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Sprint

Sprint

Owned by Akshay Aggarwal (Unlicensed)
Last updated: Aug 26, 2020
4 min read

What is the purpose of the Article?

  • You will understand what is a Sprint

  • You will understand how the Sprint cycle works in Eshopbox

  • You will understand how to plan a sprint in Eshopbox

Audience

  • Project Managers

  • Software Development Engineers

Before you proceed further:

Getting started with Sprint

What is a Sprint:

  • A sprint is a short, time-boxed period when a team works to complete a set amount of work. In Eshopbox, the Sprint duration is of 2 weeks, in which the development team implements and delivers a product increment for a project.

  • A single project can have only one sprint running at a time and a person cannot be involved in more than one sprint at a time.

SPRINT CYCLE

A Sprint is divided into multiple stages. A sprint cycle defines those stages and their chronology.

The four stages of a Sprint Cycle are as follows;

  1. Sprint Planning

  2. Daily Scrum

  3. Sprint Review

  4. Sprint Retrospective

1. Sprint Planning:

Sprint Planning is a collaborative event in the scrum that kicks off the sprint. The purpose of sprint planning is: 

  1. You will discuss “what work can be achieved in this sprint?”

  2. You will determine “how will the chosen work get done?”

  3. You will decide and distribute the work among the team members.

Stakeholders: Entire Team(Product Manager, Business Analysts, and Developers)

  • The What –  The product owner describes the objective(or goal) of the sprint and what backlog items contribute to that goal. The scrum team decides what can be done in the coming sprint and what they will do during the sprint to make that happen.

  • The How – The development team plans the work necessary to deliver the sprint goal. Ultimately, the resulting sprint plan is a negotiation between the development team and product owner based on value and effort.

  • The Who – You cannot do sprint planning without the product owner or the development team. The product owner defines the goal based on the value that they seek. The development team needs to understand how they can or cannot deliver that goal. If either is missing from this event it makes planning the sprint almost impossible.

  • The Inputs – A great starting point for the sprint plan is the product backlog as it provides a list of ‘stuff’ that could potentially be part of the current sprint. The team should also look at the existing work done in the increment and have a view to capacity.

  • The Outputs – The most important outcome for the sprint planning meeting is that the team can describe the goal of the sprint and how they will start working toward that goal. This is made visible in the sprint backlog.

Learn more about Sprint Planning in Eshopbox.

2. Daily Scrum/Stand-up

A daily scrum or stand-up is a daily meeting that involves the core team: product owners, developers, and the scrum master.

  • The scrum meeting must be completed within 15-30 mins.

Learn more about Daily Scrum/Stand-up

3. Sprint Review

A sprint review is about demonstrating the hard work of the entire team: designers, developers, and the product owner. At Eshopbox, Team members gather around a desk for informal demos and describe the work they’ve done for that iteration.

  • You are required to move issues that are completed to “Done” if their status already isn’t in the “Done” state.

  • Once the sprint is completed, the issues which are not done will be moved to the new upcoming sprint.

  • You will discuss blockers or dependencies to the issues that were not completed.

  • A sprint review takes place at the end of every sprint and is mandatory for all to end and provide their inputs.

4. Sprint Retrospective

Retrospectives are an excellent opportunity for your team to evaluate itself and create a plan to address areas of improvement for the future. The retrospective embraces the ideal of continuous improvement - and protects against the pitfalls of complacency - by stepping outside the work cycle to reflect on the past:

The purpose of the retrospective meeting is to:

  • Evaluate how the last sprint, iteration, or work item went, specifically around the team dynamic, processes, and tools based on the sprint review.

  • Articulate and stack rank the items that went well, and those items that did not.

  • Create and implement a plan for improving the way the team does work from the next sprint.

The retrospective provides a safe place to focus on introspection and adaptation. In order for retrospectives to be successful, there needs to be a supportive atmosphere that encourages (but doesn’t force) all team members to contribute.

Learn more about Sprint Retrospective.

Fundamentals

  • Product Increment: This means that value has been added to the product under development in the form a feature or functionality.

  • Scrum: Scrum is a framework that helps teams work together. Scrum encourages teams to learn through experiences, self-organize while working on a problem, and reflect on their wins and losses to continuously improve.

  • Scrum Master: The on-call person that manages the Scrum/standup call co-ordination for the week.

 

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