Sprint

When we talk to startups about sprints, we encourage them to go after their most important problem. Running a sprint requires a lot of energy and focus. Don’t go for the small win, or the nice-to-have project, because people won’t bring their best efforts. They probably won’t even clear their schedules in the first place.

Get that surface right, and you can work backward to figure out the underlying systems or technology. Focusing on the surface allows you to move fast and answer big questions before you commit to execution, which is why any challenge, no matter how large, can benefit from a sprint.

To build the perfect sprint team, first you’re going to need a Danny Ocean: someone with authority to make decisions. That person is the Decider, a role so important we went ahead and capitalized it. The Decider is the official decision-maker for the project.

We’ve found the ideal size for a sprint to be seven people or fewer.

Before every sprint, we ask: Who might cause trouble if he or she isn’t included? We don’t mean people who argue just for the sake of arguing. We mean that smart person who has strong, contrary opinions, and whom you might be slightly uncomfortable with including in your sprint.

If you have more than seven people you think should participate in your sprint, schedule the extras to come in as “experts” for a short visit on Monday afternoon. During their visit, they can tell the rest of the team what they know and share their opinions.

This person is the Facilitator, and she’s responsible for managing time, conversations, and the overall process. She needs to be confident leading a meeting, including summarizing discussions and telling people it’s time to stop talking and move on. It’s an important job. And since you’re the one reading this book, you might be a good candidate. The Facilitator needs to remain unbiased about decisions, so it’s not a good idea to combine the Decider and Facilitator roles in one person.

A sprint day looks like this: You’ll start at 10 a.m. and end at 5 p.m., with an hour-long lunch in between.

Sprints require high energy and focus, but the team won’t be able to give that effort if they’re stressed out or fatigued. By starting at 10 a.m., we give everyone time to check email and feel caught up before the day begins. By ending before people get too tired, we ensure the energy level stays high throughout the week.

The sprint team must be in the same room Monday through Thursday from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Friday’s test starts a little earlier, at 9 a.m.

Five days provide enough urgency to sharpen focus and cut out useless debate, but enough breathing room to build and test a prototype without working to exhaustion. And because most companies use a five-day workweek, it’s feasible to slot a five-day sprint into existing schedules. Your team will take a short morning break (around 11:30 a.m.), an hour-long lunch (around 1 p.m.), and a short afternoon break (around 3:30 p.m.). These breaks are a sort of “pressure-release valve,” allowing people to rest their brains and catch up on work happening outside the sprint. Inside the sprint room, everybody will be 100 percent focused on the sprint’s challenge. The entire team must shut their laptops and put away their phones.

In a sprint, time is precious, and we can’t afford distractions in the room. So we have a simple rule: No laptops, phones, or iPads allowed.

There are two exceptions to the no-device rule: 1.  It’s okay to check your device during a break. 2.  It’s okay to leave the room to check your device. At any time. No judgment. Take a call, check an email, tweet a Tweet, whatever – just take it outside. We also use devices for some specific purposes: when we need to show something to the whole team, and on Thursday for prototyping. See, we’re not so mean.

We’ve found that magic happens when we use big whiteboards to solve problems. As humans, our short-term memory is not all that good, but our spatial memory is awesome. A sprint room, plastered with notes, diagrams, printouts, and more, takes advantage of that spatial memory.

Before starting your sprint, you’ll need a bunch of basic office supplies, including sticky notes, markers, pens, Time Timers (see below), and regular old printer paper. You’ll also need healthy snacks to keep up the team’s energy.

We use Time Timers in our sprints to mark small chunks of time, anywhere from three minutes to one hour. These tiny deadlines give everyone an added sense of focus and urgency. Now, there are plenty of ways to keep time that don’t require a special device, but the Time Timer is worth the extra cost. Because it’s a large mechanical object, it’s visible to everyone in the room in a way that no phone or iPad app could ever be. And unlike with a traditional clock, no math or memory is required to figure out how much time is remaining. When time is visible, it becomes easy to understand and discuss,

Set a long-term goal To start the conversation, ask your team this question: “Why are we doing this project? Where do we want to be six months, a year, or even five years from now?”

