5 General Key Takeaways From The Book “Sprint”
Practice some Sprint principles in your everyday life
“Sprint” is a book by Jake Knapp, John Zeratsky, & Braden Kowitz, that outlines the sprint method that they have used with numerous startups as part of their work in Google Ventures. It’s an efficient 5-day process that allows companies to quickly identify, build, and test ideas or solutions. It uses design thinking methods and compresses them into five days using easy to understand tools that are very handily summarized and given to you on a silver plater (in the form of this book).
The book was very well written and easy to read. There were many real-world examples from actual sprints that the team had done, and a good amount of humor injected into what could have been a very dry manual. The power of this book lies in the last few pages, which gives you a checklist of things to do if you want to conduct your sprint. I recommend this book to anyone that wants to test out a new idea. It’s fast and cost-efficient and you get real feedback from customers.
Instead of outlining what the book already does so well, here some of my general key takeaways that are applicable even outside the sprint environment:
1. Begin with the end in mind
This is useful advice for the majority of life’s undertakings and is emphasized throughout the sprint process. First, the team needs to identify the correct challenge — what is the root of the issue, and what do you want to address? Throughout the sprint, it’s important to refer back to the end to make sure that you are solving the right things, taking notes for the right things, and getting feedback on the right things.
2. “Work alone together”
This is a phrase that Jake et al included to describe how to efficiently work in a group. They challenge the effectiveness of group brainstorming out loud, stating that individuals work much better alone. Hence “work along together” — the process of coming up with solutions individually, in a group setting, then coming together after to make progress. This concept of limiting the amount of group discussion and interaction is repeated throughout the sprint, even in the way they evaluate solutions. For example, using tools like sticky notes and dot stickers to create heat maps around different ideas is a much more efficient way to identify the most exciting features and eliminates any skewed opinions and lengthy and unfocused discussions.
3. Draw inspiration from outside
“Great innovation is built on existing ideas, repurposed with vision”
The team recognizes that products and services are often remixes of other already existing ideas. It’s not bad to remix. What’s bad is making an exact duplicate of something that exists, especially if it doesn’t bring you closer to the end goal (again, refer to key takeaway #1). Part of the sprint is looking for examples from outside your department, company, or industry, that do something exceptionally well. The purpose is to draw inspiration, learn from it, and see how it can make your product or service better.
4. Think like Goldilocks
When it comes to creating the product to test, the advice is to practice a “prototype mindset”, which means being aware that the product or service you are creating isn’t perfect and isn’t long-term. Whatever that turns out to be though, it needs to be of “Goldilocks quality”. It isn’t so bad that your customers will give negative feedback or recognize that it’s fake, but it isn’t perfect enough that you spend too much time and too many resources on it. When it comes to day-to-day tasks, oftentimes, the self-proclaimed perfectionists have this fear of starting or finishing anything because of the need to be, well, perfect. Goldilocks quality is a good way to think of things that just don’t need that level of perfection that many convince themselves they do.
5. There will be a winner every time (even if the winner isn’t the winner in the end)
Whether the sprint was testing one idea or multiple ideas, and whether they were a hit with customers or not, there is still always a winner. At the end of the sprint, you have either identified whether an idea is good or bad. Regardless of the outcome, it gets a team closer to where they need to be, with concrete feedback that you can act on. So, don’t be afraid to test and try the thing out to be closer where you need to be.
