Dominique Stender Good software is only the beginning

The ideal sprint length

When I started with Scrum, I was very cautious. I thought that with all these changes and the new mindset that had to settle, the transition would be easier if I started with longer sprints. Back then I started with three week sprints. Now, this length is perfectly well within the commonly agreed upon boundaries. Certainly the three week sprints didn't do any harm but since then I shifted to frist ten day sprints, then one week sprints and I have had much better results with shorter sprints.

I've isolated a couple of reasons why I believe shorter sprints result in higher quality and higher velocity that I want to share:

First, we had a release cycle of roughly two to three months. Having three week sprints simply gives you very little "wiggle room". There too few sprints for any mayor course correction! Mind you, no change permitted within a sprint! With only three to four sprints in a release there is hardly any chance to start with a rough idea at first and custom-fit it during the release by refactoring those parts that did not work. With shorter sprints you simply have more reviews and hence, more feedback loops.