In your sprint, you have a golden opportunity to ferret out assumptions, turn them into questions, and find some answers.

List sprint questions You’ll list out your sprint questions on a second whiteboard (if you have one). We have a few prompts for getting teams to think about assumptions and questions: •  What questions do we want to answer in this sprint? •  To meet our long-term goal, what has to be true? •  Imagine we travel into the future and our project failed. What might have caused that?

Your map should be simple, too. You won’t have to capture every detail and nuance. Instead, you’ll just include the major steps required for customers to move from beginning to completion,

Use the same whiteboard you wrote your goal on and dive in. When we’re drawing our maps, we follow these steps (keep in mind, there’s a checklist at the back of the book, so you don’t have to memorize this): 1. List the actors (on the left) The “actors” are all the important characters in your story. Most often, they’re different kinds of customers. Sometimes, people other than customers – say, your sales team or a government regulator – are important actors and should be listed as well. And sometimes, of course, there’s a robot. 2. Write the ending (on the right) It’s usually a lot easier to figure out the end than the middle of the story. Flatiron’s story ended with treatment. Savioke’s story ended with a delivery. And Blue Bottle’s story ended with buying coffee. 3. Words and arrows in between The map should be functional, not a work of art. Words and arrows and the occasional box should be enough. No drawing expertise required. 4. Keep it simple Your map should have from five to around fifteen steps. If there are more than twenty, it’s probably too complicated. By keeping the map simple, the team can agree on the structure of the problem without getting tied up in competing solutions. 5. Ask for help As you draw, you should keep asking the team, “Does this map look right?”

Most of Monday afternoon is devoted to an exercise we call Ask the Experts: a series of one-at-a-time interviews with people from your sprint team, from around your company, and possibly even an outsider or two with special knowledge. As you go, each member of your team will take notes individually. You’ll be gathering the information you need to choose the target of your sprint, while gathering fuel for the solutions you sketch on Tuesday.

Ask the Experts Allow half an hour for each conversation, although you likely won’t use all of that time. Once the expert is ready, we follow a simple script to keep things moving. 1. Introduce the sprint If the expert isn’t part of the sprint team, tell her what the sprint is about. 2. Review the whiteboards Give the expert a two-minute tour of the long-term goal, sprint questions, and map. 3. Open the door Ask the expert to tell you everything she knows about the challenge at hand. 4. Ask questions The sprint team should act like a bunch of reporters digging for a story. Ask the expert to fill in areas where she has extra expertise. Ask her to retell you what she thinks you already know. And most important, ask the expert to tell you where you’ve got it wrong. Can she find anything on your map that’s incomplete? Would she add any sprint questions to your list? What opportunities does she see? Useful phrases are “Why?” and “Tell me more about that.” 5. Fix the whiteboards Add sprint questions. Change your map. If necessary, update your long-term goal. Your experts are here to tell you what you didn’t know (or forgot) in the morning, so don’t be shy about making revisions.

Each person writes his or her own notes, one at a time, on sticky notes. At the end of the day, you’ll merge the whole group’s notes, organize them, and choose a handful of the most interesting ones. These standout notes will help you make a decision about which part of the map to target, and on Tuesday, they’ll give you ideas for your sketches. With this technique, you take notes in the form of a question, beginning with the words “How might we …?” For

To take notes, follow these steps: 1.  Put the letters “HMW” in the top left corner of your sticky note. 2.  Wait. 3.  When you hear something interesting, convert it into a question (quietly). 4.  Write the question on your sticky note. 5.  Peel off the note and set it aside.

