Sprint
A fixed-length iteration (usually 1–2 weeks) in Scrum during which a team completes a set amount of work from the backlog and delivers a potentially shippable increment.
What is a Sprint?
A sprint is a fixed-length development cycle in Scrum — usually 1 or 2 weeks — during which a team works on a committed set of backlog items and produces a working, potentially shippable product increment.
Sprint lifecycle
`
Sprint Planning → Daily Standups → Sprint Review → Retrospective → next Sprint Planning
`
| Phase | What happens |
|---|---|
| Sprint Planning | Team selects backlog items, estimates effort, agrees on sprint goal |
| Daily Standup | 15-min sync: what did I do, what will I do, any blockers? |
| Sprint Review | Demo to stakeholders, collect feedback |
| Retrospective | What went well, what to improve, 3 action items |
Sprint goal
Every sprint should have a single sentence goal: "This sprint we will X so that Y." Not just a list of tickets. A sprint without a goal is a sprint that can be disrupted by anything.
What kills a sprint
- Scope added mid-sprint without removing equivalent scope
- Unresolved dependencies discovered during the sprint
- Over-commitment (velocity not calibrated to realistic capacity)
- No sprint goal — team optimises for task completion, not outcomes
Free templates for Sprint
Frequently asked questions
Can sprint scope change mid-sprint?
In principle, no — that's the point of committing. In practice, P0 incidents and critical bugs justify scope changes. The rule: anything added must have equivalent scope removed, and the sprint goal must remain intact.
What's the difference between sprint velocity and capacity?
Velocity is the average story points completed per sprint, measured over the last 3–5 sprints. Capacity is the available person-hours in a given sprint (accounting for leave, meetings, etc.). Use velocity to forecast; use capacity to adjust for anomalous sprints.
Apply Sprint to your real product data
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Related terms
Agile
An iterative approach to software development that delivers working software in short cycles, embraces changing requirements, and prioritises collaboration over documentation.
Scrum
An Agile framework that organises work into fixed-length sprints (1–4 weeks) with defined roles, ceremonies, and artifacts to deliver working software iteratively.
Product Backlog
A prioritised list of all work — features, bugs, improvements, and technical debt — that a product team intends to build, ordered by value and urgency.