A Sprint within the Scrum framework is a set, repeating span of time that a team uses to focus on accomplishing the most important work.
Sprints are supposed to be short (usually 1-2 weeks long) but the duration varies. It’s up to the team to decide how long their Sprints are.
It’s called a Sprint because teams are more likely to make meaningful steps when large amounts of work are broken down into short increments.
Within a Sprint, certain ceremonies are often attended. Such as:
- Daily Scrum – Scrum Team meets every day (typically for 15 minutes) to discuss their progress towards their Sprint Goal.
- Sprint Planning – Scrum Team meets at the beginning of every Sprint to establish what the team will work on and what their goal(s) will be.
- Sprint Retrospective (aka “retro”) – Scrum Team meets at the end of every Sprint to discuss what went well, what didn’t go well and what they could do to improve.
- Sprint Demo – Scrum team demos their progress to stakeholders.
- Backlog Refinement – Some Scrum Team members (lead developer and Product Owner) meet once per Sprint to make sure the backlog of work is ready to work on and is prioritized.
- Bug scrubs – Some Scrum Team members (lead developer, QA and Product Owner) meet once per Sprint to discuss open bugs and their priority.
Most importantly, during a Sprint, development teams work on developing the tasks that will make progress on the Sprint Goal(s).
People find it more motivating to be partly finished with a longer journey than to be at the starting gate of a shorter one.
Small targets lead to small victories, and small victories can often trigger a positive spiral of behavior.