Organize How Might We notes As soon as the expert interviews are finished, everybody should gather his or her How Might We notes and stick them on the wall. Just put them up in any haphazard fashion, like this: First, put up the How Might We notes without any organization. Wow, what a mess! Now you’ll organize the notes into groups. Working together, find How Might We questions with similar themes and physically group them together on the wall.

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.

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.

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.

Our method for collecting and synthesizing these existing ideas is an exercise we call Lightning Demos. Your team will take turns giving three-minute tours of their favorite solutions: from other products, from different domains, and from within your own company. This exercise is about finding raw materials, not about copying your competitors. We’ve found limited benefit in looking at products from the same industry. Time and time again, the ideas that spark the best solutions come from similar problems in different environments.

Also look for ideas that are in progress but unfinished – and even old ideas that have been abandoned.

Lightning Demos Lightning Demos are pretty informal. Here’s how they work: Make a list Ask everyone on your team to come up with a list of products or services to review for inspiring solutions.

Give three-minute demos One at a time, the person who suggested each product gives a tour – showing the whole team what’s so cool about it. It’s a good idea to keep a timer going: Each tour should be around three minutes long.

Capture big ideas as you go Your three-minute Lightning Demos will go by quickly, and you don’t want to rely on short-term memory to keep track of all the good ideas. Remember the “Always be capturing” mantra and take notes on the whiteboard as you go. Start by asking the person who’s giving the tour, “What’s the big idea here that might be useful?” Then make a quick drawing of that inspiring component, write a simple headline above it, and note the source underneath.

Divide or swarm Should you divide the problem? Take a good look at your map and have a quick team discussion. If you’ve picked a super-focused target, it might be fine to skip assignments and have the whole team swarm the same part of your problem. If there are several key pieces to cover, you should divide up.

On Tuesday afternoon, it’s time to come up with solutions. But there will be no brainstorming; no shouting over one another; no deferring judgment so wacky ideas can flourish. Instead, you’ll work individually, take your time, and sketch.

We’re asking you to sketch because we’re convinced it’s the fastest and easiest way to transform abstract ideas into concrete solutions. Once your ideas become concrete, they can be critically and fairly evaluated by the rest of the team – without any sales pitch. And, perhaps most important of all, sketching allows every person to develop those concrete ideas while working alone.

Work alone together We know that individuals working alone generate better solutions than groups brainstorming out loud.fn1 Working alone offers time to do research, find inspiration, and think about the problem. And the pressure of responsibility that comes with working alone often spurs us to our best work.

The four-step sketch contains each of these important elements. You’ll start with twenty minutes to “boot up” by taking notes on the goals, opportunities, and inspiration you’ve collected around the room. Then you’ll have another twenty minutes to write down rough ideas. Next, it’s time to limber up and explore alternative ideas with a rapid sketching exercise called Crazy 8s. And finally, you’ll take thirty minutes or more to draw your solution sketch – a single well-formed concept with all the details worked out.

On Monday or Tuesday, we start the process of finding customers for Friday’s test. That means one person needs to do some extra work outside of the sprint. It takes all week – but only an hour or two a day – to screen, select, and recruit the best matches. Ideally, someone besides the Facilitator should take responsibility for recruiting, since the Facilitator will be busy enough as it is. There are two ways to find the right customers for your test. If you have fairly easy-to-find customers, you’ll use Craigslist. If you have hard-to-find customers, you’ll use your network.

The entire sprint depends on getting good data in Friday’s test, so whoever takes charge of recruiting your customers should take the job seriously. Even though this recruiting happens behind the scenes, it’s as important as the team activities. For a sample screening survey and other online resources, take a look at thesprintbook.com

Your goal for Wednesday morning is to decide which solutions to prototype. Our motto for these decisions is “unnatural but efficient.” Instead of meandering, your team’s conversations will follow a script.

