Sprint is a fundamental component of Scrum methodology, a time-boxed iteration during which the development team works together to deliver shippable product increments. This duration of a sprint is typically two to four weeks, depending on the complexity of the task. During this time, the scrum team selects a prioritized list of items from the backlog for development.
The goal of each sprint is to deliver deliverable increments. This means at the end of each sprint there should be a valuable increment of work that can be immediately released to the product owner, stakeholders or potential customers.
Daily Scrum
During a sprint, the scrum team engages in various scrum meetings such as daily stand up or daily scrum to discuss the development progress, challenges, blockers and their plan for the day. This fosters collaboration between the scrum team and helps them to solve the problems more quickly and efficiently.
Sprint review
At the end of each sprint, a sprint review is conducted where scrum teams showcase the completed increments to stakeholders. This provides an opportunity to get feedback from the stakeholders and ensure the product aligns with the customer expectations.
Sprint Retrospective
After sprint review, the team conducts a retrospective where they reflect on what went well and what can be improved in the next sprint.
How to Plan a Sprint?
Planning a sprint in scrum is one of the most crucial events. It is a collaborative event where scrum master, development team and product owner come together and make decisions about what needs to be completed in the sprint.
Team review the outcome of the previous sprint and include the spillover or incomplete work in the upcoming sprint. Product owner then select a prioritized list of features, fixes and issues from the backlog and present it in front of the team. The development team reviews the items and asks for clarification and further information from the product owner. They break down the items into smaller tasks and subtasks. They discuss the time and effort required to complete each task and give story points to get an estimate. Once finished, the team then decides the sprint goal or what should be achieved at the end of the sprint.
Team then creates a plan on how they will work on these features. They decide which task to complete first and what are the dependencies. Tasks are then assigned to the relevant developers and the team shares their progress through daily scrums.
Thus, from planning to execution, development team. Scrum master and product owner closely work together and collaborate with each other to complete the work by the end of sprint.
Do’s and Don’ts
Planning and executing a Sprint may sound straightforward, but teams often encounter challenges along the way. Here we have rounded up a list of some do’s and don’ts that can help you to create a more effective plan for your upcoming sprint.
Do’s
- Clearly communicate the goals, expectations and any change in priorities or features with the development team so that they can have a better understanding of what they need to do. This is the key to ensure everyone is on the same page and moving forward to a common goal.
- Actively involve the development team in decision making regarding how they will complete the work to make accurate estimation.
- Regularly refine your backlog and provide clear acceptance criteria to the team. This will eliminate the ambiguity as well as ensure consistent quality of work.
- Don’t add a lot of features in your sprint to complete the work early. Remove the features from your sprint backlog if you believe development won’t be able to complete it within the sprint duration.
- Be open to the changes in requirements, priorities, and external factors that may affect the sprint velocity.
- Regularly conduct the sprint retrospective to estimate the velocity, strengths, and weaknesses of the team and utilize this data to pan your next sprint.
Don’ts
- Don’t make decisions in isolation. When you don’t involve the team in decision making it can cause misunderstandings and hinder the collaboration between the team members.
- Don’t understand the importance of the daily standup meetings. These brief interactions can significantly contribute to track the work progress, estimate velocity, identify and remove potential blockers and foster communication between team members.
- Avoid rigidity in planning. Be flexible and open to changes to ensure the team can efficiently meet the changing priorities and deliver a product that aligns with the expectations of the stakeholders and customers.
- Don’t ignore performance metrics. Refulary monitor velocity, speed, burndow, burnup charts to identify the areas of improvements.
- Don’t dismiss feedback from the team. Actively listen to their complaints, suggestions and impediment and address them promptly.
- Don’t neglect stakeholders engagements in various events such as sprint review. Regularly communicate with them to align the product with their expectations.
