"It's what work should be about – working together to build something that matters to people. This is the best use of your time. This is a sprint." This was a great sentence to finish the book, and it's a great sentence to begin working in a better way.
In the preface, the author states he had his first child. When he returned to the office, he wanted his time on the job to be as meaningful as his time with his family. He took a hard look at his habits and saw that, "I wasn’t spending my effort on the most important work". He discussed how improving team processes became an obsession for him. Through his experience of working with teams to create new products at Google, and experimenting on improving the way teams work, he found that focusing on individual work, having time to prototype, and an inescapable deadline produced far better results.
Running the 5 day sprint described in the book enables a team to easily find out if they are on the right track before they commit to the risky business of building and launching their products. The sprint process however is just as applicable to teams launching internal products/solutions/services. This way of work is applicable to any company, not just startups.
The author shares how other Google Ventures team members added to the sprint process to make it better through the years. Braden Kowitz added story-centered design – which focuses on the whole customer experience instead of individual components or technologies. John Zeratsky helped to ensure that each sprint starts at the end, so the business's would be able to identify and answer their most important questions. Michael Margolis encouraged them to finish each sprint with a real world test. By putting your prototype in front of real customers/prospects, you didn't have to guess whether your solutions were good, at the end of the sprint you got answers.
Over the last 10 years, I have facilitated interactive workshops to help teams get a shared understanding of the business problem they are trying to solve, which is a precursor to a shared commitment to solve the problem. Having a solid understanding of the research behind collaborative approaches to work, and understanding the approach to use based on the problem domain you are in is critical to a successful outcome. Because of my background and real-world experience, I recognize how effective the sprint design is, and feel confident in using the process with any client I work with. The psychology behind the methods is real, the creativity of the design will engage all who participate, and you will build better products.
If you are passionate about helping teams work more effectively, if you care about making work a more engaging experience, if you have a burning desire to improve customers' lives, read this book and then USE this book to run sprints.
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Popular Highlights in this book
“Why are we doing this project? Where do we want to be six months, a year, or even five years from now?”Highlighted by 3,605 Kindle readers- An important part of this exercise is rephrasing assumptions and obstacles into questions.Highlighted by 3,167 Kindle readers
- We’ve found the ideal size for a sprint to be seven people or fewer.Highlighted by 3,104 Kindle readers
Reviews with images
A masterpiece. This is the new ’START HERE’ book I recommend to all my design students as well as CEOs I work with.
Jake, John, and Braden have synthesized the most important design-thinking concepts of today into a book that is worth its weight in gold. Seriously — I’ve translated the ideas and checklists in this book to tens of thousands of dollars already as a design consultant.It’s weird... even after 4 years of studying Art & Design in college and 4 years of working at a big tech company, this book was STILL a revelation to me. It helped me understand and practice design in a whole new way. I was lucky to be mentored by top-tier designers. Now you can be mentored by some of the best designers in the Silicon Valley. Listen in on how they work and think...90% of what you need to know about designing great products is in these 257 glorious pages. The other 10% is just blood, sweat and tears.
Top reviews from other countries
Allegretta
Un libro che fornisce un approccio alternativo ai problemi complessi
Reviewed in Italy on March 31, 2024
Allegretta
Reviewed in Italy on March 31, 2024
Un aspetto che ho molto apprezzato del libro è la presenza di illustrazioni, che aiutano a ricordare in modo più semplice concetti chiavi o a chiarire quanto viene descritto nel libro (seppur il libro stesso sia molto chiaro).
Ritengo che questo libro possa tornare utile non solo ad imprenditori e manager che cercano un modo diverso di affrontare problemi e/o progetti su cui non si hanno le idee chiare su come proseguire, ma anche a chiunque cerchi spunti su come poter migliorare le proprie skill su come approcciare sfide che risultano complesse o su metodologie per sviluppare nuove idee.
Images in this review
Harry
Indeed a Sprint to successfull Projects
Reviewed in India on November 1, 2023
Gavin Deadman
Practical guide on everything you need to know to get going with using the Design Sprint process
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on April 10, 2023
Gavin Deadman
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on April 10, 2023
Covering a variety of different experiments which they ran/problems they addressed made it a good read, including Slack (finding the best way to explain Slack to non-tech customers), Savioke Hotels (how hotel guests would react to a robot with personality, by experimenting through a robot delivering a toothbrush to a guests room), Flatiron Health (dealing with the complexities of getting cancer patients into clinical trials), and Blue Bottle Coffee (getting their value proposition clear on a new digital experience).
The book is practical, so if you’re new to Design Sprints, you’ll find it easy to create a plan which you can apply across your product as well as understand the key ingredients needed, so whilst tools have evolved to make it easier more than ever to validate a hypothesis in a remote world for digital products using the likes of Figma, Miro, UserTesting… the fundamentals haven’t changed in that you need to:
1. Collaborate with people throughout the sprint
2. Have a decision maker (normally Product Manager)
3. Identify a high priority problem to solve
4. Ideate and create prototype/s
5. Get feedback from potential customers
“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.”
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