Too long, didn’t read?

The Scrum Guide is short, concise and informative. I encourge you to read it. But if it’s too long to you, or you need to onboard a busy team, follow me on my new blog series 2-Minute Scrum for Busy Teams — a bite-size, per-chapter, bullet-point summary of The Scrum Guide.

The Sprint

Sprint is timeboxed to at most 1 calendar month because:

  • this enables predictability by ensuring inspection and adaptation happens at least every month
  • this limits risk to a month of cost.
  • when too long:
    • requirements may change
    • complexity may rise
    • risk may increase

Each Sprint has:

  • a goal of what is to be built
  • a design and flexible plan that will guide building it
  • the work
  • the resultant product increment that is “Done”, useable & potentially releasable

Each Sprint consists of:

  1. the Sprint Planning
  2. Daily Scrums
  3. the development work
  4. the Sprint Review
  5. the Sprint Retrospective

Cancelling a Sprint

A Sprint may be cancelled before it ends:

  • only by Product Owner, sometimes under influence from stakeholders, Development Team, or Scrum Master
  • when the Sprint Goal becomes obsolete, due to:
    • the company changes direction
    • the market or technology conditions change
    • it no longer makes sense given the circumstances

When a Sprint is cancelled:

  • all “Done” Product Backlog Items are reviewed and usually accepted by Product Owner
  • all incomplete Product Backlog Items are re-estimated and put back on the Product Backlog

Uncommon and rarely make sense, because:

  • Sprint duration is intentionally short
  • it consumes resources, since everyone regroups in another Sprint Planning to start another Sprint
  • it is often traumatic to the Scrum Team


Read the full text in The Scrum Guide.

In 2-Minute Scrum for Busy Teams series