The sticky decision We’ve spent years optimizing our sprint decisions to be as efficient as possible. We ended up with a five-step process – and coincidentally, every step involves something sticky: 1.  Art museum: Put the solution sketches on the wall with masking tape. 2.  Heat map: Look at all the solutions in silence, and use dot stickers to mark interesting parts. 3.  Speed critique: Quickly discuss the highlights of each solution, and use sticky notes to capture big ideas. 4.  Straw poll: Each person chooses one solution, and votes for it with a dot sticker. 5.  Supervote: The Decider makes the final decision, with – you guessed it – more stickers. This sticky stuff isn’t a gimmick. The dot stickers let us form and express our opinions without lengthy debate, and the sticky notes allow us to record big ideas without relying on our short-term memory.

Explaining ideas has all kinds of downsides. If someone makes a compelling case for his or her idea or is a bit more charismatic, your opinion will be skewed. If you associate the idea with its creator (“Jamie always has great ideas”), your opinion will be skewed. Even just by knowing what the idea is about, your opinion will be skewed.

Here’s how the speed critique works:   1.  Gather around a solution sketch.   2.  Set a timer for three minutes.   3.  The Facilitator narrates the sketch. (“Here it looks like a customer is clicking to play a video, and then clicking over to the details page …”)   4.  The Facilitator calls out standout ideas that have clusters of stickers by them. (“Lots of dots by the animated video …”)   5.  The team calls out standout ideas that the Facilitator missed.   6.  The Scribe writes standout ideas on sticky notes and sticks them above the sketch. Give each idea a simple name, like “Animated Video” or “One-Step Signup.”   7.  Review concerns and questions.   8.  The creator of the sketch remains silent until the end. (“Creator, reveal your identity and tell us what we missed!”)   9.  The creator explains any missed ideas that the team failed to spot, and answers any questions. 10.  Move to the next sketch and repeat.

Think of the straw poll as a way to give your Decider some advice. It’s a straightforward exercise: 1.  Give everyone one vote (represented by a big dot sticker – we like pink). 2.  Remind everyone of the long-term goal and sprint questions. 3.  Remind everyone to err on the side of risky ideas with big potential. 4.  Set a timer for ten minutes. 5.  Each person privately writes down his or her choice. It could be a whole sketch, or just one idea in a sketch. 6.  When time is up, or when everyone is finished, place the votes on the sketches. 7.  Each person briefly explains his or her vote (only spend about one minute per person).

The supervote is the ultimate decision. Each Decider will get three special votes (with the Decider’s initials on them!), and whatever they vote for is what your team will prototype and test. Deciders can choose ideas that were popular in the straw poll. Or they can choose to ignore the straw poll. They can spread out their votes, or put them all in one place. Basically, the Deciders can do whatever the heck they want.

When you have two good, conflicting ideas, you don’t have to choose between them at all. Instead, you can prototype both, and in Friday’s test, you’ll be able to see how each one fares with your customers. Your prototypes will battle head-to-head, like professional wrestlers whacking each other with folding chairs. We call this kind of test a Rumble.

If you have more than one winning solution, involve the whole team in a short discussion about whether to do a Rumble or combine the winners into a single prototype. Typically, this decision about format is easy. If it’s not, you can always ask the Decider to make the call.

Throughout the sprint, you’ll have times when you need to gather information or ideas from the group and then make a decision. The Note-and-Vote is a shortcut. It only takes about ten minutes, and it works great for everything from fake brand names to deciding where to get lunch. 1.  Give each team member a piece of paper and a pen. 2.  Everyone takes three minutes and quietly writes down ideas. 3.  Everyone takes two minutes to self-edit his or her list down to the best two or three ideas. 4.  Write each person’s top ideas on the whiteboard. In a sprint with seven people, you’ll have roughly fifteen to twenty ideas in all. 5.  Everyone takes two minutes and quietly chooses his or her favorite idea from the whiteboard. 6.  Going around the room, each person calls out his or her favorite. For each “vote,” draw a dot next to the chosen idea on the whiteboard. 7.  The Decider makes the final decision. As always, she can choose to follow the votes or not.

