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

The perfect combination of abstract thinking and 'roll-up-your-sleeves' ideas. I was able to immediately implement the suggestions in this book and have already seen results. A must read for anyone trying to create and improve products.

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!

This book gives you the ability þó start working right away. Very good examples are drawn up that clarifies the whole process. The checklist at the wnd summarizes all that you have read and saves you from looking up through out the book.

Lightly written, with relateable case studies and inspiring anecdotes. A perfect how-to for startup founders or corporate managers looking for a lean and approachable method to managing both incremental or disruptive innovation, marrying principles and techniques from Lean Startup, Design Thinking, Agile Development — complete with guidelines, checklists and all!

Amazing book with simple, straightforward action plans. The book is an in-depth look at a few of the many Sprints the authors have run with companies such as Blue Bottle Coffee and Flatiron Health. It goes step-by-step Day 1 through Day 5 and gives you a checklist at the end to help you run your own sprint. We picked up a Sprint Kit at [...] to get all the necessary supplies.

Absolutelly great book for innovation practitioners helping them to run Google Sprint by their own. It is also great for newbies, while authors describe also detailed steps how to facilitate each day withing the sprint, including hints and techniques that are known for those who did this already.

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.

The book challenges some very stablished mental models, such as basic assumptions regarding the brainstorming process within groups. The Sprint Methodology is very user friendly, technically correct and very helpful for managers facing complex problems to solve. I definitely recommend!

The book content is great and the process methods and practice are well defined for any UX professional to pick up and be effective with out of the box. Four stars because the Kindle version is dreadful, don't buy it terrible image formatting of tiny indistinguishable blobs. The Kindle typography is also borderline. Buy paper you will thank me.

While the concept might be good and useful and there are some good points. The book moves slow, iterating the same things over and over, making progress slow and painful. Coupled with too much time used on name dropping, I gave up on it never finishing it.

My problem is that the ebook costs $15 and cannot be loaned OR printed! For a work book about coordinating teams, this is simply unforgivable. If I am realistically going to organizing a meeting using the methods described in this book, I need to be able to share content from this book with others on my team that are organizing the meeting as well. That the publisher blocked the already paltry loaning options offered by the store is silly & greedy.

Otherwise, for content, I would rate this book a 3/5. Not essential but not worthless either. It has about 10-15 pages of useful ideas surrounded by a lot of narrative fluff.

This is really a life changing book. I use parts of the book every day and it gives me a great framework to get things done. Especially the research part based on 5 interviews changed my view on testing forever.

I really enjoyed this book. It gave me confirmation on how much a team can achieve in a short period if they focus and follow an intelligent process. We have started offering these as a service, and the initial sprints have been enlightening and successful.

If you like placing big bets on untested guesses then this book might not be for you - save your money and buy a Powerball ticket. However, if you'd prefer to launch something new into the world with a bit more knowledge about how customers might respond, then I highly recommend Sprint.

There's a lot to like about the book, but I'll start with the tone. It suits the methodology perfectly - it's energetic, it doesn't seem to take itself too seriously, and it is direct. It's a refreshing read and has the effect of making you want to try the process right away.

From a format perspective, the book is primarily laid out according to the five days of a sprint which further helps with its applicability. The five main sections of the book cover each of the five days of a sprint with practical tips, lessons, and real world examples embedded throughout.

The content will feel familiar to those versed in design thinking...but entirely accessible to those who are not. Much of what is contained in the book will strike you as a very sensible approach; however, in practice you often see the exact opposite applied and groupthink and inaction typically reign. And that's where the book shines. It really gives you a roadmap for applying this process, that once underway and properly facilitated, will feel like it's the method you should use to navigate those really tricky business challenges. Sprint reveals a simple but profoundly powerful approach to making progress and determining next steps without guessing.

It's a book about the great lengths the authors went to optimize solving the smallest and easiest part of the product development problem. Not particularly valuable to anyone doing anything of significance.

With John Zeratsky and Braden Kowitz, Jake Knapp explains how to solve the biggest problems, answer the most difficult questions and/or generate the best ideas with what he characterizes as a “sprint team.” Knapp invented the Google Ventures process and has run more than a hundred sprints with startups. However, the same process — with only minor modification — will work within any organization, whatever its size and nature may be,

What’s involved initially?

1. Recruit a team of seven (or fewer).

o Decider (group leader)
o Facilitator (results-driven navigator)
o Finance expert (best knows your organization’s finances)
o Marketing expert (competitive environment)
o Customer expert
o Tech/logistics expert
o Design expert

2. Identify most important problem to solve, most important question to answer, etc.
3. Identify “expert” candidates, perhaps from outside the organization to include on an as-needed basis.

Think of a sprint team as analogous to a SWAT team or SEAL Team Six. It has a tightly-structured five-day schedule to complete its assignment. The sprint process is easy to explain and Knapp has no doubt about what can be accomplished. “Sprints offer a path to solve big problems, test new ideas, get more done, do it better, and do it faster. They also allow you to have more fun along the way. In other words, you’ve absolutely got to try one for yourself. Let’s get to work.”

Yes, that’s right: Each sprint is a five-day process.

MONDAY: Create a path for the sprint week; agree on a long-term goal; create a map of the challenge; then select a target

TUESDAY: Share and evaluate possible solutions; remix and improve; then each team member will complete a sketch (See pages 103-118)

WEDNESDAY: Critique all possible solutions and select those most likely to succeed; then take the winning sketches from all the sketches and weave them into a storyboard

THURSDAY: Adopt a “fake it” philosophy to convert the storyboard into a realistic prototype

FRIDAY: Share prototype with customers and observe interactions; interview customers to obtain feedback. “This text makes the entire spring worthwhile. At the end of the day, you’ll know how you have to go, and you’ll know just what to do next.

