Beyond The Prototype: A roadmap for navigating the fuzzy area between ideas and outcomes.

This book came at a great time for me and my team. The presentation is concise, filled with actionable tips and insights to help you run a successful design sprint. More importantly, Beyond the Prototype teaches you how to execute on your prototype ideas weeks or months after the design sprint has ended to convert them into tangible value. Additionally the author includes many real world examples of how to navigate complex company politics and manage expectations of stakeholders to ensure successful outcomes. I would highly recommend it.

Design sprints provide a great framework for napkin to validation. They help in getting from problem/idea to tested hypothesis within a short span of a week. Books by Jake Knapp, frameworks from leading design thinkers have great frameworks that address on the whys and how to run design sprints. However, Design sprint to a prototype is a fuzzy area. It is hard to align execution to the artifacts and learnings from the design sprint. Often the design sprint then leads to disillusionment and a trough. It is not surprising that this is akin to an athlete who wins a race or completes a marathon and then faces a long lull and disillusion.This book is one of the only books I am aware of that address the question, "What should we do after the design sprint?". The book comes with an easy 6 step process to lead product and design managers & the team to execute post the design sprint.Apart from the framework there are many tools, softwares and templates that Douglas Ferguson addresses. As an entrepreneur and someone who has seen several startups in the past in various capacities, I have not come across such a treasure trove resource of tools, frameworks and softwares packaged for execution. If you are a UX leader, designer, product manager, an entrepreneur or engineering leader- this book is a must read & use in your future implementations.

I enjoyed this book, I did. Its very handy and it is a great little reference book much like a cheat sheet to a design sprint. It's bite sized ideas from start to finish. References for planning and ready questionnaires are the best parts.

Design sprints are a phenomenal way to come up with a prototype or proof of concept in just a week, but what's next? Whether you're an entrepreneur trying to get a new idea off the ground, or (especially) work in a larger company and are trying to drive new innovations within a larger business, Douglas spells out a practical roadmap for going from a "cool idea" to figuring out how to move the initiative forward despite multiple stakeholders and competing priorities. Lots of great wisdom - an awesome book!

Since the original Google Sprint book, there have been hundreds of articles about how to do them in every form. But if you’ve ever been part of organisations applying them to everything and then failing to follow through with any of the outcomes, this book is for you. Rather than inducing yet more innovation theatre, Douglas Ferguson lays out a clear map of the common pitfalls and a plan of what to do next. Ferguson has experienced working on design sprints from the inventors of it and as a master facilitator, you know he knows what he is talking about from first hand experience.

With examples that ground the theory into reality, this read gives helpful advice on how to move forward after a sprint. It's directed for those who are new to sprints and work at small to medium companies.

What Douglass does exceptionally well is provide concrete "what's next?" steps to realize the potential value which comes from a design sprint. Until you make it real, it is only potential value - and Douglass provides actionable guidance on how to close that gap. Peppered with practical insights and examples from sessions Douglass has run, teams he's worked with, the book and the process are very approachable. A must read for any team attempting to realize the potential of design sprinting.

It’s shocking to me to see so many good reviews on this book, smells like nepotism or paid reviews to me. Page 92: “Multi-functional team members are extremely valuable assets to any post-sprint team.” Like come on Sherlock, multi-functional people are valuable to any team. Next sentence... “These people wear many hats and contribute in different ways.” How do I even describe such awful writing?The book is 169 pages but considering the ~20pt font, the quotes that obnoxiously take an entire page (trees are screaming “wtf”), and white space that makes you think you’re looking at a picture of Santorini, this book is basically worth 40 pages of your typical book maximum.Some valuable info I got: draw your designs before moving into implementation. Explain your feature to an imaginary higher up. And that’s it. This book was awfully put together and used pages for ~10 words far too often (probably 40+ “pages” that fit this description). I was going to leave a 2 star rating cause I was thinking it may just not be of my interests but no. Time and time again the writing was just too awful that I questioned why I was reading the book (business reasons) but that example mentioned above was the last straw. I flipped through and skimmed the rest and didn’t find anything better than the first half of the book I went through. Look for a different book if you’re interested in design.

Hi, I am disappointed by this book and feel cheated. I mean when you pay 30€ for a book, that is a lot and you expect much better writing as well as content. As already mentioned in another review the use of font, spacing and repetition of words/sentences in this books is just wrong. It seems like the author needed to fill up space to make his book longer. I don't understand the need for this.I read the entire book cover to cover to gave it a chance... But it is simply not good work. The recommendations are shallow and it lacks examples/variety. If you are a beginner and have never done any product development then this might be okay for you but if you have a tiny bit of experience then this book does not offer any new insights. Too bad, as the topic (post design sprint phase) in general is interesting and I appreciate the effort to write about it.I do hope the author revises this book and improves it. It is not a lost cause and can be improved hugely with a bit of smart editing. Again, what bothers me most is the price point. It is not in line with the quality of the work. Therefore 1 Star.I can't understand the 5-star reviews. I doubt all of them are real.

Overall, it is a nice book. It contains very beneficial post sprint tips.I am giving 4 stars because I would like to see more examples about how an idea can turn and convert to backlog elements.