If you start prototyping without a plan, you’ll get bogged down by small, unanswered questions. Pieces won’t fit together, and your prototype could fall apart.

Draw a grid First, you need a big grid with around fifteen frames. Draw a bunch of boxes on an empty whiteboard, each about the size of two sheets of paper.

You’ll start drawing your storyboard in the top left box of the grid. This frame will be the first moment that customers experience on Friday.

Choose an opening scene How do customers find out your company exists? Where are they and what are they doing just before they use your product? Our favorite opening scenes are simple: •  Web search with your website nestled among the results •  Magazine with an advertisement for your service •  Store shelf with your product sitting beside its competitors •  App Store with your app in it •  News article that mentions your service, and possibly some competitors •  Facebook or Twitter feed with your product shared among the other posts

It’s almost always a good idea to present your solution alongside the competition. As a matter of fact, you can ask customers to test out your competitors’ products on Friday right alongside your own prototype.

It’s okay if some parts of your prototype don’t work. You can have buttons that don’t function and menu items that are unavailable. Surprisingly, these “dead ends” are generally easy for customers to ignore in Friday’s test.

Remember that most ideas sound better in the abstract, so they may not be that good. But even if one of those new ideas is the best idea ever, you don’t have time to back up in the process.

Thursday is about illusion. You’ve got an idea for a great solution. Instead of taking weeks, months, or, heck, even years building that solution, you’re going to fake it. In one day, you’ll make a prototype that appears real, just like that Old West façade. And on Friday, your customers – like a movie audience – will forget their surroundings and just react.

To prototype your solution, you’ll need a temporary change of philosophy: from perfect to just enough, from long-term quality to temporary simulation. We call this philosophy the “prototype mindset,” and it’s made up of four simple principles. 1. You Can Prototype Anything

2. Prototypes Are Disposable

3. Build Just Enough to Learn, but Not More

4. The Prototype Must Appear Real

In Friday’s test, customer reactions are solid gold, but their feedback is worth pennies on the dollar.

There’s a good chance that your team’s regular tools are not the right tools for prototyping. The trouble with your team’s regular tools is that they’re too perfect – and too slow. Remember: Your prototype isn’t a real product, it just needs to appear real. You don’t need to worry about supply chains, brand guidelines, or sales training. You don’t need to make every pixel perfect.

Pick the right tools If you’re not sure how to build your prototype, start here: •  If it’s on a screen (website, app, software, etc.) – use Keynote, PowerPoint, or a website-building tool like Squarespace. •  If it’s on paper (report, brochure, flyer, etc.) – use Keynote, PowerPoint, or word processing software like Microsoft Word. •  If it’s a service (customer support, client service, medical care, etc.) – write a script and use your sprint team as actors. •  If it’s a physical space (store, office lobby, etc.) – modify an existing space. •  If it’s an object (physical product, machinery, etc.) – modify an existing object, 3D print a prototype, or prototype the marketing using Keynote or PowerPoint and photos or renderings of the object.

Divide and conquer The Facilitator should help the sprint team divvy up these jobs: •  Makers (2 or more) •  Stitcher (1) •  Writer (1) •  Asset Collector (1 or more) •  Interviewer (1) Makers create the individual components (screens, pages, pieces, and so on) of your prototype.

The Stitcher is responsible for collecting components from the Makers and combining them in a seamless fashion.

Every sprint team needs a Writer, and it’s one of the most important roles. In Chapter 9, we talked about the importance of words in your sketches.

You’ll want at least one Asset Collector on Thursday. It’s not a glamorous role (although “asset collector” does sound glamorous), but it’s one of the keys to rapid prototyping. Your prototype will likely include photos, icons, or sample content that you don’t need to make from scratch. Your Asset Collectors will scour the web, image libraries, your own products, and any other conceivable place to find these elements.