Since 2012, Knapp and his associates have run more than one hundred sprints with startups. “That’s a big number, but it pales in comparison to the number of people who have taken the sprint process and used it on their own to solve problems, reduce risk, and make better decisions at work.” Now with the publication of this book, the number of independent “Sprinters” is certain to increase rapidly and substantially.

The book includes a checklist, accompanied by key ideas. Also, a list of “sprint supplies” and an annotated schedule template, followed by an FAQ section. I also urge you to check out all the free resources available at the sprintbook.com website.

While working my way through the narrative I was again reminded of an observation by Margaret Mead: “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has." Gary Knapp, John Zeratsky and Braden Kowitz may have had that thought in mind when creating the material for Google Ventures and later (after extensive fine-tuning) for the manuscript of this book. They highly recommend that those who read the book follow the guidelines during their first few sprints but urge them to then make whatever modifications the members of the next sprint team deem appropriate. If your organization needs a unique methodology “to solve big problems, test new ideas, get more done, and do it faster,” look no further.

The preface starts of really strong with a short background of Jake Knapp’s personal life and career. While I have to admit guilty to being very motivated, driven and impressed by people who’s success is of his caliber, it is the passion with which he delivers the purpose of the book that intrigues me. You can tell that he enjoys what he truly loves what he does, and for that reason I want to listen to what he has to say and learn from his breadth of experience.

The book start off with a couple anecdotes of the success of the methodology being described to immediately captivate the audience. When you hear of a robot company, Savioke, that delivers a toothbrush straight to the door of your hotel, and proceeds to do a happy dance, how do you not want to keep reading? Whether you are in tech or not, this short success story immediately makes you wonder how you can achieve something similar. Like the people behind the cameras during the experiment, you can tell that Jake was rooting for every member of that team, and by proxy, so is the reader.

Whether you are interested in robotics, brewing coffee, fitness, communication at work or medicine, Jake did a great job and using examples from a great variety of examples so as to appeal to readers of various backgrounds. I would go so far as saying that this is a must read for anyone who enjoys solving problems in our outside of work. Managers, designers, engineers and pretty much anyone from any other profession would benefit from the whole and individual concepts taught throughout the book.

It is extremely easy to read, and has a very good flow so it’s easy to follow. The book itself felt like a sprint as the facilitator, the author, took you into a book-long meeting, and made you question how you ever resolved anything at work in the past. It was the perfect mix of prefacing every problem with sufficient reasoning for it to require a solution, showing several alternative solutions that one could follow without facing the paradox of choice, and inserting real life examples exactly when they were needed.

As I was reading about the various methods to identify problems or iterate on solutions, all I could think of was how I could apply it in my workplace. As I was reading about the various success or failure stories, I kept making mental notes of dos and dont’s, while also being motivated to reach the same spot as all these other individuals have in the past.

One thing I noticed was a very interesting and consistent mix of gender references. I applaud Jake for not introducing gender biases and always referring to one party (i.e. the interviewer) by one gender and another (i.e. the interviewee) by another. This may it very easy to differentiate who he was referring to, and eliminated gender bias.

This book was absolutely entertaining, educational and even exhilarating at some points. I can’t wait to find myself in the situation where my team and I will need to go through a whole sprint so I can experience everything myself. In addition to the clear and succinct writing, Jake was kind enough to summarize everything in the end so no one ever has an excuse to not follow everything step by step.

Thank you so much for sharing this book with the world.

Within a couple of pages this book went from being something feared for being a dire, hype-filled and unrealistic second-rate “you can do it”-type business guide to an indispensable, actionable and powerful little book that was hard to put down. Sprint to solve a problem indeed!

Three design partners from Google Ventures share a unique five-day process that they have tried and tested and use to solve problems through design, prototyping and customer testing. It really does sound too good to be true! This process, the secrets of which are liberally shared with the reader, is used to help companies answer key questions about challenges, projects and issues that need to be resolved, irrespective of industry sector.

It is a very practical guide, written in a very clear, understandable manner that exudes enthusiasm and makes you want to have a problem or issue at hand just so you can test it out. Of course, the authors can only give you the system and a guide to using it; you have to supply your own problem or issue and do all the necessary work. No gain without pain and all that… Yet if you do manage to implement the system and utilise it to get some answers, the very modest price of this book will be easily forgotten. Heck, even if you have no specific problem or issue to resolve, there is enough good general guidance in the book to take advantage of. A true win-win.

There is not much more to say that would not be repeating itself. It is great book, covering a great subject in a great way. Sadly, there are far too many cruddy books out in the marketplace that promise the earth and deliver very little in return, so they tend to collective poison the well against similar books that come out. This book was the exception, something of worthy consideration for all who are involved in business and creative or managerial processes.

An excellent resource to offer the world with many problems to solve.  This tool rich approach to getting customer reaction is valuable in the message it communicates, “Let’s find out what real customers think!”.  In just about every situation, business and nonprofit, there is resistance to that step, mostly out of ignorance.   The rule of five —that getting reactions from 5 targeted potential customers is enough to kickstart this process into reality puts this learning in reach of many.  

The humor is lovely - the testimonials are revealing.  The honesty about guarding against falling in love with your own idea is critical.  Within new product development and entrepreneurship there is a legacy of championing your own idea, driving it through, despite the opposition.   Sprint could get a team/management through all that.   Most start ups fail for one reason, a lack of customers. Sprint gets the customer's point of view into the equation early.  

The 5 day commitment is a challenge.  There are guidelines and advice on work arounds. It likely becomes quite prestigious to be selected for a ‘Sprint’.   I foresee professional opportunities to become Sprint facilitators!!

Sprint is essential read for anyone who's involved in creating products at a startup or fast-moving company. Jake & Team are fantastic at explaining the big picture: why does this matter? why is their approach effective? - but they're equally good at giving actionable insights. Instead of vague self-help-meets-management-theory mumbo jumbo, just like in a sprint, they get down and dirty with steps, check lists an details.

