A lot of people have probably heard the word “sprint” or been a part of a “sprint” process at work—solving problems with a systematic process that takes a few days out of your normal routine. Jake Knapp and his team at Google Ventures helped to define and create the sprint system. After running more than 100 sprints with companies like 23andme, Slack, Nest, and Foundation Medicine, he’s outlined the sprint process in his brand-new book Sprint: Solve Big Problems and Test New Ideas in Five Days. Read on to learn more about Knapp’s inspirations and who would be his all-time dream-team for a sprint throughout history!
When did you realize you wanted to write Sprint out as a book?
What happened was we started writing blog posts about the Sprint process. And I was really surprised by the feedback. People read the blog posts, and they ran their own sprints, and it worked (which was slightly depressing because I hoped I was the magical ingredient that made it work, but it turned out that people could do it on their own). But people had a lot of questions about the details, and they wanted to hear more stories. So I wrote more blog posts, and my colleagues John, Braden, Daniel, and Michael, we were all writing posts about this design process, trying to fill in the gaps for people. But we started to realize that people might want a book. And so we were intrigued by the idea.
The idea for the book was around in a “Huh, wouldn’t that be interesting?” way for a year or two. Then I decided to do what I’d tell someone else to do—which is run a sprint, make a prototype, see if it was interesting for people, and see what it felt like for myself to hold the book and get real, not just talk about the idea in the abstract.
So that’s what I did. I made a prototype, I mocked up a jacket in Keynote, wrapped it around an existing hardcover book, just to see what it would look like. And I made the first 20 pages, a table of contents, pasted it in along with some blog posts, and the point is that when I saw that, and I shared it with a few people and got their reaction to that prototype, then I got super-super excited about it, and realized we should totally do this.
When it came to including case studies and examples in the book, what made the cut for you?
We’re actually pretty good about documenting them, so we had a lot of options. So actually we wrote probably at least three books’ worth of stuff that didn’t make the cut! I recently published on Medium a whole chapter with a case study that we ended up cutting because it just wasn’t quite right.
I was looking for stories that illustrated each part of the process as clearly as possible, and also for a set of case studies together that helped to show how versatile sprints can be. I didn’t want them to be all software, or all life science. And some products are easier to understand and more fun than others. They just lend themselves to storytelling.
Every sprint that I’ve been a part of is interesting—but sometimes it takes a half-day to understand what the company is doing! And we couldn’t afford that in a book.
What are some of the more unusual companies or projects that you know of that have adopted a Sprint process?
Last week, we did a sprint with a company called Orbital Insight that is selling satellite imagery data analysis. They have acquired feeds of satellite imagery from all these companies that have satellites, they look at it every day, analyze it at a huge scale, and they can tell you for example how many cars are in a retail chain’s parking lot day by day and how it trends over time. In their sprint, they wanted to figure how to explain the value of that to hedge fund managers who might subscribe to the data.
At Google Ventures, we’ve used sprints to work on healthcare, coffee, robots, farming, food technology, and I’ve heard of sprints being used at Facebook, at McKinsey and other consultancies, at Lego, in government, in English classrooms, and recently somebody tweeted at us that she had run a sprint at her church. (Pretty awesome! We sent her a book.)
In an ideal world, what famous minds would you want to invite to a “Bill & Ted”-style time travel sprint?
Whoaaaaa! Wow. My number one draft pick for a sprint is J.K. Rowling, actually, because everybody says that she’s an introvert, and she’s obviously an amazing, amazing individual worker. So much of what happens in a sprint is quiet people using writing to express their ideas on a level playing field with someone who pitches their idea really well, and who’s masterful at a group dynamic. And J.K. Rowling is the epitome of a quiet writer, a quiet person.
Sacagawea. You want someone who’s going to guide a group of people through things they aren’t familiar with, she’d be a good facilitator right there.
The decider, maybe Teddy Roosevelt. I think in terms of bombastic decision-maker, I could see that.
For designers and engineers, the Wright Brothers. I think they really epitomize the sprint mindset, because they just experimented and experimented.
For marketing, Lady Gaga. For a little bit of a different perspective.
For science and data, E.O. Wilson. Pretty cool guy. Studied ants.
Being in that room is gonna get pretty interesting.
Why Sharpies? Why not another type of marker or pen?
Not Sharpies, actually! Sharpies are dangerous, because I always write on myself with Sharpies and then can’t wash it off, or I’ll mistake them for whiteboard markers and ruin a whiteboard.
But we do use Papermate Flair for our sketching exercises. And there are an embarrassing number of reasons why I think that is the best pen, having tried a lot of pens. For one thing, the line quality is really nice—it’s a thin line, but not too thin. It makes a satisfying scratching sound as you write, you can feel the friction against the paper. But perhaps most importantly, they are cheap, easy to find, kind of cool looking, but non-pretentious. They don’t look like a tool a fancy-pants designer would use. They look like a pen that’s been around decades. Nobody picks up that pen and thinks: “I now have to create a masterpiece.”
Anything else I should ask you about?
I want to talk about why sprints are so important. My father used to say, “Jake, you should find a way to enjoy your work, because you’ll spend most of your life doing it.” And it’s true. A huge portion of your waking life is spent doing work. But a lot of what happens during that time can just be a blur of reacting to meetings, and emails, and doing things that mostly aren’t ultimately very important. My father passed away in October, and I’ve been thinking a lot about what he did with his time, how he practiced what he preached about finding ways to enjoy his work, and finding meaning in his work.
And for me—as corny as this sounds—that’s why sprints are so important. They are a way to drop everything else, drop the noise of the workweek, and pick one important thing, and work closely with the people on your team. It becomes this moment in time that won’t blur by like everything else that happens at work. It’s a time when you get to do what really matters. You get to do your best work, your team gets to do their best work, and you get to really enjoy your work.
And I think that’s truly important. Your first sprint might be a little uncomfortable, because it’s different. But that enjoyment and meaning at work is worth doing something that’s a little uncomfortable.