Keep Your Sprints Short

Scrum allows sprints to be of any length up to one calendar month (so, yes, you could run a one day sprint if you wanted to — some support/service teams actually do). Over the years, however, sprints have shortened from a typical three or four weeks to a much more common two weeks or even one week.

This is an excellent trend. Shorter sprints, like small PBIs, are easier to manage. Shorter sprints hold less overall work, so there’s fewer details to plan and get confused over. Less overall work also means less risk and fewer surprises during the sprint. Sure, the team gets less done during a 2-week sprint than a 3-week sprint, but the reduction in complexity results in an increase in day-to-day productivity and improved quality.

Scrum teams are responsible for choosing sprint length and are encouraged to experiment with different sprint lengths. If your sprint is longer than 2 weeks, try a shorter sprint.