The result is a rare combination of something that changes your paradigm on developing (digital) products in fast-paced environments, but also gives you a solid recipe to get going. And what's best, the book is far from a boring read: it's full of fun anecdotes (from some of the best technology companies in the world), illustrations and pictures. Trust me, this book is going to do what "Lean Startup" did a few years ago - change the way companies create consumer-centered products for the better.

I use Scrum in my company which consist of two week sprints for software development so I was curious about this book. The book is quite short, easy to read and it has a lot of actionable content. I agree that is very important to find the right problem to solve, to prototype and get customer feedback as early as possible. I have some doubts whether it's possible to build a testable prototype in just one day (even with all the shortcuts and tools suggested in the book) and whether the feedback from five test customers is statistically significant. I also wished that the book would have addressed automated A/B testing as well.

Honestly, I am not a big fan of highly prescriptive books (such as step-by-step guides, cookbooks, etc.), as they tend to suffocate creativity and keep no room for innovation. Surprisingly though, I love this one as it strikes a pragmatic balance between practicality and experimentation. “Sprint” –as illustrated in this book- is consecutive 5-days method to solve a specific problem. It do not know if it is scalable to address more far-reaching or multi-faceted challenges. Nevertheless, I think it would be a bit daunting to implement it in many projects due to a plenty of factors: customer commitment, Business Owner availability, uncontrollable distractions, and the daily “busyness” of the business. Unless you have the ultimate say in how to plan the business analysis work, it would be extremely difficult to apply it. Nevertheless, you can adopt some ideas and techniques mentioned in the book, e.g. “If you need to make a small decision in a meeting, try a “Note and Vote” (p. 146). If you find yourselves frustrated by problems, try writing How Might We notes (p. 73). If you’re talking about solutions in the abstract, do a Four Step Sketch to make them concrete (p. 109). Every meeting benefits from a Time Timer (p. 47) and a Facilitator writing notes on the whiteboard (p. 36). And you can conduct customer interviews (p. 204) at absolutely any time—with a prototype, with your real product, with competitors’ products, or even with no product at all.”

Solve big problems and test new ideas in just five days with seven people working together for seven hours a day. Author Jake Knapp and his partners from Google Ventures have perfected their five day sprint method with over a hundred real life sprints with companies from Slack to Blue Bottle Coffee and many other portfolio companies.

Sprint gives you a day-by-day breakdown with schedules and checklists. It has high level details like how to set the stage with the right team at the right time and place, medium level details like how to re-frame problems as opportunities, sketch solutions, storyboard, prototype and conduct test interviews and also the nitty-gritty level details like why you should break for lunch at 1 PM, use yellow sticky notes, big and little dots, and use white board markers instead of Sharpies. After completing this easy, but informative read, which includes well placed drawings, pictures and checklists, you’ll be empowered to lead your organization in your own five day sprint that solves the biggest problems your organization faces.

How to Sprint

Unlike many business books, Sprint doesn’t spout platitudes and give over generalizations based on a few experiences. It gives you the tools with examples to make it happen drawn from sprints with organizations of all stripes.

Set the stage: pick.
Pick a big problem. You’ll be taking up a week of time from senior people— it has to be worth their time. You’ll be demanding their full attention and best efforts — it has to engage them. You’ll be paying potential customers for their experience — it has to yield tangible results. Sprint focuses on the surface level problem because that is where the customer interacts with the product. And it’s the surface level that you can prototype and test.

Pick the right team. Two key people you need are the facilitator and the decider. For a startup, the decider should typically be the CEO / Founder or somebody analogous to this. Other roles are the marketing expert, finance / business dev expert, customer expert, technical expert, and design expert. While seven is the magic number one final role to consider is the troublemaker. The troublemaker is the person in the firm who sees things differently and may challenge the solution if not made part of the process.

Pick the time and place. Time boxing is a central premise to Sprint. The time spent is only 10 AM -5 PM with a lunch break at 1 and two small breaks at 11:30 and 3:30 — I’ve worked on a similar schedule and found it ideal. The place should be one comfortable room with two whiteboards. Whiteboarding is essential. Putting the right people in the right space for a week working on the right problem will yield the best results.

Here’s how the week goes:
Monday: Frame the challenge and the key questions the sprint seeks to answer. Put these at the top of every whiteboard and return to them at the start of each new segment. After that Monday is about finding problems and turning them into opportunities — using a technique called How Might We. It’s about asking basic questions, not just to make sure that everyone is on the same page, but also to flesh out assumptions. It also involves bringing in other experts for their insights. You’ll get a visual on the problem by completing a mapping exercise and then targeting areas on the map for improvement. Throughout the techniques render ideas visually.

Tuesday: If Monday looked at opportunities in problems, then Tuesday looks at solutions for those opportunities through techniques called lightning demos and 4 step sketches combined with key ideas such as remix and improve, concrete is better than abstract, and work alone together.

Wednesday: hump day is decision day. An exercise called Art Museum helps kick off the sticky decision themed morning and Heat Map, Speed Critique, Straw Poll and Super Vote follow. By lunch you have either one or two ideas for prototyping. But don’t start prototyping yet, in the afternoon you storyboard the prototype(s) to save time.

Thursday: split up the work and start prototyping. Prepare the interview questions for tomorrow and finish the day with a test run of the prototype. While you could pull all nighters, it’s important to remember you only need a “Goldilocks” level quality prototype — just enough realism to get honest reaction from your test users.

Friday: Five is the magic number — 85% of all feedback can be obtained through just 5 well done one-on-one interviews, which are incidentally broken into five segments. One member conducts, while the rest of the team watches on a video feed and learns together. It’s important to see the results on Friday and finish with a wrap-up session. The team should be taking stickup notes and looking for patterns throughout the day.

Why You Sprint
Scarcity sharpens our problem solving. Our resources need direction to solve problems, the bigger the problem the more important the direction. Sprint gives you the direction with the framework and tools to not simply look at problems differently, but build a prototype with useful test data; a prototype that can be improved in light of the test data. Every sprint is a winner — you either have an efficient failure with data on why or you have a flawed success — a good first start that can be improved based on the interview comments.

