What is a Sprint in Agile?

In Agile, a Sprint is a time-boxed iteration of 2 to 4 weeks, during which the scrum team works to complete a set amount of work planned during sprint planning meetings. Sprint is a fundamental component of Scrum, which is one of the popular Agile frameworks.

Who uses Sprints?

Sprints in Agile Scrum are used by the entire Scrum team which includes the Development Team, Scrum Master and Product Owner. Additionally, the key stakeholders including customers, end users, business representatives and the leadership team of a company, use Sprint. The Development Team includes all Software Developers, Quality assurance, Testing teams, Designers and UX Specialists who are involved in the development process of a product or project.

Characteristics of a Sprint:

The key characteristics of a Sprint are listed below.

1. Time-Boxed Duration: A sprint has a fixed, time-boxed duration which is determined by the Scrum Team based on the team’s capacity and the nature of the project. As a general practice, this duration is consistent throughout a project for predictability.
2. Fixed Sprint Goal: Each Sprint has a well-defined, clear and concise Sprint goal with planned objectives the team aims to achieve.
3. Iterative Process: Sprints are continuous and repetitive with each sprint working on top of what was achieved in the previous sprint.
4. Incremental Development: From each sprint the product is built incrementally, and releases done to product increments.
5. Collaborative Teamwork: Sprints are executed by the Collaborative efforts of all team members including the product owner, scrum master and development team. They work together to plan, execute and review the sprint.
6. Adaptive: Sprint is adaptive and flexible to adjust the scope of the sprint based on customer feedback and markets’ changing requirements.
7. Potentially Shippable Product Increment: The primary objective of each sprint is to deliver a well-defined potentially shippable product increment that meets the ‘definition of done.
8. Empirical Process Control: Based on the feedback, data and experience of Sprint Review and Sprint Retrospective events, the empirical process is implemented. Empirical process control helps the team to continuously inspect and adapt their work for improvement.
9. Stakeholder Engagement: Sprints engages all stakeholders during the sprint cycle, to engage and receive feedback which promotes transparency and alignment with stakeholders’ needs.

Sprint is a fixed-length iteration and an agile scrum event, during which a cross-functional scrum team works to complete a set amount of work. Generally, a sprint is time-boxed to 2 to 4 weeks duration. Sprint breaks down complex tasks in product or project development to shorter duration with a well-defined sprint goal, and it results in a potentially shippable Product Increment (PI).