Sprint: How to Solve Big Problems and Test New Ideas in Just Five Days by Jake Knapp and John Zeratsky and Brad Kowitz

From three partners at Google Ventures, a unique five-day process for solving tough problems, proven at more than a hundred companies.

Entrepreneurs and leaders face big questions every day: What’s the most important place to focus your effort, and how do you start? What will your idea look like in real life? How many meetings and discussions does it take before you can be sure you have the right solution?

Now there’s a surefire way to answer these important questions: the sprint. Designer Jake Knapp created the five-day process at Google, where sprints were used on everything from Google Search to Google X. He joined Braden Kowitz and John Zeratsky at Google Ventures, and together they have completed more than a hundred sprints with companies in mobile, e-commerce, healthcare, finance, and more.

A practical guide to answering critical business questions, Sprint is a book for teams of any size, from small startups to Fortune 100s, from teachers to nonprofits. It’s for anyone with a big opportunity, problem, or idea who needs to get answers today.

I will preface this review by saying I rarely enjoy or learn something new and perspective-changing from business books, and often won't recommend them even to colleagues, so my 5-star rating system as I've defined it is not kind to the genre. Generally speaking, this was a fine book. I think the concept is interesting, and it's been recommended at every product management workshop I've attended. It's broken up into a logical, day-by-day structure that explains exactly how to attack a 5-day sprint to test a prototype and “fail fast” with little consequence. It's illustrated and peppered with helpful real-life examples. But to actually get the time and resource to do this for a prototype is something I can't champion (at least, not at my huge company, and not at my level/experience), and given the book is more or less a step-by-step how-to... it's not especially helpful for me. Who knows, though. Maybe down the line — and then I'll be appreciative I have a copy of this book.

Hands-on, useful mix of various approaches to prototype and gather feedback over the course of a week. Team-based, structured and with checklists, it's great for those who have the ability to follow steps exactly — I understand why they didn't want to build “spin off” options, which I'm sure their website might capture, but would have liked to see some nonetheless.

I'm going to be bold here. This is one of those books, like the “7 Habits of Highly Effective People” and “Getting Things Done” that lays out what you think might be obvious in a way that makes it actionable and concrete. It belongs on the same shelf, to serve as a reminder of the tools available to us.

Basically, Jake Knapp clearly (with examples from Google Ventures) lays out how you can save time by focusing attention on ideation, elimination, and testing to get from “My Big Idea” to “My Actual Thing” in a reasonable amount of time. Pitfalls, roles, and materials are all identified. The decision structures and limits laid out in each step may be the most valuable part of this book. I like that you can read it straight through and see how this worked for the example ventures (only one of them is software) and still reference the the tools and checklists included in the book from the website later.

While I have not tested the Sprint idea, I feel confident (since it was tested by Google Ventures more than 100 times) that following the plan will work for many different kinds of ideas. This book is an incredibly fast read with well-organized reference material. I'd recommend this to anyone who wants to do/create/make/sell/etc. something and isn't exactly sure how to get there.