Following the discussions both elsewhere and on this blog about sprint duration, the questions poses itself – what is the preferred sprint length? So I ran a poll.
And the winner is… 2 weeks.
According to this very scientific survey (1 week on my blog, 228 Visitors, 50 votes), the most popular sprint duration is 2 weeks, followed by (early leader) 3 weeks, which lost by one vote.
The final results are:
1 week | 2 (4%) |
2 week | 18 (36%) |
3 week | 17 (34%) |
4 week | 5 (10%) |
1 month | 5 (10%) |
longer, but fixed | 5 (10%) |
variable | 1 (2%) |
How long should the sprint be? There are many right answers, some of which argued for longer sprints:
But most argued for shorter sprints:
Very short sprints, i.e. 1 week are appropriate for very short projects, say 1 month. To do a 4 week project in 1 sprint, or even 2, does not leave much opportunity for feedback.
Mike Cohn pointed out:
3-week sprints have become very popular over the last 12-18 months. Before then most teams considered them odd 😉 Seriously, it’s a recent change for most teams
And the closing word:
The preferred sprint duration is the one that works best for your team 🙂
–Dmitry Beransky
I’ll second that!
Thanks to Dmitry, Ben, Ash, Ilja, Paul, Kiran, Paddy, and Brett for their comments, as well as to everyone who voted!
Cookie | Duration | Description |
---|---|---|
cookielawinfo-checkbox-advertisement | 1 year | Set by the GDPR Cookie Consent plugin, this cookie is used to record the user consent for the cookies in the "Advertisement" category . |
cookielawinfo-checkbox-analytics | 11 months | This cookie is set by GDPR Cookie Consent plugin. The cookie is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Analytics". |
cookielawinfo-checkbox-functional | 11 months | The cookie is set by GDPR cookie consent to record the user consent for the cookies in the category "Functional". |
cookielawinfo-checkbox-necessary | 11 months | This cookie is set by GDPR Cookie Consent plugin. The cookies is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Necessary". |
cookielawinfo-checkbox-others | 11 months | This cookie is set by GDPR Cookie Consent plugin. The cookie is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Other. |
cookielawinfo-checkbox-performance | 11 months | This cookie is set by GDPR Cookie Consent plugin. The cookie is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Performance". |
viewed_cookie_policy | 11 months | The cookie is set by the GDPR Cookie Consent plugin and is used to store whether or not user has consented to the use of cookies. It does not store any personal data. |
Cookie | Duration | Description |
---|---|---|
mailchimp_landing_site | 1 month | The cookie is set by MailChimp to record which page the user first visited. |
Cookie | Duration | Description |
---|---|---|
CONSENT | 2 years | YouTube sets this cookie via embedded youtube-videos and registers anonymous statistical data. |
_ga | 2 years | The _ga cookie, installed by Google Analytics, calculates visitor, session and campaign data and also keeps track of site usage for the site's analytics report. The cookie stores information anonymously and assigns a randomly generated number to recognize unique visitors. |
_gat_gtag_UA_42152348_1 | 1 minute | Set by Google to distinguish users. |
_gcl_au | 3 months | Provided by Google Tag Manager to experiment advertisement efficiency of websites using their services. |
_gid | 1 day | Installed by Google Analytics, _gid cookie stores information on how visitors use a website, while also creating an analytics report of the website's performance. Some of the data that are collected include the number of visitors, their source, and the pages they visit anonymously. |
Cookie | Duration | Description |
---|---|---|
NID | 6 months | NID cookie, set by Google, is used for advertising purposes; to limit the number of times the user sees an ad, to mute unwanted ads, and to measure the effectiveness of ads. |
test_cookie | 15 minutes | The test_cookie is set by doubleclick.net and is used to determine if the user's browser supports cookies. |
VISITOR_INFO1_LIVE | 5 months 27 days | A cookie set by YouTube to measure bandwidth that determines whether the user gets the new or old player interface. |
YSC | session | YSC cookie is set by Youtube and is used to track the views of embedded videos on Youtube pages. |
yt-remote-connected-devices | never | YouTube sets this cookie to store the video preferences of the user using embedded YouTube video. |
yt-remote-device-id | never | YouTube sets this cookie to store the video preferences of the user using embedded YouTube video. |
Cookie | Duration | Description |
---|---|---|
COMPASS | 1 hour | No description |
cookies.js | session | No description available. |
S | 1 hour | No description available. |
2 Comments
I note some teams have a variable sprint duration. Is this a "Scrum smell" or is there any merit in it?
Hi Savaged,
It's considered to be a smell. According to Jeff Sutherland's latest Scrum-But test, an iteration length of 4 weeks or less is good. If the sprint length is longer or variable, this has been found to be a sign of lower performance.
Cheers,
Peter