I’ve read a lot on productivity and management, but haven’t seen such a coherent and pragmatic guide to problem solving as Sprint. Failure fast or slow has never appealed to me, I’d rather succeed in a sprint.

I've used this process now in two sprints and it is excellent. In the second sprint we tested a new idea for a mobile app. We asked eight very busy people to dedicate their week to the process and all felt that we accomplished in a week what would have taken several weeks using another process. Our large organization is now looking at ways to use the Sprint Book process regularly. It works.

The Audible version is outstanding. The narrator is very good and easy to listen to. The print version of the book is also very good.

This has changed the way I work. I highly recommend it.

I've been a Product leader in Silicon Valley for the last 15 years. During this time, my idea of how to design and develop products/solutions that solve customer problems have evolved greatly. Jake and the Google Ventures team have taken the best ideas that have come out of Silicon Valley in the last few years -- incorporating customer centered design, design thinking, and lean start-up principles -- and put it into a step by step How To guide for practitioners. If you want to build better products that solve customer problems with fewer wasted resources and iteration cycles, you'll want to buy this book.

I really appreciate how the Google Ventures team breaks down step-by-step how to conduct an effective 5 day sprint. The book covers what the team has learned over the years having conducted over 100 design sprints. The book gives rich detailed examples of several sprints the team has conducted, what worked well, what didn't, and how that has evolved the design of their sprint process.

As a product leader and consultant/advisor to many start-ups, I have used the principles and step by step instructions to facilitate design sprints for my companies with great results. Feedback from sprint participants from sprints that I've conducted include:
- Sprints are a fun and efficient way to get cross-functional teams to work through a challenging problem in a short timeframe (surprisingly this isn't done as commonly as you might think)
- It's a process that allows for creative generation of ideas, and one that helps the group decide on the best ideas fast
- There's no judgment/ego involved in this wonderful process
- Higher confidence that the team is going to build the right product for our customers through the prototyping/customer validation steps

Thank you Jake and the Google Ventures team for your wonderful book. By teaching me the sprint process, it has helped me become a better Product leader and a master facilitator who can bring teams together to build great products for our customers!

Being a bit of a process geek, I was excited to read Jake Knapp's new book, Sprint, which covers the refined innovation approach that is used at Google Ventures. I feel that this book is a must read for executives, digital product owners, as well as designers/developers (and I would rarely categorize one book as good for all of those demographics).

Detailed Review

One of the great things about this book is that it takes some of the core aspects of agile/lean methodology but boils them into a pragmatic and useful framework. Focusing on a smaller autonomous team with clear objectives and small batch sizes sounds like a framework for an agile development team, but in this case those concepts are utilized for rapid focused innovation.

The examples covered in this book are also excellent. In so many books, the examples are somewhat bland and not directly applicable to the reader. However, that was not the case here. Jake did an amazing job helping you understand the challenges that these organizations were facing. Many of these organizations were ones that I heard of or dealt with directly. Applicable examples are essential in a book like this.

If there is one thing lacking, I would say that is a bit unfortunate that this book doesn't go more into how to take some of the concepts and bake them into a sustainable culture. The one week Sprint approach is an amazing framework, but many of these concepts don't have to die when that week is over. It would have been ideal to hear more about mixing the rapid one week iteration sprint with a sustainable approach for ongoing lean development. However, even with that, I still give this book five stars.

Highlights:

1. The book gives great advice on structuring the team when executing these rapid innovation sprints. Jake lays out a lot of good techniques here including always having the decider in the room as well as the troublemaker.

"And if your Decider doesn't believe the sprint will be worthwhile? If she won't even stop for a cameo? Hold up! That's a giant red flag. You might have the wrong project. Take your time, talk with the Decider, and figure out which big challenge would be better." (p. 32)

2. Another benefit was seeing the activities that are undertaken during this sprint. For example, the process of creating a customer-centric map (in Chapter 5) to illustrate the key actors and story lines is particularly useful in helping teams break down the overall complexity. In addition, simple exercises like the How Might We exercise (Chapter 6) are common tools that can be used outside of the bounds of the innovation sprint.

3. Allowing participants in the sprint to maximize both group brainstorming as well as individual time for coming up with a solution was great. Some exercises like the Crazy 8's (in Chapter 9) are helpful at providing rapid iterations in a short period of time. The techniques presented that maintained the momentum of the sprint and minimized unnecessary discussion were also solid gold.

"Each person believed his or her own idea could work. And each person could have spent an hour explaining why. But if we had to spend an hour discussing each idea, the whole day could have gone by without any clear conclusion."

4. One aspect that I loved was the focus on testing with real target users at the end of the week. There is a good amount of knowledge on how to best perform user interviews (Chapter 15) that will be immensely helpful if the concept is new to you. The only site that goes with the book also provides a video of one of the interviews taking place.

"In Friday's test, customer reactions are solid gold, but their feedback is worth pennies on the dollar." (p. 169-170)

Closing Thoughts

Even if you never implement this rigid one week innovation sprint, the techniques included in the book can be applied across a wide variety of scenarios. However, I think many organizations will be spurred to try the one week framework to solve a complex issue after reading through this book. This book does an absolutely amazing job of spurring action quickly and providing insightful case studies. I think you will love it.Being a bit of a process geek, I was excited to read Jake Knapp's new book, Sprint, which covers the refined innovation approach that is used at Google Ventures. I feel that this book is a must read for executives, digital product owners, as well as designers/developers (and I would rarely categorize one book as good for all of those demographics).

Detailed Review

One of the great things about this book is that it takes some of the core aspects of agile/lean methodology but boils them into a pragmatic and useful framework. Focusing on a smaller autonomous team with clear objectives and small batch sizes sounds like a framework for an agile development team, but in this case those concepts are utilized for rapid focused innovation.

