To start the conversation, ask your team this question: “Why are we doing this project? Where do we want to be six months, a year, or even five years from now?”

Your map should have from five to around fifteen steps. If there are more than twenty, it’s probably too complicated.

Lurking beneath every goal are dangerous assumptions. The longer those assumptions remain unexamined, the greater the risk.

An important part of this exercise is rephrasing assumptions and obstacles into questions.

The long-term goal is your motivation and your measuring stick.

On Monday, you’ll map out the problem and pick an important place to focus. On Tuesday, you’ll sketch competing solutions on paper. On Wednesday, you’ll make difficult decisions and turn your ideas into a testable hypothesis. On Thursday, you’ll hammer out a realistic prototype. And on Friday, you’ll test it with real live humans.

Before the sprint begins, you’ll need to have the right challenge and the right team. You’ll also need time and space to conduct your sprint.

“Why are we doing this project? Where do we want to be six months, a year, or even five years from now?”

Imagine you’ve gone forward in time one year, and your project was a disaster. What caused it to fail? How did your goal go wrong?