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

by Jake Knapp

As the organization goes on, it’ll be useful to label the themes. Just write a title on a fresh sticky note and put it above the group. (We usually end up with a “Misc” theme of notes that don’t fit anywhere else. Those misfit notes often end up being some of the best ones.)

  Organize into groups, and give each group a label.

  This process could go on forever if you let it, but the organization doesn’t have to be perfect. After ten minutes, the notes will be sorted enough to move on to prioritization.

  Vote on How Might We notes

  To prioritize the notes, you’ll use dot voting. It’s one of our favorite shortcuts for skipping lengthy debate. Dot voting works pretty much the way it sounds:

  1. Give two large dot stickers to each person.

  2. Give four large dot stickers to the Decider because her opinion counts a little more.

  3. Ask everyone to review the goal and sprint questions.

  4. Ask everyone to vote in silence for the most useful How Might We questions.

  5. It’s okay to vote for your own note, or to vote twice for the same note.

  At the end of the voting, you’ll have clusters of dots on a few How Might We notes, and the whole wall will be prioritized.

  Use dots to vote for the most promising questions.

  When the voting is over, take the How Might We notes with multiple votes, remove them from the wall, and find a place to stick them on your map. Most notes will probably correspond with a specific step in the story. Here’s Flatiron’s map again:

  Flatiron Health’s map with top How Might We notes.

  The prioritization process isn’t perfect: There’s little time for deliberation, and early votes will sometimes bias later votes. But it leads to pretty good decisions, and it happens fast enough to leave time for the most important job of the day: After a look back over your long-term goal, your sprint questions, your map, and the notes you took this afternoon, your team will choose one specific target for the rest of your sprint’s efforts.

  * * *

  I. We’re not naming any names, but . . . (cough) engineers.

  II. We prefer whiteboard markers over Sharpies for three reasons: (1) They’re more versatile. (2) They don’t smell as much. (3) If you hand Jake a Sharpie, he’ll accidentally use it on the whiteboard, guaranteed.

  7

  Target

  In 1948, a young scientist named Marie Tharp moved to New York and found a job in the geology department at Columbia University. There she took on an unusual assignment: making the world’s first detailed map of the ocean floor. Tharp plotted thousands of sonar soundings with painstaking precision. Where there were gaps between data points, she used her expertise in geology and math to figure out what was missing.

  As Tharp inked her map, she discovered something surprising. What had appeared to be isolated undersea mountains were in fact one long, interconnected chain of volcanic ranges and deep valleys. It jumped right out of her map: a thick, unbroken band stretching for thousands of miles.

  Today, you can easily see the Mid-Ocean Ridge (as it’s now known) using Google Earth. In the Atlantic Ocean the ridge shows up as a dark blue line snaking from the waters north of Greenland, through Iceland, and all the way into the South Atlantic. There, at tiny Bouvet Island, it connects with another jagged blue band and runs east toward the Indian Ocean. On and on it goes, one ridge connecting to another, from ocean to ocean, around the entire earth.

  Tharp was the first to see it. The ridge, she hypothesized, was a massive crack where the earth’s shell pulled apart. At the time, plate tectonics—the idea that giant pieces of the earth’s crust are in constant motion, moving continents and shaping landscapes—was generally considered to be a wacky idea. But it was difficult to argue with Tharp’s map. By the late 1960s, plate tectonics was accepted as fact.

  • • •

  At the end of the day on Monday, you’re set up for a Marie Tharp moment. Tharp didn’t go looking for the Mid-Ocean Ridge, but when she compiled the data and made a map, she couldn’t miss it. After interviewing the experts and organizing your notes, the most important part of your project should jump right out of your map, almost like a crack in the earth.

  Your final task on Monday is to choose a target for your sprint. Who is the most important customer, and what’s the critical moment of that customer’s experience? The rest of the sprint will flow from this decision. Throughout the week, you’ll be focused on that target—sketching solutions, making a plan, and building a prototype of that moment and the events around it.

  Savioke decided to target the hotel guest (rather than the hotel staff) and to focus on the moment of delivery (rather than the elevator or lobby). The other scenarios were important, but the biggest risk and opportunity were at the guest-room door. And they knew that if they got the delivery right, they could apply what they learned elsewhere.

  Blue Bottle Coffee decided to target their most challenging audience: Customers who had never heard of their cafés and who were shopping for beans they had never tasted. If they could convince strangers that their beans were worth buying, they could be sure the new online store would work well for their fans.

  What about Flatiron Health? They had plenty of viable targets. They might try to help patients better understand how the clinical trials worked, and that they wouldn’t be treated as guinea pigs. They might try to streamline the many steps that happened after patients agreed to a trial. They might send a message to doctors before every appointment, reminding them to consider a trial therapy. The possibilities went on and on, but Amy, the Decider, had to pick one target.

  Throughout Monday afternoon, we had talked to key experts from the Flatiron team. Janet Donegan, a nurse practitioner with twenty-five years of experience in oncology clinics, gave an account of the work done by clinic staff. The software engineers—Floyd, DJ, Allison, and Charlie—detailed the world of medical record data. With each interview, the story got a little clearer.