Finally, there’s the Interviewer, who will use the finished prototype to conduct Friday’s customer interviews. On Thursday, he should write an interview script. (We’ll go into detail about the structure of this script in Chapter 16.) It’s best if the Interviewer doesn’t work on the prototype. This way, he won’t be emotionally invested in Friday’s test, and won’t betray any hurt feelings or glee to the customer.

Stitch it together Your Stitcher will make sure dates, times, names, and other fake content are consistent throughout the prototype.

The Stitcher’s job can take many forms, but no matter what you’re prototyping, it’s a critical role. When you divide work, it’s easy to lose track of the whole. The Stitcher will be on the hook to keep everything tight. He may want to check on progress throughout the day, to see if the various parts of the prototype look coherent.

Trial run We like to do our trial run around 3 p.m., so that we still have enough time to fix mistakes and patch any holes we find in the prototype. Have everyone pause work and gather around, and then ask the Stitcher to walk through the entire prototype, narrating as he goes.

Here’s how Friday works: One person from your team acts as Interviewer. He’ll interview five of your target customers, one at a time. He’ll let each of them try to complete a task with the prototype and ask a few questions to understand what they’re thinking as they interact with it. Meanwhile, in another room, the rest of the team will watch a video stream of the interview and make note of the customers’ reactions.

So Nielsen analyzed eighty-three of his own product studies.fn2 He plotted how many problems were discovered after ten interviews, twenty interviews, and so on. The results were both consistent and surprising: 85 percent of the problems were observed after just five people.

The number five also happens to be very convenient. You can fit five one-hour interviews into a single day, with time for a short break between each one and a team debrief at the end:

One-on-one interviews are a remarkable shortcut. They allow you to test a façade of your product, long before you’ve built the real thing – and fallen in love with it. They deliver meaningful results in a single day. But they also offer an important insight that’s nearly impossible to get with large-scale quantitative data: why things work or don’t work. That “why” is critical. If you don’t know why a product or service isn’t working, it’s hard to fix it.

The Five-Act Interview This structured conversation helps the customer get comfortable, establishes some background, and ensures that the entire prototype is reviewed. Here’s how it goes: 1.  A friendly welcome to start the interview 2.  A series of general, open-ended context questions about the customer 3.  Introduction to the prototype(s) 4.  Detailed tasks to get the customer reacting to the prototype 5.  A quick debrief to capture the customer’s overarching thoughts and impressions

The interview is a not a group exercise; it’s a conversation between two people.

Act 1: Friendly welcome People need to feel comfortable to be open, honest, and critical. So the first job of the Interviewer is to welcome the customer and put her at ease. That means a warm greeting and friendly small talk about the weather. It also means smiling a lot.

“Thanks for coming in today! We’re always trying to improve our product, and getting your honest feedback is a really important part of that. “This interview will be pretty informal. I’ll ask a lot of questions, but I’m not testing you – I’m actually testing this product. If you get stuck or confused, it’s not your fault. In fact, it helps us find problems we need to fix. “I’ll start by asking some background questions, then I’ll show you some things we’re working on. Do you have any questions before we begin?”

Act 2: Context questions After the introduction, you’ll be eager to bring out the prototype. Not so fast. Instead, start slow by asking some questions about the customer’s life, interests, and activities. These questions help build rapport, but they also give you context for understanding and interpreting your customer’s reactions and responses.

