Sprints within Agile Projects with Scrum

Sprints are also known as an iteration, is a time-boxed period of one to six weeks duration (typically two weeks). Each Sprint starts with a Sprint Planning event that aims to define a Sprint Backlog, identify the work for the Sprint, and make an estimated commitment for the Sprint goal. At the end of each Sprint, a Sprint Review and a Sprint Retrospective will be conducted.   Each sprint will also consist of daily scrum meetings where each of the team members discusses the progress of the project and answers the following questions:

* What I did yesterday?

* What I intend to do today?

* Are there any impediments impacting my work?

Finally, there will be the development of the product and regular reviews by the product owner.

Sprints and Shippable Products

At the end of each Sprint, a working product should be available.  The software should be fully integrated, tested and documented, and it should also be in a potentially shippable state.  Note that while the product should be in a shippable state, this does not mean that no further development of the product is required.  The product should be usable after each increment of the final product objective.

Sprint Length

Sprints are repeating development cycles that will occur until the project is complete.  Requirements are developed, tested and approved during each sprint, in addition to integration.  The sprint length depends on how long the organization can go without making changes.  If the organization cannot go a week without requiring changes to the planned development, then a two-week sprint should not be considered. Choosing a one-week sprint length would then give greater stability to the sprint and also boosts performance in the scrum team.  Note that sprint lengths should not change after they have begun, and should remain constant during a project.  Changes during a project may make it difficult to analyze historical velocities.  

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