Comments on: Knowing when to sprint with your startup

By: Audai E. Louri

Audai E. Louri — Tue, 16 Feb 2010 23:28:51 +0000

First of all thank you for this informative article, I was just wondering what where your “Soaring Signs” that encouraged you or enlightened this is the time to start “Sprinting” with your startup?

By: Technotheory.com - Theme for 2010: Swim

Technotheory.com - Theme for 2010: Swim — Mon, 04 Jan 2010 16:46:58 +0000

[...] as I mentioned recently, AwayFind is in a sprint right now. We’re building something pretty-frickin’-amazing, but we’re not charging yet [...]

By: Jared Goralnick

Jared Goralnick — Mon, 14 Dec 2009 03:52:56 +0000

Really appreciate your thoughts here, Victoria. These are great caveats : ).

By: Victoria Pickering

Victoria Pickering — Wed, 09 Dec 2009 22:50:12 +0000

Jared – A great and thoughtful piece!
I agree with everything you say about how to think about the costs and opportunities that result in deciding to sprint vs. spread out a project. Here are two caveats I’d add:
1. If you sprint, know when to stop sprinting. Very often sprints aren’t called off when they should be. Especially if talented people have been hired for the sprint phase, owners often keep them around because they don’t want to let good people go (or have a reluctance to terminate them) or keep thinking up new things for them to do, whether or not they are core to the business objectives. So sprints can often run into massive cost overruns after the initial sprint period.
2. Usually sprints are built on the premise that the work path is pretty well defined at that point. But there are still times during a sprint where it would be best to turn the direction or revise plans, regardless of the sunk costs. So it would benefit any owner before starting a sprint to really work through the contingencies that might call for a change in direction, rather than getting swept up in the adrenaline of the sprint and the reluctance to think about making any changes.

Again, really like the way you have laid out the issues so clearly!

By: Jared Goralnick

Jared Goralnick — Wed, 09 Dec 2009 20:43:50 +0000

Thanks, Nick. You’re right that much of this post shouldn’t be taken to heart without strong clarity on the part of the PM/CEO.

I began to write this post without any caveat about clarity–mostly touting working fast–but that’s just not good advice–that there are many times when we need to slow down and figure things out without burning people’s time on the wrong effort.

However, once you know that there’s a straight path from X to Y that takes 100 hours, getting those hours out of the way in the shortest calendar span is very helpful.

By: Nick Campbell

Nick Campbell — Wed, 09 Dec 2009 20:04:58 +0000

Good post. It’s good to get peoples thoughts on the subject, especially for product people like myself. However, people should be wary of looking at the problem from a purely financial point of view. While we’re talking about relatively small groups of people, the idea of the Mythical Man Month still holds true.

I like that you mentioned “as soon as it became clear that there were multiple months of work for a new person, I’ve added that person”. Just hope that distinction is clear to others.

Thanks for the perspective!