Act 3: Introduce the prototype(s) Now you’re ready to get the customer started on the prototype. Michael begins by saying: “Would you be willing to look at some prototypes?” By asking for permission, he reinforces the status relationship: The customer is doing him a favor, not the other way around, and it is the prototype that will be tested, not the customer. It’s also important to say: “Some things may not work quite right yet – if you run into something that’s not working, I’ll let you know.” Of course, if you built a “Goldilocks quality” prototype on Thursday, the customer will forget it isn’t real once they start using it. However, introducing it this way encourages them to give blunt feedback. Explaining that it’s a prototype also makes the Interviewer’s job easier in case something breaks or the customer encounters a dead end (both of which are likely to happen). Remind the customer that you’re testing the prototype – not her: “There are no right or wrong answers. Since I didn’t design this, you won’t hurt my feelings or flatter me. In fact, frank, candid feedback is the most helpful.” That “I didn’t design this” line is important, because it’s easier for customers to be honest if they don’t think the Interviewer is emotionally invested in the ideas. Hopefully the Interviewer avoided working on the prototype on Thursday – but he should probably say “I didn’t design this” even if he actually did. Don’t worry, we won’t tell on you. The Interviewer should also remind the customer to think aloud: “As we go, please think aloud. Tell me what you’re trying to do and how you think you can do it. If you get confused or don’t understand something, please tell me. If you see things you like, tell me that, too.” Thinking aloud makes the interview format especially powerful. Seeing where customers struggle and where they succeed with your prototype is useful – but hearing their thoughts as they go is invaluable.

Act 4: Tasks and nudges In the real world, your product will stand alone – people will find it, evaluate it, and use it without you there to guide them. Asking target customers to do realistic tasks during an interview is the best way to simulate that real-world experience. Good task instructions are like clues for a treasure hunt – it’s no fun (and not useful) if you’re told where to go and what to do. You want to watch customers figure out the prototype on their own.

Starting from this simple nudge, the customer reads and evaluates the app description, installs the app, and tries it out. The “how would you decide?” phrasing encourages her to act naturally along the way. We learned much more from this simple task…

As the customer goes through the task, the Interviewer should ask questions to help her think aloud: “What is this? What is it for?” “What do you think of that?” “What do you expect that will do?” “So, what goes through your mind as you look at this?” “What are you looking for?” “What would you do next? Why?” These questions should be easy to answer and not intimidating. The…

When you ask debrief questions, your customers can help you sift through everything you heard. Here are some of Michael’s debrief questions: “How does this product compare to what you do now?” “What did you like about this product? What did you dislike?” “How would you describe this product to a friend?”…

If you’re testing two or more prototypes in your interviews, review each one (to refresh the customer’s memory) and ask these questions: “How would you compare those different products? What are the pros and cons?” “Which parts of each would you combine to…

Watch the interviews together. It’s much faster, because everyone is absorbing the results at once. Your conclusions will be better as a group, since you have seven brains working together. You’ll avoid problems of credibility and trust, because each sprinter can see the results with his or her own eyes. And at the end of the day, your team can make an informed decision about what to do next – the results of the interviews (and the sprint) are still clear in everyone’s short-term memory.

Made for people 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. Every interview draws you and your team closer to the people you’re trying to help with your product or service. If you continue running sprints, and if you’re true to your vision, the day will come when you’ll close that gap. You’ll be watching some Friday’s test, and you’ll see people understand your idea, believe it will improve their lives, and ask the Interviewer how to buy it.

You can run a sprint anytime you’re not sure what to do, or struggling to get started, or dealing with a high-stakes decision. The best sprints are used to solve important problems, so we encourage you to pick a big fight. Throughout the book, you learned a handful of unconventional ideas about how to work faster and smarter: •  Instead of jumping right into solutions, take your time to map out the problem and agree on an initial target. Start slow so you can go fast. •  Instead of shouting out ideas, work independently to make detailed sketches of possible solutions. Group brainstorming is broken, but there is a better way. •  Instead of abstract debate and endless meetings, use voting and a Decider to make crisp decisions that reflect your team’s priorities. It’s the wisdom of the crowd without the groupthink. •  Instead of getting all the details right before testing your solution, create a façade. Adopt the “prototype mindset” so you can learn quickly. •  And instead of guessing and hoping you’re on the right track – all the while investing piles of money and months of time into your ideas – test your prototype with target customers and get their honest reactions.