Sprint Book Summary - Sprint Book explained in key points

Sprint summary

Name: Sprint
Rating: 4.4 (48 reviews)
Author: Jake Knapp

Jake Knapp

How to Solve Big Problems and Test New Ideas in Just Five Days

Table of Contents

Sprint
Summary of 8 key ideas

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Key idea 1 of 8

What’s in it for me? Get a quick and clear appraisal of your ideas’ potential for success.

Do you have a business idea that you want to get off the ground as soon as possible? You’re not alone – but not all ideas are a good fit for their respective markets. Many people spend huge amounts of time and money in vain, trying to push their ideas in markets where they simply won’t stay afloat.

So don’t make the same mistake. Instead of entering a market with an impractical or incomplete product, one that you might not even have tested, consider another, more efficient approach. These blinks will reveal exactly what this approach entails and show you how to get started.

In these blinks, you’ll discover

why you need to equip yourself with more than a mere idea;
why your approach to playing with Lego might come in handy; and
why you don’t need to gather loads of people to test your prototype.

A sprint is an effective project management tool, especially for start-ups.

Do you ever find yourself facing multiple deadlines and feeling certain that you won’t be able to deliver the results you need while sticking to your schedule? Well, don’t sweat it. People do their best work when they take on challenges with little time to complete them.

The author came to this conclusion while working at Google. He had just one month to develop an important new feature for Gmail that would automatically organize messages. But despite the tight deadline, his team generated a design, a prototype and ultimately earned loads of positive user feedback.

So how did they do it?

By using a new approach to project management. The author calls it a sprint and it has three key components:

First, a short deadline is essential for preventing procrastination. For example, when a project has to be completed within a few days, the ability of a team to focus is much stronger than the urge to hang out and drink coffee.

Second, it’s important to have people with different skills all working in one room. Engineers, designers and product managers tend to get more done when they’re all together and are able to answer each other’s questions.

The third and final ingredient of a sprint is for the project to produce a concrete prototype, not just an abstract idea like those shouted out during brainstorming sessions.

The author identified these three points as the foundation of his project management style – but it wasn't until later that he realized sprints are perfect for start-ups. After all, start-ups usually have just one shot to launch a product; if their first attempt goes bust, they generally run out of money before they can launch another.

But with sprints, start-ups have an effective tool for testing out their projects before they pour money into their production and launch.

Sprints help ensure great ideas and outstanding execution.

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.

On Monday morning, identify your challenge and gather a diverse team.

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?”

On Monday afternoon, draft a roadmap from finish to start and choose a target.

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.”

Tuesday is the day you collect ideas, present them to each other and sketch them out.

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.

Wednesday’s task is to select the best ideas and create a storyboard of their development.

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.

Thursday is the day to create a realistic prototype.

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.

The sprint ends on Friday with testing your idea and collecting feedback.

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.

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What is Sprint about?

Sprint (2016) is a guide to start-up success, broken down into a five-day plan that lets you test new ideas and solve complex business problems. These blinks give you everything you need to move quickly from an idea to a prototype and, ultimately, make a decision on whether or not to launch.

Best quote from Sprint

My best work happened when I had a big challenge and not quite enough time.

—Jake Knapp

Who should read Sprint?

Entrepreneurs or project managers who face tight deadlines
Anyone interested in the creative process behind major start-up successes
Anyone with an idea, project or opportunity that they want to get started on right away

About the Author

Jake Knapp is a partner at Google Ventures and the creator of the Google Ventures sprint process, through which he has advised more than a hundred start-ups.

John Zeratsky is a partner at Google Ventures specializing in design. He has written on the topic for major publications including The Wall Street Journal, Wired and Time.

Braden Kowitz is a partner at Google Ventures and founded the Google Ventures design team in 2009.

Categories with Sprint

Management & Leadership Entrepreneurship

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