The examples covered in this book are also excellent. In so many books, the examples are somewhat bland and not directly applicable to the reader. However, that was not the case here. Jake did an amazing job helping you understand the challenges that these organizations were facing. Many of these organizations were ones that I heard of or dealt with directly. Applicable examples are essential in a book like this.

If there is one thing lacking, I would say that is a bit unfortunate that this book doesn't go more into how to take some of the concepts and bake them into a sustainable culture. The one week Sprint approach is an amazing framework, but many of these concepts don't have to die when that week is over. It would have been ideal to hear more about mixing the rapid one week iteration sprint with a sustainable approach for ongoing lean development. However, even with that, I still give this book five stars.

Highlights:

1. The book gives great advice on structuring the team when executing these rapid innovation sprints. Jake lays out a lot of good techniques here including always having the decider in the room as well as the troublemaker.

"And if your Decider doesn't believe the sprint will be worthwhile? If she won't even stop for a cameo? Hold up! That's a giant red flag. You might have the wrong project. Take your time, talk with the Decider, and figure out which big challenge would be better." (p. 32)

2. Another benefit was seeing the activities that are undertaken during this sprint. For example, the process of creating a customer-centric map (in Chapter 5) to illustrate the key actors and story lines is particularly useful in helping teams break down the overall complexity. In addition, simple exercises like the How Might We exercise (Chapter 6) are common tools that can be used outside of the bounds of the innovation sprint.

3. Allowing participants in the sprint to maximize both group brainstorming as well as individual time for coming up with a solution was great. Some exercises like the Crazy 8's (in Chapter 9) are helpful at providing rapid iterations in a short period of time. The techniques presented that maintained the momentum of the sprint and minimized unnecessary discussion were also solid gold.

"Each person believed his or her own idea could work. And each person could have spent an hour explaining why. But if we had to spend an hour discussing each idea, the whole day could have gone by without any clear conclusion."

4. One aspect that I loved was the focus on testing with real target users at the end of the week. There is a good amount of knowledge on how to best perform user interviews (Chapter 15) that will be immensely helpful if the concept is new to you. The only site that goes with the book also provides a video of one of the interviews taking place.

"In Friday's test, customer reactions are solid gold, but their feedback is worth pennies on the dollar." (p. 169-170)

Closing Thoughts

Even if you never implement this rigid one week innovation sprint, the techniques included in the book can be applied across a wide variety of scenarios. However, I think many organizations will be spurred to try the one week framework to solve a complex issue after reading through this book. This book does an absolutely amazing job of spurring action quickly and providing insightful case studies. I think you will love it.

What a great book! We read this book at work as a part of our continuous improvement in our Product Development team. We recently completed a Sprint and it was a huge success. I can't wait to tackle another. The five day plan works out well and really keeps you on the straight and narrow. There are always going to be more and bigger problems to solve, but if you stay focused you'll wind up on Friday having learned a lot.

If you're working on a Product Management team, I would highly recommend convincing people to read this book and trying this process for your next project. You'll be surprised with what you can do in one week.

This book explains step by step the framework that Google Ventures Design team have devised to test new ideas or improve business models, products and/or services (or indeed any aspect of a business) in just one week. It moves through the framework for identifying a problem to address, and asking the right questions on day one, then looks at creating a map and a vision for the week, generating ideas (better ones normally come from individuals rather than group think apparently ), drawing storyboards, designing a test and what to test, building a prototype inexpensively, and finally testing the prototype/s on day five. The process inevitably leads to gaining valid data as feedback, ( so even if the idea fails the use of time has been worthwhile ) and discovering if the new idea idea has legs or not.

The process has evolved to generate remarkable business outcomes and has helped companies such as Slack gain growth, meanwhile it's been adopted to other contexts by the likes of McKinsey and Wieden + Kennedy ( but is equally as applicable in everyday situations and is recomendad for these as well ). It sets out the structure: the number of people involved (ideally 7) , that there must be a decider (with whom the buck stops), and a facilitator etc, it defines the time to spend working (6 hours a day no more) and goes into detail how to phrase questions, to limit time spent on each segment, how to vote for the best concepts and ideas to test ( which is very similar to how concepts get chosen at Start Up Weekend ), and even what colour pens to use, how to find interview subjects and conduct interviews etc. The book interweaves about 5 carefully chosen test cases that compliment each other well including Blue Bottle coffee, a hotel that is implementing robots, and a cancer screening company. These all flesh out the process, but to read, it never dwells unnecessarily as one carefully illustrated chapter flows into the next.

This is a book to read if you want to shake up your design thinking, clear away rust that may have set in and see how it is possible to address issues holding you business back or test new ideas without wasting resources very quickly, and is ideal for those who may want to run a sprint for themselves or others. It ends by pointing out that by the time a team facilitating sprint become familiar with the process it can be adapted by them perfectly well to suit context or preference.

I was fortunate enough to read a proof copy and I found it the book extremely approachable, just like the authors are in real life (disclaimer: I know/have worked with them). I read the book straight-through...it's a short, easy-to-read encapsulation of the design sprint process that clearly explains each step and how they build on each other during the week. By reading the book you'll be able to run your first design sprint successfully with your own team. (IMO it takes quite of bit of facilitation experience to run a successful sprint with a client)

The book is structured just like the week...with a chapter dedicated to each day of the sprint. This makes it not only easy to read but easy to quickly look up stuff as you're doing a sprint...if it's Wednesday you can quickly flip to that chapter and find out what you need. Each chapter begins with a story of one of GV's clients and ends with a description of the design exercise. This helps put each exercise in perspective of the challenge that the client was trying to solve.

Perhaps the best parts about the book are the little, helpful sections such as the section on interviewer tips or the set of checklists in the back of the book. These are so helpful and have really helped me stay on track as I've run design sprints with my clients. I think that's what sets the book apart...you will actually use it during your work week.

