Yevgeniy Brikman's Reviews > Sprint: How to Solve Big Problems and Test New Ideas in Just Five Days

This book works on two levels:

1. The first level is the instructions on how to run a "design sprint," which is a processed originally developed at Google / Google Ventures, but now used by designers all over the world, which has step-by-step instructions on how to go from identifying a problem, to coming up with a design, to building a prototype, and even testing the prototype with users, all in 1 week. It's a cool idea that we'll be trying out at my company shortly.

2. The second level is that the design sprint itself uses several dozen tools and techniques that are useful in a variety of contexts. It's like a grab-bag of team-work and collaboration best practices, and I see us using many of these tools and techniques outside of design sprints too. Some of these include user journey mapping, explicitly asking "how can we fail," the "how might we" exercise, lightning demos, the four-step sketch, crazy 8s, art museum, dot voting, heat maps, speed critique, note and vote, storyboards (including opening scenes), and more.

Unlike many other business books, this one has no fluff or filler. It explains what design sprints are, where they have been used, why you may want to try them yourself, and then dives right into the process you use, going through each day of the design sprint in detail. Along the way, you get lots of examples from real world design sprints (e.g., at Slack, Blue Bottle Coffee, Medium, etc), plus checklists at the end that help you run your own. You can read the book in one afternoon and start trying out design sprints, and the other tools in this book, are your company the very next day. Highly recommended!