  Everyone had a chance to share an opinion about what we should focus on. Bobby Green, the VP of clinical strategy, thought it would be best to build a tool for doctors. The engineers wanted to focus on research coordinators. Both had excellent arguments.

  By late afternoon, the snowfall had thickened and everyone had a cup of coffee in hand. We were all gathered around a whiteboard, where the team had drawn and redrawn (and re-redrawn) the map. The top How Might We notes were stuck beside corresponding steps in the process. To an outsider, it might have looked like a mess of arrows, text, and sticky notes. To our team, it was as clear as Gene Kranz’s diagram of the Apollo 13 flight path.

  At last, it was time to make the final decision about where to focus the sprint. Amy needed to choose one target customer and one target moment on the map. Those of us from GV were bracing for a long discussion. But when Jake asked Amy if she was ready, she nodded and grabbed a marker.

  “Right here.” Amy made two circles on the whiteboard:

  Flatiron Health’s map, with target customer and target moment.

  “The research coordinators,” she said, “when they’re searching to see if a new patient matches a trial. It’s the top of the funnel, where we can evaluate the most patients. And it’s the coordinators’ primary job to match patients with trials. We won’t be competing for attention like we would be with the doctors.”

  Around the room, the Flatiron team nodded, as if Amy’s choice was obvious. We looked at Bobby Green. Earlier that afternoon, he’d made a great argument for focusing on doctors, since they were closer to the treatment decision. Like Amy, Bobby was an oncologist, and he’d spent years running a cancer clinic. He knew what he was talking about. But Bobby had come around. “Doctors’ behavior is tough to change, and our system won’t be perfect at first. The research coordinators will be more tolerant when we make mistakes.”

  “This is the right target,” Amy said. “If we can help coordinators find more matches, it’ll be a giant first step.”

  • • • />
  In all of our sprints with startups, we’ve never encountered anything more convoluted than clinical trial enrollment. Yet for Amy, the target was as obvious as the Mid-Ocean Ridge. It jumped right out of the map. And the rest of the team found it easy to commit to her decision.

  Of course, we shouldn’t have been surprised. Amy wasn’t the Decider by accident. She had deep expertise and a strong vision. As for the rest of the team? Throughout the day, they had all heard the same information, seen the same notes, and agreed to the same map. Everyone had a chance to register his or her opinion. By Monday afternoon, they had clarity about the challenge, the opportunity, and the risk. The target was obvious to them, too.

  Once you’ve clustered your team’s How Might We notes, the decision about where to focus your sprint will likely be easy. It’s the place on your map where you have the biggest opportunity to do something great (and also, perhaps, the greatest risk of failure).

  Pick a target

  The Decider needs to choose one target customer and one target event on the map. Whatever she chooses will become the focus of the rest of the sprint—the sketches, prototype, and test all flow from this decision.

  Ask the Decider to make the call

  It’s easiest if the Decider just makes the decision without a lot of discussion and process. After all, you’ve been discussing and processing all day. By Monday afternoon, most Deciders will be able to make the decision as easily as Amy did. But sometimes, the Decider wants input before she chooses. If that’s the case, conduct a quick, silent “straw poll” to collect opinions from the team.

  Straw poll (if the Decider wants help)

  Ask everyone on the team to choose the customer and the event each of them believes are most important and to write down those choices on a piece of paper. Once everyone has privately made a selection, register the votes on the map with a whiteboard marker. After the votes have been tallied, discuss any big differences of opinion. That should be enough input for the Decider. Turn it back over to her for the final decision.

  Once you’ve selected a 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. In our sprint with Flatiron, the target (coordinators searching for matching trials) matched the sprint question “Will clinics change their workflow?” By testing a solution with real coordinators, we hoped to learn the answer.

  Flatiron Health’s target matched one of their sprint questions.

  * * *

  By Monday afternoon, you’ve identified a long-term goal and the questions to answer along the way. You’ve made a map and circled the target for your sprint. Everyone on the team will have the same information, and everyone will understand the week’s objective. Next, on Tuesday, it’ll be time to come up with solutions.

  FACILITATOR NOTES

  1. Ask for permission

  You may feel nervous about managing the group. That’s natural. Even the most experienced Facilitators get nervous. And since structured meetings are uncommon in most companies, your team may not be used to the idea. What should you do to start things off right?

  A helpful tactic (learned from our friend Charles Warren, a former Googler) is to ask the group for permission up front. Tell the team you’re going to facilitate and that you’ll keep track of time and process so they don’t have to. Then just say, “Sound okay?”

  Don’t expect everyone to shout “Yes!” in unison, but because you laid it out there, and because you gave them the opportunity to object (which they likely won’t), everyone will feel better about the dynamic. More importantly, so will you.