For a 2nd edition I would love to see even more visuals showing the process...in my experience participants are hesitant to dive in until they really believe that low fidelity is good...that their sketches are throw-away...that nothing they product is precious and exists only for testing. I would also like to see some discussion about how to extend/modify the design sprint methodology to longer time periods (e.g. two weeks)...that has come up several times with clients. In general though this is probably the most useful product design book I've read in the past five years and I highly recommend it.

This is a must read book for anyone planning to do a 5-day Design Sprint in Google style. The authors work at Google Ventures and use the same format for all startups invested by GV. I work for Google as Developer and Startup Relations Manager and we also use the format to help early-stage and mature-stage startups inside our programs. The book contains every detail and step by step processes to run the 5 day design sprint. The main sections of the book are organized by day (From Monday to Friday). In summary buy this book if you want to solve problems in a team setting and by using techniques from Design Thinking and Lean in a fast paced workshop format!

A delightful and concise read. Sprints contains the recipe for running a successful, sometimes intense, both enjoyable and occasionally challenging, though extremely beneficial week - a tried, tested and proven process for innovation. Illustrated with wide ranging use cases from the hundreds of Sprints this team have run - this book makes you ask why we’ve not changed the way we try to innovate in business and beyond, and previously deciphered these techniques from inventors and makers before us. Thank you Jake and team, for asking me to be an advance reviewer - this is a great book!

I had the distinct privilege to read an early version of Sprint and I highly recommend this book. If you've ever experienced the struggle of trying to solve a design or product challenge with a team, whether from within a large corporation or at an early stage startup, then this is a must read.

I use and teach design thinking and design sprint methodology regularly and am a huge fan of the GV (Google Ventures) method. The GV team, having run over 100 sprints, has figured out the recipe for success and I’m thrilled to see they’ve shared their technique with the world. This is one of the most comprehensive guides to design sprints that I’ve read and they hold nothing back sharing both successes and failures. They cover the full gamut from prototyping a dancing robot to dealing with unhappy stakeholders.

The best part? It’s not only educational, but also highly entertaining. The book is structured in such a way that it reads like a novel, but teaches like a course. This book gives you everything you need, from checklists to Q&A, to empower you to run your own sprint.

In trying to find a truly innovative ideation process that might stand a chance of catching on at a Fortune 50 retailer, I came across Sprint and was immediately attracted to the notion of a five day process to prototype with customer feedback. Having studied and experienced design thinking over the course of several years left me with the sensation that our current process could be so much more but also left me confident that it would be a tough sell with senior leadership to adopt as a standard operating procedure for a multitude of reasons, time being a large factor. Here was something that addressed that concern so directly I couldn’t pass it up.

The book is broken up by the five days of the process, allowing for easy nightly reading goals, and dashing through Sprint the minute I got it has me reflecting on my team’s current process in two different ways: aspirational and immediate takeaways. For a long term goal in how to shift our ideation process I now have something that doesn’t come across as too academic or not “real world enough” to pitch to senior executives looking for results. Asking to test a five day process will be one of the easier conversations I have this year, and the book gives me a natural outline for better organization of existing activities: it turns out we're already doing some of the suggested steps, but in isolation, over extended periods of time, or with shifting team members, lessening the impact and not allowing the “Aha!” moments. As for activities we don’t already do, this book has a variety of new tricks for the toolkit, many that can be used outside of the formal sprint process for adoption immediately. I’ve also used the structure to reanalyze past efforts in a lessons-learned exercise and to see if I can find a new lead on some “cold cases”. One of my favorite features is the authors’ acknowledgment of some of the tougher parts of the office experience (executives, the “outlier” of a group, endless and fruitless discussions, etc.), and how to harness those aspects as tools in the process.

The book has a great FAQ section in anticipation of the normal questions that come to mind as you read, and the structure, notes to Facilitator, and checklist sections make it quick to jump back to the parts you need to reference later on. I’m currently sneaking sprint-style activities in my daily actions while on the hunt for my first opportunity to run a full sprint - and if you’re wondering, the FAQ says “Go for it!” even without experience.

This is one of the most useful work books I've ever read. Practical, easy to read, fantastically easy to apply to work projects. Loads of super insightful information and advice! I used this text for a class I taught at the Stanford d.school and the students really loved it.

I highly recommend this book to any team wanting to incorporate fast iterations into work flow/product development.

I worked directly with all three authors at Google, and experienced first hand the nascent Sprint process that Jake was pioneering. I can't recommend the team and the process highly enough. When we look back in ten years at how this decade saw design move from a peripheral role in a technology team to a primary strategic role, this process will be acknowledged as one of the key things that changed how people think about design.

There are many books out there on Design Thinking and Product Innovation, this book is different. You can read it from front to back as you would read a novel and be completely engaged and when you finish you will have a strong understanding of how to run your own Sprint. Through entertaining examples of both successes and a few misses, the book clearly illustrates each stage in the 5 day process. You will learn how and when to apply this process to your own unique challenge.

Jake Knapp and the team have developed this process, through testing and iteration until they have come up with a tried and true sequence of activities that generate truly effective solutions. As a Sprint facilitator I apply this methodology to business challenges with teams every day, and reading this book helped me to clearly understand the role of a facilitator in actively problem solving and driving the a team towards user validated solutions.

The Google Ventures Design Sprint is a battle-tested method to define a problem, compare and contrast competing ideas, prototype one of them, and get customer feedback, all in one week.

My team at Lucidpress (a tech startup) was fortunate to get an early copy of this book at the perfect time. We were looking for a way to quickly test some new ideas to decide which direction we should take our business next. There were a lot of ideas and only a little bit of time. This book gave us the structure for a really successful sprint that helped us hone in on what we should build next.

Here’s what our General Manager said of our experience:
“It was absolutely a success. In the span of just five days we took a number of rough product ideas we’d had and worked them into prototypes our customers validated. Some ideas got great reception, and we’ll start developing them immediately. Others—including one idea that we probably would have started to develop—received only lukewarm reception and so will be put further into our backlog or be refined further. The whole point of the Sprint is to learn. And we learned. A lot.”

