5 takeaways from “Sprint: How to Solve Big Problems and Test New Ideas in Just 5 Days”

The bible on product development for startups is a great guide, and weaved throughout are 5 salient points.

There is no shortage of great ideas for product development in Sprint: How to Solve Big Problems and Test New Ideas in Just 5 Days. As the title suggests, this is a ‘how to’ book for the startup crowd that feel like time is ticking away and progress slow to come by.

Authors Jake Knapp, Braden Kowitz and John Zeratsky are seasoned development gurus, having started their own companies and consulted for dozens of others through Google Ventures. If anybody knows how to get from 0 to 100 in 5 days, it’s these guys. And as you’d expect, it’s all about methodology and action.

But for all the newbies out there (and this is as much a book for new visionaries as it is for established designers, programmers, marketers and businesspeople), we can’t imagine you’ll be able to see all of the 300-page book’s prescriptions through in one busy week.

However, there is much to glean from the text without having to dive into each exercise for each stage of product development. And while we recommend somebody at your company reads this book thoroughly and sifts through it for the right ideas for your team, keep these 5 points at the forefront of your product development — whether it takes a week, or a year. (But don’t take too long, pressure’s on, especially if competitors have their hands on this book, hehe.)

1. Silence is more powerful than words

Meetings are where ideas and plans are put in motion. When it comes to product development, they are for creativity and coming together to arrive at the best solution through due diligence, consensus and brainstorming.

But by default, people will talk over each other in meetings, and the loudest voice will often win. It’s not exactly ideal for finding the one best solution for product development. There is a natural tendency for some members to follow others (the path of least resistance it would seem) and others to lead the way (old habits die hard). Unfortunately, staging successful development meetings requires some restraint, and more silence than you’d imagine.

Throughout Sprint, the authors make the case for a type of silent, parallel development of ideas. For example, instead of brainstorming aloud, teams are asked to develop ideas silently on cards that will later be shared with the group. This has the tendency to put things on an even footing — for introverts, extroverts, bosses and subordinates. It also keeps all minds active and engaged throughout the process.

This might be the best advice in the book, and can be applied to more than just product development: get the supplies out and heads down before committing to anything.

2. Don’t assume product fit and value propositions

Everything should be tested to the best of your team’s abilities. There are many examples in the book of how certain assumptions had the effect of derailing product development by sending it in the wrong direction. Perhaps the excitement for the product idea came from an assumption that x customer would love y product, but the truth might be that x customer would love z product, and that 1 degree of separation was the difference between success and obscurity.

The adage goes, assuming makes and ‘ass’ out of ‘u’ and ‘me.’ It never gets old.

Testing hypotheses will most likely require input from the outside (aka, the real world, and real people). While this might seem daunting and annoying, it is completely necessary and will do wonders to help ensure success. Expressing the value proposition to target demographics will exercise the team’s marketing abilities, and will identify pain points that need to be addressed. And this type of testing is like a free pass for failures — better to move beyond them in a controlled setting than to be surprised at the launch.

3. Storyboard as if you’re Pixar

It’s better to know exactly what you’re doing and start later than it is to start now and figure out exactly what you’re doing later.

Every product has a story, and how intimately you understand it will have a direct correlation with the success of your product. The best approach takes a page out of Pixar’s book. The animation studio makes amazing films, but not one scene is composited until the entire story is meticulously laid out.

The reason for storyboarding for Pixar: this is how you make a perfect CGI film, save money and avoid disastrous headaches and compromises down the road.

And the additional reasons for startups: This is how clients will interact with your product. And without great interaction, you will miss the mark and come up short. Don’t move forward unless you know your storyboard.

4. Your MVP or prototype should be as simple as possible

All you need is a working prototype to test your big idea. It might be fun to ‘imagineer’ all the bells and whistles that will distinguish the product and provide added value, but this can be extremely distracting at the beginning of development.

The best approach is to figure out only what is essential, and isolate this element for testing. Everything else is secondary, and for naught so long as your core idea isn’t rock solid.

5. Never lose momentum

The reason why a book called Sprint: How to Solve Big Problems and Test New Ideas in Just Five Days would be so appealing to startups is that about 95 percent of ideas are usually left half-baked and never realized (we made up this stat, but the actual number is probably a bit higher). And it isn’t for a lack of trying: it’s easy to go in circles and down wrong turns in product development. It’s easy to find oneself in a tangle that now makes the whole endeavour seem utterly impossible to complete. And it’s easy to waste time and get nowhere.

But Knapp and co-authors show that with airtight methodology and dedication, amazing things can be done in a short amount of (very productive) time. And we’d like to make the case that with these 5 things at the top of your mind, you can do the same at either turtle or hare speed (but try and accelerate with each new product sprint).

The secret is to keep moving forward and never kid yourself if you’re not. Everyday you should be chipping away at development, keeping the project close to mind. Momentum is energy, and energy is progress.

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Interested in product development? Caravan would be glad to help as consultants or a trusted team. With 5 years in custom software and application development, we’ve done our homework.