We like the concept of Scrum, but…
Are you serious? — episode 23
Many people think that Scrum dictates the Sprint length. It’d have a maximum length of four weeks and a minimum length of two weeks. People see this apparent rule as a reason to not consider Scrum or to stop using Scrum. They wish to see smaller iterations than Sprints of two weeks.
The thing is….Scrum doesn’t dictate the minimum Sprint length (anymore).
The OOPSLA ’95 paper by Jeff Sutherland and Ken Schwaber in which they introduced their view onScrum is already talking about 1 to 4 week Sprints:
A Sprint is a set of development activities conducted over a pre-defined period, usually one to four weeks. — OOPSLA ’95 paper on Scrum
Then “Agile Software Development with Scrum”, 2002 by Ken Schwaber and Mike Beedle mentions it has a length of a month.
The first Scrum Guide dropped the minimum length altogether:
“A Sprint is one iteration of a month or less that is of consistent length throughout a development effort” — 2010 Scrum Guide
Currently the Scrum Guide says the following:
“The heart of Scrum is a Sprint, a time-box of one month or less […]” — November 2017 Scrum Guide
This is clear enough:
Scrum doesn’t dictate a minimum Sprint length.
Do you want to work with one week Sprints? By all means go for it. Experiment. The benefits of a smaller Sprint are certainly interesting:
More frequent Sprint Reviews, thus faster feedback on the increment and more flexibility to adjust your direction.
More frequent Sprint Retrospectives, thus more frequent opportunities for the team to inspect itself and plan to improve.
You’d also expect that the Scrum Events would be shorter because the Sprints are shorter. If this would not be the result, then this could be a drawback for the team because you’d end up with relatively more time spent on the events.
Do you want to experiment even more? Well, people are even talking about Sprints of one day. Crazy? It may not be suited for all of us, but I like the idea.
I encourage you to ask yourself: What do we need to do to be able to have a One Day Sprint?
This thought experiment could result into awesome actions to improve the Scrum Team’s environment.
John Cutler wrote a great article about the One day Sprint:
One Day Sprints
Have The Conversation. Do The Thing. Review. Go Homehackernoon.com
John’s example isn’t pure Scrum (no Daily Scrum and Retrospective every 2nd week), but the reason for me to mention it is that it’s thought-provoking.
Don’t confuse Sprint length with possibilities to deploy! If you wish to shorten the Sprint length only because you wish to deploy more often, then note that Scrum allows you to deploy as often as you want. If you wish to shorten the Sprint length because you want to deploy more often AND you want to inspect and adapt more frequently (what you built, how you worked together) then those are the right reasons!
Did you like the article? Then it would be awesome if you’d clap 👏🏻. I am also very keen to learn what you think about this topic.
My twitter profile is https://twitter.com/WJAgeling
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