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

Sprint book review The Sprint book is easy read and could be dealt with as a story. The format of Sprint moving through the working week creates atmosphere that I was hearing Jake(the main author) telling me a story. Watching some videos on YouTube for Jake helped me better understand the book. As they say, our writing is kind of reflection of who we are beyond the subject of the book. While it is simple read, the underlying concepts have roots in Human Centered Design, Anthropology, Prototyping, UX, Innovation, App Design, Software Development, Agile Management, ….. The book stitches these concepts in a simple 5 days intuitive road-map for any organization that wants to solve big challenge in 5 days. No bluff, no extended plans, not procrastination, no top-down solutions, and no naysayers. By solving a challenge, I mean ‘learning’ what to do about it. Design Sprint is about learning what we need to do about the challenge. The bigger the challenge the higher the applicability of Design Sprint and the bigger the reward can be. I am familiar with Human Centered Design from IDEO. For me Design Sprint cuts to the chase if we want to apply the whole Design Thinking process in a week. There could be follow-up after the Sprint to iterate on the feedback from users on Friday, but that followup will be shorter. In days , it is like 5+3+2; 5 days for the first Sprint. And every segment has definitive outcomes that provides concrete learning to the organization. Having key stakeholders in the Design Sprint team, would help having timely feedback and decisions on the progress of the Sprint. Meaning, those stakeholders will bring us to the reality about the aspects of the business applicability of the solution. For me this reduces the risk of implementing a solution which despite of being desirable by users, is non-implementable due technical feasibility or business sustainability. The book includes examples of companies from diverse industries including healthcare, software development, hotels, coffee-shops, and fitness. I am more comfortable applying Sprint process to design services that primarily utilize digital solutions. However, the author mentioned he implemented the same process for designing non-digital solutions. Again, this is a Design Thinking mentality where we start from complete uncertainty about what we need to do and go through a discovery process for learning about the context and what probably can work. What probably works is based on user testing of a facade solution (prototype). Sprint book is complete and can be the main source for anyone who wants to facilitate Design Sprint, like me:) Like any other process, learning can happen only through practicing using the right process. and mindset. Based on the lessons learned from tens of Sprints the author facilitated, I believe this book can be valuable for team facilitators. It is about time for organizations to be transparent about their challenges and empower their employees to help ‘learning’ about what to do regarding them. Historically, organizations provide top-down solutions without engaging the right people who understand the complexity of the existing situation. Meaningful learning can be done in 5 days using the Sprint process detailed in this book and with the right skill-mix of team members. Design Sprint can be incorporated as habitual process for ‘learning’ about challenges and designing solutions/services using Design Thinking mentality. It is all in one week! Similar to Design Thinking and Learn Startup which focus on learning, Design Sprint aims to reduce the risk of having wrong a product/ solution. Although customer usage of solutions is the final judge, Design Sprint can reduce the risk of developing the wrong feature in the first place. In Agile language, before adding a feature into the product backlog, we need to ensure first that it was tested earlier with the target audience using tangible prototype rather than words. Design Sprint can enable that!

Most of the books on innovation and design espouse ideas about what it means. This book is designed for you to put to work, tomorrow if necessary. Sprint is unique in presenting a step by step guide of interactive design sessions without coming across as a cookbook or boring methodology. The authors skip past the 'theory' or design and go right to the action and that is a welcome change. Sprint is a 5 day intensive design process for exploring, defining and prototyping solutions to specific problems. The book presents a readily understandable and very engaging description of the process that follows three or four companies through the process. The authors even discuss failures and how they learned that obvious things do not work. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED for anyone who needs to engage a team to start and solve large and complex problems. This is a well designed book, engagingly written with the right amount of prescription. The authors create just enough structure to allow the creativity of teams to come out. They also provide very practical advice on building the kinds of prototypes needed to successfully test ideas and solutions. Strengths: Actionable advice provided in a highly accessible way. Clear instructions and guidance on the fundamental things to get right, without being picky about the things that will work themselves out Simple and understandable illustrations and actions Example stories of others, including success and failures Practical discussion of tools you will need from advice about not using sharpie markers to prototyping tools. Support materials at the end that condense the process into a few pages Respect for the reader, a real issue in many design books that view the uninitiated as somewhat inferior, not this book. Challenges The authors assume that you have some appreciation for the creative or a design process. This is a structure to make that process flourish and therefore it does not try to convince you that design is the way to go. It is written for people who think before they act, blindly following this recipe will not create great results because the value is in the interactions between people and the creative process that happens within the structure. Overall -- great book to USE rather than just one to read and think about.

Since the book publication in 2016, the Design Sprint process has become a familiar approach to efficiently solving big business problems/validating hypothesis that involve high amounts of complexity/uncertainty/risk, and Jake gives the background as to how Design Sprints originated along with an in-depth account of how they went through the process to test some ideas at Google Ventures. Covering a variety of different experiments which they ran/problems they addressed made it a good read, including Slack (finding the best way to explain Slack to non-tech customers), Savioke Hotels (how hotel guests would react to a robot with personality, by experimenting through a robot delivering a toothbrush to a guests room), Flatiron Health (dealing with the complexities of getting cancer patients into clinical trials), and Blue Bottle Coffee (getting their value proposition clear on a new digital experience). The book is practical, so if you’re new to Design Sprints, you’ll find it easy to create a plan which you can apply across your product as well as understand the key ingredients needed, so whilst tools have evolved to make it easier more than ever to validate a hypothesis in a remote world for digital products using the likes of Figma, Miro, UserTesting… the fundamentals haven’t changed in that you need to: 1. Collaborate with people throughout the sprint 2. Have a decision maker (normally Product Manager) 3. Identify a high priority problem to solve 4. Ideate and create prototype/s 5. Get feedback from potential customers “When you get into a regular rhythm of listening to customers, it can remind you why you’re working so hard in the first place.”

If you're in UI/UX this book is a must read. I am a senior UI designer and I run creative workshops at my job, and this book helped me implement some changes in order to be a more effective facilitator. These guys have put in the work in fine tuning the sprint, and have provided every bit of detail throughout the whole book so that you can get a head start. I'd recommend this to anyone who runs creative workshops

I've now bought 3 copies of this book. Even if you're not planning a design sprint and are interested in design thinking, product design, wicked problem-solving - this book is an extremely valuable resource. Practical tips and some fascinating anecdotes. Knapp and co know what they are doing and it's great that they shared it.

Bra, praktisk metodik som vi kommer att implementera på mitt företag.

Metodo concreto e facilmente applicabile e versatile per diverse sfide e opportunità aziendali