INSPIRED, 2nd Edition

CHAPTER 58Discovery Sprint Technique

I find that many teams, especially those new to modern product techniques, are looking for a structured introduction to modern product discovery. In this chapter, I describe the concept of a discovery sprint.

A discovery sprint is a one‐week time box of product discovery work, designed to tackle a substantial problem or risk your product team is facing.

A discovery sprint is definitely useful for more than just transformation. It could just as easily be considered a discovery planning technique or a discovery prototyping technique. But I find it's most helpful in bringing all these things together, so I choose to include it here.

Some people use the term design sprint rather than discovery sprint, but as the purpose of the work—when done well—goes significantly beyond design, I prefer the more general term.

Further, if your company has been struggling with the concept of MVP, this is a very good way to start getting the value from this key technique.

A discovery sprint is a one‐week time box of product discovery work, designed to tackle a substantial problem or risk your product team is facing.

I first met the Google Ventures (GV) team many years ago when they were just getting started. They are part of Google's investment arm, but even more valuable to the startup than their money, GV created a small team to go in and help the companies they invest in get their product efforts off to a good start. Their model is to typically spend a week ...