I highly recommend this book.

One tip after going through this process:
-You need at least 3 whiteboards. We used four for most of the week (and it still felt cramped!).

Also, we wrote up a blog post in more detail on our experience in hopes of helping others who may want to try out this process. You can check out on the Lucidpress blog if you’re interested.

Fantastic book. I work in a software company and this is the first book that I was able to pitch and use. I'm running a Sprint next week to validate/check a client request. Looking forward to seeing what we produce. Gotta say I'm excited, but don't want to over-promise what we are going to come away with. I think it will be great having the team together concentrated to plan out what we want our product to do.

As soon as I heard about this book, I had to read it (and, unfortunately, wait six weeks until it was released). The book is essentially a recipe for how to get over group think and to create, and test a new product in just five days. Thanks to the book, I was able to lead a super sprint and quickly determine a product which in the end did not work out. The authors write in a fun, informative way that left me wanting to read more while laughing at the same time. If you're tired of being in brainstorm meetings and want a "cookbook" of how to create new products, then you'll want to read this book. Thank you, Jake, John, and Braden.

I was lucky enough to get a review proof of the book early, and found it an incredibly insightful view into the Sprint process.

While it may seem like there are a lot of tools and gear involved in actually setting up and facilitating a sprint, what Jake and the Google Ventures team have put together is a revolutionary way to surface ideas while avoiding inherent decision-making bias. By following the Sprint process, you're able to glean insights and knowledge that might not be shared in any other format - whether it's due to participants being distracted or frustrated, having the wrong people in the room, or lack of interest in researching a specific idea.

Worthwhile read.

This is a superb book that is very easy to read, with real world examples of how to apply the techniques discussed. I have taken some of the concepts discussed and am applying them to other activities beyond a 5 day Sprint process. Thoroughly recommended.

I worked directly with Jake, Braden, and John while I ran the UX team at Google and they were among the best designers in our organization. Jake has over the years relentlessly iterated to refine the methodologies we used to teach and implement design thinking throughout Google. While Google has always been famously engineering driven, design sprints helped to engage designers, engineers, and product designers to direct their technological innovations towards an empathic user experience that solves people's needs.

Almost everyone who works in product development has sat through ineffective brainstorming sessions where perhaps the loudest or highest ranking person in the room dominates the discussion or ideas are critiqued as they are generated. The beauty of the way these design sprints are run is that ideas are inspired by an understanding of users; everyone has a voice; and people are given psychological safety to be able to generate many ideas. There is a consciousness around when the group does divergent thinking vs. convergent thinking, with a structured way to surface the best ideas that then get prototyped.

Now, as an advisor and investor to many startups, I employ these very techniques to help startups brainstorm, prototype, and test ideas and bring them to market. Thank you Jake, Braden, and John for teaching people how to bring better design to the world!

One of the hardest things around your product is to be successful with a new idea that works. The pitfalls are many: your CEO's pet idea, lowest-common-denominator features, a slightly improved competitor's latest add-on... it's easy to go wrong and torpedo yourself with shots in the dark.

This book lays out a practical methodology to come up with new ideas and approaches, and evaluate them before building them! And without a team of rocket scientists, but with your own team, no less. I'm very impressed.

I've had the pleasure of taking teams—both clients, and internal teams at my startup—through this elegant and refined sprint process. Whether you employ the full sprint process as a whole (recommended) or use specific exercises in a piecemeal way, you'll find the methods immediately useful. The process builds trust among team members, perhaps one of its most valuable outcomes. Jake and his co-authors have created and refined a process that recognizes the social construction of design (i.e. product) decisions, explicitly addressing bias… well done.

In the end, running these sprints is fun, revealing, and practical. Consider yourselves lucky that the GV design team has decided to share their hard-earned knowledge with the world. :)

If you're looking for an effective and proven process to help you solve big problems, look no further.

Learn how Jake and his buddies at Google Ventures have helped startups solve big problems with the Sprint. The book is packed with interesting anecdotes, lessons learnt, and lots of other tips that will help you run your own Sprints. The process will help you find, develop, and prototype the best ideas to solve a problem, and then get feedback by observing target customers try them out. In just five days! (I was fortunate to have an advance copy of the book.)

I want to run a Sprint now!

Jake Knapp & friends make it cool & usefull: if we may think about a learning curve reading a business book, the Sprint doesn't have one. You will enter in the story immediatly. If you are interested in Startup & innovation, it's a the best gift to share with all you teamates and avoid the innovation theater provided by corporates & events. How to work like Startup isn't a anymore a valuable question, but how to work with startups is the right challenge: answers is provided in the Sprint book.

I've had the opportunity to know Jake for a while and to use his Sprint process many times before in all the companies I've been a part of.

If you're interested in making great products, especially ones that people love, then you NEED this book. I am fully aware of the fact that there are a ton of people out there preaching their own process, and there might be some that actually work. These guys have truly dug deep into how humans work, and created a process that is incredibly effective.

Do yourself a huge favor—grab this book, read it, and apply it. You'll see real results and feel closer to your team. If you have any questions, or want to chat about how I've used the sprint method, shoot me a note - charles.riccardi (at) icloud

An extremely adaptable framework that can be used for almost any problem. The stories and anecdotes in the book really bring the process to life and highlight the strength of the framework as being fundamentally human-centred, and the checklists at the end turn the book into a very usable reference manual for facilitating a design sprint yourself.

Sprint provides practical advice on how to make a team more effective at solving challenging problems. Whether it be building a better business strategy or developing new customer experience ideas, the recommendations in this book make this work more effective and efficient. Jake, Braden and John are known as experts in the field have long been inspiring designers and business people alike. At Airbnb, where I lead the Experience Design team, we're often utilizing their teachings. They have seriously cracked the code on how to get diverse teams solving problems effectively and quickly.

