What is the optimal sprint length in Scrum? cover image
Delivery Management

What is the optimal sprint length in Scrum?

How to determine the perfect sprint duration for every project phase.

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Matthias Orgler
Jun 16, 2022 • 7 min read
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Delivery Management
Sprint Planning
Iterations and Increments
Small Increments
Iterative Development
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Summary

Sprints are basically equally divided sections of the main project that each have their own planning, work phase, and review. Your project goal determines how long your sprints should be. Agile coach Matthias Orgler explores the answer to "What is the optimal sprint length in Scrum and how you can determine it" in this piece.

He writes that everything shorter than 1 week creates too much overhead compared to the time you get to actually work on the product. And everything longer than 1 month deprives you of the much-needed checkpoints. So the sprint length always has to be between 1 week and 1 month. Read to find out what is sprint, why you need it, the benefits of doing multiple sprints, and a lot more.

Takeaways

  • Agile coaches suggest that the recommended optimal sprint length in Scrum should at least be 2 weeks. This gives you enough benefits without the high cost. It’s also easy enough advice for novice agile teams to understand and apply.
  • Sprints are basically equally divided sections of the main project that each have their own planning, work phase, and review. However, for any sprint, multiple reviews and planning are done to mitigate problems.

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