Book of the Week: Sprint
18 Oct 2016
This week I read Sprint: How to Solve Big Problems and Test New Ideas in Just Five Days by Jake Knapp, because I’m impatient and want to solve big problems. I think of the book as a mix of design thinking, agile sprints, usability testing and lean startup. Knapp has refined the sprint process through experimentation and this books serves as a step by step guide. The stories in the book were fresh to me since they were more recent examples and companies in Google Venture’s portfolio. Sprint The purpose of a sprint is to generate and test ideas to solve a problem before fully committing resources.
- Decider is needed to make decisions
- Facilator is needed to make sure things stay on track
- 5 days
- ideal size for sprint team is 7 or fewer people.
- start at 10 AM, end at 5 PM
- lunch at 1 PM to break up day in half.
I was going to summarize each day of the sprint, but you’re better off reading the book. The checklist in the back of the book does a good job of detailing the specifics. If I was going to do a sprint, I would have a copy of the book on hand. Knapp has done enough sprints to know what works and what doesn’t. There is one thing I would like to highlight. Group brainstorming doesn’t work. You need to work individually and then show, critique and combine ideas. People try to brainstorm, because it sounds cool and inclusive, but in practice it falls flat. Also improving your drawing ability by reading Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain will make it easier to sketch your ideas during the sprint.