If you create products, stuck on what to do next, or are even starting a company, read this book.

Sprint is complete handbook for how to choose, prototype, and test problems in a week. If you are new to design, the authors have done an excellent job of combining many popular tools - like user journeys - into a compact, understandable format. Jake and the GV crew introduce different techniques and back them up with anecdotes from their own work. Even better, the workshops and material discussed within can be reused in a variety of situations. Easy read as well. Bonus!

This book is a swiss-army-design-workshop-knife. For business.

If you don't test, you'll bound to build stuff that people don't want. Avoid that common trap by testing prototypes in 5 days. This book shows you how. Well done to Jake, John & Braden for sharing these lessons and thanks for bringing higher level thinking to agile.

This is the kind of book that compiles so much knowledge that comes from the field not from the classroom. I was wondering how come in the IT industry there was no name for design methodologies similar to those names we see in SCRUM, and then the book was on the horizon. Great stuff Jake, John and Braden.

I went into Sprint thinking it was going to be a good book for startups and small businesses. I quickly realized many of the tools and actionable insights outlined in the book can apply to organizations of any size and across pretty much any industry. I’d highly recommend it. – The book’s website has a lot of great resources worth checking out too.

This book is a must read for product designers and product managers who want to solve big problems efficiently and effectively. There is a nice contrast between theory (what is a design sprint and how do you conduct one) and examples of how design sprints have been applied by others.

Focused preparation, decisive decision-making, the best of individual and group work, fast feedback from people who represent your users (and not simply relying on your expertise). These are the ideas behind running a sprint and whether or not you’ll be running a sprint soon, their philosophies can certainly be adapted to your everyday situations.

The target isn’t a lone inventor (though anyone can learn from their principles). Jake Knapp and his co-authors run sprints for startups at Google Ventures and Sprint is their how-to manual, written after dozens and dozens of efforts to improve products and ideas. Their experience shines through as they masterfully weave together real life examples (both good and bad), step-by-step instructions on how to run your own sprint, and explanations of the processes and theories behind why they do what they do. The writing and design is superb too. Handmade-looking graphics play into the fun atmosphere as well as provide clear insight into how the sprint process works. Similarly, they draw on popular culture to communicate key ideas (examples including Oceans 11, Lord of the Rings, and Apollo 13. Their playful tone mixes well with their expert advice.

The book functions as a reference for anyone who is or may need to quickly decide the fate of a major project. They break the book down by each day you’re in the sprint (Monday-Friday) with tabs printed on the edge of each page according to the day. They also include facilitator notes (so that you can run your own sprint), supplies you’ll want to buy before running your own sprint, and checklists to keep you on track when you’re running a sprint.

This book was very valuable to me. A must read for anyone that's interested in business innovation. I use the method at many of my clients, big and small. It even inspired me to create a 1 Minute explainer video about the Design Sprint.

Amazing method and straight to the point book. Just go for it. Easy reading. Try it. You will learn a lot from your customers. I've been implementing this approach for the past 6 month in our organization, and it only get better.

Sprinted through the book. Seemed the fair thing to do. Took five whole minutes...

First minute: Scanned cover, title, dedications, some editorial reviews, and the premise.
Second: Read a few pages at the beginning to get a heading.
Third: Hmmm...appeared that all the right ingredients have to be in place for a SPRINT.
Fourth: Must limit available time...drastically, to just five days. Cook up a pot roast in five seconds?
Fifth: Skimmed through the rest, various experiences detailed, and wrote/edited this review.

Seriously, what next? A business plan pitch in one minute? Oh wait - that's the MO today. Wham, Bam, Thank you, Ma'am? Most unchivalrous. "Git 'er done!" "In a jiffy, boss!" The insane world of the present, the need for speed, measured and careful approaches be damned.

Am glad the method worked/works for the authors and their numerous review buddies. Not something an author, a writer communicating change, can recommend.

I'm in school for Marketing and this book seems to be a promising tool in the future. I'm not convinced the job i'm currently at would need a Sprint platform, but there are some really helpful ideas on running productive meetings. Overall the book Sprint is really helpful, in depth, easy to read, and a great idea. I'm excited to use a Sprint in the future.

the store,

For starters, I cannot believe the way such a company as yourself handled a five star review. Instead of answering my question, an important question for other purchasing customers to see, you completely block it. You then expect me to revise a great review. I'm definitely not going to send another review, and am a bit dissapointed in how such a big company as yourself can get something like this wrong. Maybe you should read this book and create a sprint on how the store handles product reviews and helps customers, instead of hiding a relevant review that would help not only the rating of a product, but an obvious issue after the purchase of an audiobook.

John Uphold

This book was great at breaking down a full design process into actionable activities that can be accomplished in a tight time-frame of 5 days. The guides, checklists and diagrams are especially useful in visualizing the types of deliverables that can come out of the sprints. I highly recommend it for not only designers but any professionals who are looking to dip their toes into design thinking methodologies!

One of the most important books any startup, entrepreneur, intra-preneur, manager, person can read. I read this in about one day - could not put it down. Have since bought 5 for my senior managers and just put on their desk (like a book fairy), hoping they read it. It's a revelation and its so simple to carry out these brilliant author's step by step process. BUY

Didn't enjoy it at all. Just because it works for some people doesn't mean it will work for every team. Hundreds of other books have didnt ideas on how to improve at work and this one is no different. Plus many problems will be half way fixed because the fix is rushed out in a week, not a great way to fix problems. Customers shouldn't expect a rushed fixed that could be done better with more time

Sprint presents a method and plan for 5 days of work to prototype and test some hard ideas or problems related to your business.

Method is rationalized based on author's earlier successful and failed projects where Sprint method was used and tuned more.

Additional references to movies and historic events presenting similar cases adds a really nice touch and makes reading experience smooth.

I'm really looking forward for opportunities to test drive some of these ideas at work.