  2. ABC: Always be capturing

  We don’t want to freak you out, but if you’re playing the role of Facilitator, Monday is your busiest day. In addition to leading the group through all of the activities, you’re responsible for something simple but important: recording key ideas on the whiteboard. Or as entrepreneur Josh Porter likes to say: “Always be capturing.”

  All day Monday, the Facilitator should have a whiteboard marker in her hand. Throughout the day, you’ll synthesize the team’s discussion into notes on the whiteboard. Most of the time, you’ll be able to follow the exercises in this book. But not everything will fit into our templates. Feel free to improvise as you go, making lists of interesting information, drawing additional diagrams, and so on.

  As you go, ask the team, “Does this look right?” or “How should I capture that?” And when the conversation starts to stall out, you can nudge it to conclusion by saying, “Is there a good way we can capture this thinking and move on?”

  Remember, the whiteboard is the shared brain of the team. Keep it organized and you’ll help everyone be smarter, remember more, and make better decisions, faster.

  3. Ask obvious questions

  The Facilitator needs to say “Why?” a lot and ask questions to which everybody already knows the answer. Covering the obvious ensures there’s no misinterpretation, and it often draws out important details that not everyone knows about.

  In our sprints with startups, we have an unfair advantage: We’re outsiders who don’t know anything, so our dumb questions are genuine. In your sprint, you’ll have to act like an outsider.

  4. Take care of the humans

  As Facilitator, you’re not only running the sprint—you’ve got to keep your sprint team focused and energized. Here are some of our tricks:

  Take frequent breaks

  Breaks are important. We like to take a ten-minute break every sixty to ninety minutes, since that’s about as long as anyone can stay focused on one task or exercise. Breaks also give everyone an opportunity to have a snack and get coffee. When the team is not hungry and/or suffering from caffeine withdrawal, your job as Facilitator is much easier.

  Lunch late

  Eat lunch at 1 p.m., and you’ll miss the rush at most cafeterias or restaurants. It also splits the day neatly in half. You’ll work for three hours, from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m., then another three, from 2 p.m. to 5 p.m.

  Eat light and often

  Provide good, nutritious snacks in the morning and throughout the day. And be careful of eating a heavy lunch. No burritos, pizza, foot-long subs, or all-you-can-eat buffets. We learned the hard way (Indian food burritos, with tortillas made of naan) how these lunch foods can kill a group’s momentum in the afternoon.

  5. Decide and move on

  Throughout the sprint week, there are many large and small decisions. For the biggest decisions, we’ve given you a script (like Monday’s target, or the narrowing of sketches you’ll find on Wednesday). But you’ll have to handle some smaller decisions on your own.

  Slow decisions sap energy and threaten the timeline of the sprint. Don’t let the group dissolve into unproductive debates that aren’t moving you toward a decision. When a decision is slow or not obvious, it’s your job as Facilitator to call on the Decider. She should make the decision so the team can keep moving.

  Tuesday

  On Monday, you and your team defined the challenge and chose a target. On Tuesday, you’ll come up with 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 emphasizes critical thinking over artistry. Later in the week, the best of these sketches will form the plan for your prototype and test. We hope you had a good night’s sleep and a balanced breakfast, because Tuesday is an important day.

  8

  Remix and Improve

  Imagine it’s the early 1900s. You’re drinking a nice hot cup of coffee. Only . . . it’s not so nice. Coffee grounds stick in your teeth, and the liquid is so bitter your mouth puckers. If it weren’t for the caffeine, you probably wouldn’t bother. Back in those days, coffee was brewed like tea, by dunking a pouch of ground beans into boiling water. There was a lot of room for error: over-brewing, under-brewing, and plenty of grit at the bottom of the cup. Some people strained their coffee thro
ugh filters made of cloth, but the material was overly porous and a mess to clean up.

  In 1908, a German woman named Melitta Bentz got fed up with gritty, bitter coffee. Convinced there had to be a better way, Bentz went looking for ideas. She came across the blotting paper in her son’s school notebook. The material was designed for mopping up excess ink. It was thick and absorbent—and disposable.

  Inspired, Bentz tore out a sheet of the blotting paper. She punctured holes in a brass pot with a nail, placed the pot on top of a cup, put the paper inside, filled it with ground coffee, and added hot water. The resulting drink was smooth, grit-free, and a snap to clean up after. Bentz had invented the paper coffee filter. More than a hundred years later, it remains one of the most popular (and best) tools for brewing coffee.

  • • •

  We all want a flash of divine inspiration that changes the world—and impresses our teammates. We want to create something completely new. But amazing ideas don’t happen like that. The lesson of Melitta Bentz is that great innovation is built on existing ideas, repurposed with vision. Coffee filters had been tried before, but they were made of cloth. And the blotting paper? It was just sitting there.

  This combination of existing ideas doesn’t take anything away from Bentz’s achievement, but it is promising news for the rest of us would-be inventors. In your sprint, you’ll follow her example: remix and improve—but never blindly copy.

  You’ll begin Tuesday morning by searching for existing ideas you can use in the afternoon to inform your solution. It’s like playing with Lego bricks: first gather useful components, then convert them into something original and new.