Resources
by Jake Knapp
A five-day process, developed at Google Ventures, for going from a hard question to a tested answer without building the product first. Its real value is structural: it compresses the argument, the design and the evidence into one week, so a team stops debating and starts learning.
Key Concepts
Monday — Map
Agree the problem, map the journey end to end, and pick one target to focus the week on.
Tuesday — Sketch
Everyone sketches competing solutions alone. Individual work first produces better ideas than group brainstorming.
Wednesday — Decide
Critique the sketches and commit to one storyboard rather than trying to merge everything.
Thursday — Prototype
Build a realistic façade, not a working product — just enough to provoke a genuine reaction.
Friday — Test
Five customer interviews. Patterns show up fast, and the week ends with evidence instead of opinion.
Value & Benefits
Decisions on a Deadline
A time-box that ends open-ended debate with a tested answer.
Cheap Failure
Discover an idea is wrong in a week, before it becomes a quarter of engineering.
Better Ideas from Individuals
Sketching alone before converging avoids the flattening effect of group brainstorms.
Stakeholders in the Room
The people who can say yes watch the tests, so the result is hard to dismiss.