Sprint: How to Solve Big Problems and Test New Ideas in Just Five Days (Summary)
How do you design a hotel delivery robot that guests will love, not fear? Instead of spending months building one, a startup team taped an iPad to a wheeled trash can, put a bowtie on it, and had a human control it from another room. By observing guest reactions to this crude 'prototype,' they learned more in one afternoon than they could have in six months of development, discovering that people didn't want a futuristic butler, just a friendly, helpful presence.
Work Together, But Think Alone
Sprints replace chaotic group brainstorms with a structured process where individuals generate ideas silently and then share them. This avoids groupthink and lets the best ideas rise on merit, not decibel level.
During the 'sketching' phase, each team member individually draws a detailed, anonymous solution. The next day, these sketches are taped to the wall and critiqued silently using dot stickers for voting before any discussion begins. This ensures everyone's ideas get equal consideration.
A Realistic Façade is All You Need
You don't need a polished, functional product to get valuable feedback. A high-fidelity prototype—a realistic but fake 'façade'—is all you need to test your core idea with real users.
To test a new online ordering system for Blue Bottle Coffee, the team didn't write a single line of code. They created a series of realistic screens in Keynote (presentation software) that looked and felt like a real app. They watched customers 'use' it and learned what worked in a single day.
Appoint a 'Decider' to Cut Through Debate
To avoid endless debates and committee-driven compromises, every Sprint must have one designated 'Decider.' This is the person with the authority to make the tough calls and keep the process moving forward.
When Slack ran a Sprint to improve its onboarding process, their CEO, Stewart Butterfield, served as the Decider. When the team was stuck between two different design approaches, he was right there in the room to make the call, instantly resolving a conflict that could have stalled the project for weeks.
Compress Time to Force Focus
The strict five-day deadline isn't arbitrary; it's a powerful constraint. By compressing work that would normally take months into a single week, teams are forced to focus on what's essential and make tangible progress.
The book itself was created using Sprints. Instead of spending months on a first draft, the authors ran a 'book sprint' to outline, write, and test entire sections in just one week, using early reader feedback to iterate quickly.
