Sprint summary

If you look at the most successful start-ups, you’ll see that their rise to fame was based on powerful and innovative ideas. But ideas are just one aspect of start-up success; they’re not much good if poorly executed.

Take Webvan, an online store that launched in 1999 to allow users the luxury of buying groceries from home. It’s an idea that remains popular today, with Amazon currently expanding its operations to offer something similar, AmazonFresh.

It’s impossible to move fast if you don’t know where you’re going, which is why the first day of your sprint should begin with pinpointing the problem you need to solve. The best way to start this process is by identifying the challenge you’re facing.

So, simply pose the question, “what’s our challenge?”

After identifying your challenge and building the right team, you’ll be off to a great start. So, keep your momentum rolling into the afternoon of your first day by making a roadmap for your sprint. But don’t make it chronological; it’s best to plan your sprint from your ultimate goal and work your way backward to identify any potential pitfalls.

A successful sprint depends on your long-term goal. So, ask yourself what aspect of the business you need to improve within the next six months. For instance, Savioke, a company that designed a robot to help hotel staff deliver small items like toothbrushes and towels, set the goal of “a better guest experience.”

If you’re into electronic music you’ll know how DJs sample an old track to create a brand new song. Well, Tuesday is your day to play DJ; this is when you draw inspiration from existing products.

The day starts by bringing together existing ideas from near and far, from which you can build your own solutions. Just think of it like playing with Lego: you amass as many pieces as possible and put them together into an original design.

At this point, your walls should be plastered with sketches of potential solutions. But Wednesday is the day to separate the wheat from the chaff. After all, you can’t see all your ideas through.

You should begin the day by sorting through solutions. To avoid wasting time and energy on never-ending discussions, simply present solutions, answer questions and then vote on an idea.

So you’ve got great solutions, but only two days left on your schedule. At this point, instead of actually building your idea, you should fake it; the intention of your sprint is to collect reactions and you only need a prototype that seems real enough.

After all, there’s no way you’ll have the time to finish a market-ready prototype – but a low-quality prototype is no good either, since people won’t believe that it’s real. So, put yourself into a prototype mindset where you accept that anything can be prototyped as long as it has a sufficiently believable facade.

Friday is the final day of your sprint, when all your hard work pays off: the prototype you created on Thursday will be tested, preferably by a small sample of guest users.

For this phase, five is the magic number. Five guest users are all you need to get a good sense of your solution’s pros and cons. In fact, this optimal figure was first defined by Jakob Nielsen, a Danish pioneer in website usability.