Sprint
by Jake Knapp
A friend and colleague recently asked a group for ideas and advice on how she could support her practice in their ambitions to improve patient access as they were planning to hire in an external organisation to help. Lots of ideas were suggested and, in the middle of the discussion, this book popped back into my mind. Written by 3 designers from Google Ventures, the venture capital branch of the company, it documents an intensive 5 day ‘sprint’ process to develop and test new ideas in an organisation.
Now, I know most general practices and healthcare organisations don’t have that a whole week to spend on developing and testing ideas for improvement… but what stuck with me was the realisation that – unlike most of my prior experiences trying to change things in my workplace – quality improvement doesn’t have to take a long time. Although the time frames suggested in this book are a thing of fantasy for most teams there are still loads of ideas that can be taken and used individually as part of a (slower) QI process. Suggestions for rapidly understanding processes and problems, for developing creative ideas and consensus in decision making, and for quickly prototyping changes to get rapid evidence of impact (or lack thereof). This book won’t be for everyone, but for those interested in refining Quality Improvement processes it might be worth a look.
Will Owen, Next Gen GP