roles like Maker, Stitcher, Writer, and Asset Collector.
On Thursday, you’ll also make sure everything is ready for Friday’s test by confirming the schedule, reviewing the prototype, and writing an interview script.
10 a.m.
❏ Pick the right tools. Don’t use your everyday tools. They’re optimised for quality. Instead, use tools that are rough, fast, and flexible.
❏ Divide and conquer. Assign roles: Maker, Stitcher, Writer, Asset Collector, and Interviewer. You can also break the storyboard into smaller scenes and assign each to different team members.
❏ Prototype!
1 p.m.
❏ Lunch
2 p.m.
❏ Prototype!
❏ Stitch it together. With the work split into parts, it’s easy to lose track of the whole. The Stitcher checks for quality and ensures all the pieces make sense together.
3-ish
❏ Do a trial run. Run through your prototype. Look for mistakes. Make sure the Interviewer and the Decider see it.
❏ Finish up the prototype.
Throughout the Day
❏ Write interview script. The Interviewer prepares for Friday’s test by writing a script.
❏ Remind customers to show up for Friday’s test. Email is good, phone call is better.
❏ Buy gift cards for customers. We usually use $100 gift cards.
Key Ideas
- Prototype mindset. You can prototype anything. Prototypes are disposable. Build just enough to learn, but not more. The prototype must appear real.
- Goldilocks quality. Create a prototype with just enough quality to evoke honest reactions from customers.
FRIDAY
Your sprint began with a big challenge, an excellent team — and not much else. By Friday, you’ve created promising solutions, chosen the best, and built a realistic prototype. That alone would make for an impressively productive week. But you’ll take it one step further as you interview customers and learn by watching them react to your prototype. This test makes the entire sprint worthwhile: At the end of the day, you’ll know how far you have to go, and you’ll know just what to do next.
Makeshift Research Lab
❏ Two rooms. In the sprint room, the sprint team will watch a video feed of the interviews. You’ll need a second, smaller room for the actual interviews. Make sure the interview room is clean and comfortable for your guests.
❏ Set up hardware. Position a webcam so you can see customers’ reactions. If your customer will be using a smartphone, iPad, or other hardware device, set up a document camera and microphone.
❏ Set up video stream. Use any video-conferencing software to stream video to the sprint room. Make sure the sound quality is good. Make sure the video and audio are one-way only.
Key Ideas
- Five is the magic number. After five customer interviews, big patterns will emerge. Do all five interviews in one day.
- Watch together, learn together. Don’t disband the sprint team. Watching together is more efficient, and you’ll draw better conclusions.
- A winner every time. Your prototype might be an efficient failure or a flawed success. In every case, you’ll learn what you need for the next step.
The interview is not a group exercise. It is a conversation between two people!
Five-Act Interview
- Friendly welcome. Welcome the customer and put him or her at ease. Explain that you’re looking for candid feedback.
- Context questions. Start with easy small talk, then transition to questions about the topic you’re trying to learn about.
- Introduce the prototype. Remind the customer that some things might not work, and that you’re not testing him or her. Ask the customer to think aloud.
- Tasks and nudges. Watch the customer figure out the prototype on his or her own. Start with a simple nudge. Ask follow-up questions to help the customer think aloud.
- Debrief. Ask questions that prompt the customer to summarise. Then thank the customer, give him or her a gift card, and show the customer out.
Interviewer Tips
- Be a good host. Throughout the interview, keep the customer’s comfort in mind. Use body language to make yourself friendlier. Smile!
- Ask open-ended questions. Ask “Who/What/Where/When/Why/How?” questions. Don’t ask leading “yes/no” or multiple-choice questions.
- Ask broken questions. Allow your speech to trail off before you finish a question. Silence encourages the customer to talk without creating any bias.
- Curiosity mindset. Be authentically fascinated by your customer’s reactions and thoughts.
Meanwhile, in the sprint room, the team watches the interviews over a live video feed and takes notes.
Before the First Interview
❏ Draw a grid on a whiteboard. Create a column for each customer. Then add a row for each prototype or section of prototype.
During Each Interview
❏ Take notes as you watch. Hand out sticky notes and markers. Write down direct quotes, observations, and interpretations. Indicate positive or negative.
After Each Interview
❏ Stick up notes. Stick your interview notes in the correct row and column on the whiteboard grid. Briefly discuss the interview, but wait to draw conclusions.
Use a different colour marking depending on the note: green for positive, red for negative, black for neutral.
❏ Take a quick break.
At the End of the Day
❏ Look for patterns. At the end of the day, read the board in silence and write down patterns. Make a list of all the patterns people noticed. Label each as positive, negative, or neutral.
Wrap up. Review your long-term goal and your sprint questions. Compare with the patterns you saw in the interviews. Decide how to follow-up after the sprint. Write it down.
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