Every team can get more done with sprints — but it’s not just about going fast

The typical workday is busy, but it’s not always productive. We spend too much time on email, have too many meetings, then struggle finding willpower and energy to focus on what’s really important. This isn’t our fault. After all, as Cal Newport says, we’re just taking the path of least resistance.

Plenty of authors have proposed systems and philosophies for getting more done at work. My writing partner Jake Knapp created his own solution in 2009: the sprint. It’s a five-day process that helps teams focus on one big goal, taking them from ideas to prototypes to customer research in just a week. In a sprint, you get to fast-forward your project — to see what the end result might look like and how customers would react.

But the sprint is not another theoretical model or framework. It’s a proven recipe, and in our book Sprint, we provide detailed hour-by-hour instructions for following that recipe. At GV, we’ve tested the process with more than 100 companies. We help our startups use sprints to answer big questions, test new business ideas, and solve critical challenges. We’ve seen firsthand, again and again, how sprints help teams get more done and move faster.

Yes, sprints are fast, but it’s not what you think. The sprint is not an all-out, late-night, stack-of-pizza-boxes-on-the-conference-table affair. In fact, the sprint day only lasts from 10am to 5pm. You’ll have plenty of time to hang out with your family, meet up with friends, get a good night’s sleep — and yeah, stay caught up on those pesky emails.

Why do sprints help teams get more done? It’s not just about speed. It’s about momentum, focus, and confidence. The companies who use sprints (in fields like oncology, robotics, coffee, and dozens more) see consistent results from the process. Here are five of the most important outcomes.

Sprints help you start

When a big problem is looming, it can be tough to dig in and get started. Sprints make an excellent commitment device — when you gather a team, clear the calendar, and schedule customer interviews, you commit to making progress.

GV portfolio company Savioke found themselves in this same situation: they had spent months developing their delivery robot for hotels, but felt paralyzed by big questions about the robot’s personality and behavior. We planned a sprint, and by the end of the week, the Savioke team had tested a simple robot personality with actual customers.

Sprints move you from abstract to concrete

Too many projects get stuck in Abstractopia: an alternate universe where debates, theories, and hunches are plentiful, but concrete progress is rare. For podcast startup Gimlet Media, an abstract question — “should we become a technology company?” — was causing anxiety for founders Alex Blumberg and Matt Lieber.

Gimlet decided to run a sprint on the question, and almost immediately had an answer. That’s because, in every sprint, you sketch specific solutions (not abstract ideas) and build a realistic prototype before the week is up. Gimlet’s sprint helped them see what their future as a technology company would look like. And in their case, it led the team to decide it wasn’t necessary to reach their goals as a company.

Sprints focus you on the important things

Think about the typical day at work. With all the noise, distractions, and demands for your attention, it’s almost impossible to see what’s truly important. That’s why every sprint starts with an entire day devoted to mapping out the problem at hand. Then, after your team has built a shared understanding of the challenge, you can figure out exactly where to focus.

When Flatiron Health began work on a new tool for cancer clinics, their focus naturally turned to doctors and patients, the typical stakeholders for their products. But when we sprinted together, the Flatiron team realized that research coordinators (the folks who administered clinical trials) were actually a more important group to focus on. By the end of the week, Flatiron had tested a prototype with research coordinators and had the confidence to move forward with the project.

Sprints force crisp decision-making

Business-as-usual decision-making is busted: we strive for consensus; we don’t make tough calls; we aren’t transparent about how decisions are made on our team. The sprint corrects these problems with a recipe for better group decision-making.

The leadership at Slack used that structure to decide between two fundamentally different marketing approaches. One approach was unique, bold, and difficult to implement. (It was also the CEO’s favorite.) The other was more conventional but easier to build.

Slack could have debated the merits of each approach, or just went with the CEO’s hunch. But in our sprint together, we cleanly separated the two concepts, then decided to prototype and test both. After Friday’s customer test, the results were clear: the simpler marketing was more effective, and the CEO’s favorite, while clever, wasn’t as successful with customers.

Sprints point you down the right road, so you can go full speed ahead

Your team will accomplish a ton in every sprint, but the knock-on effects — the confidence of knowing you’re on the right road — are even more powerful.

When GV startup LendUp began working on a new credit card for consumers with no or low credit, they had a lot of ideas for helpful features. But they were stuck: without a clear prioritization of features it was difficult for them to make progress on designing and launching the card. In our sprint together, we created fake credit-card marketing to test LendUp’s ideas. Armed with the results — a clear delineation between essential and unimportant features — their team went full speed ahead with the card.

How would your team behave differently if they knew they were right? How much faster could they go? Sprints can give any company the confidence to get more done, not just during the sprint, but down the road. And the best part is: you don’t have to make sweeping cultural or personnel changes to make it happen. You just have to try a sprint.

This article was originally published at Harvard Business Review.