In any given week our company is typically developing five projects at once, with teams of one to three. We run one-week sprints with a half day planning session on Monday morning, and a review session on Friday afternoon.

A sprint is the basic unit of development in Agile. Sprints tend to last between one week and one month and are a “timeboxed” development effort of a constant length.

Our sprint planning session is broken down as follows:

  • Product owner – prioritise and explain highest priority items in the product backlog (we use Pivotal Tracker). The team can ask questions at this point.
  • Product owner – set a sprint goal (what are we achieving this sprint).
  • Team – select Pivotal Tracker stories you can commit to, to attain that goal.
  • Team – demonstrate a solution to each story in the sprint and ensure no outstanding questions.

Our Friday afternoon review session:

  • Product Owner and Team  - demo all completed stories.
  • Team – Review estimates from the sprint and note down how you went and how you can improve (if target not met).
  • Team – Review points missed from the sprint and why, and how you can improve on that for next sprint.

If you’re running sprints in your organisation do you do things a little differently? Drop us a line in the comments.