What is Sprint?
A sprint is a time-boxed iteration in Scrum during which the team commits to and completes a defined set of work, aiming to produce a potentially shippable increment by the end. Sprints are usually one to two weeks long and are kept a consistent length so the team develops a reliable rhythm.
Each sprint is bracketed by ceremonies: it starts with sprint planning (deciding what to build), includes daily standups (syncing on progress), and ends with a sprint review (demoing the work) and a retrospective (improving the process).
For product managers, the sprint is the unit of delivery. PMs ensure the highest-value, well-defined stories are ready at the top of the backlog before planning, protect the team from mid-sprint scope creep, and use the steady cadence to communicate predictable progress to stakeholders.
Examples
- During sprint planning, a team pulls 8 user stories totaling 21 story points based on its average velocity.
- A PM declines to add a new request mid-sprint and instead queues it for the next sprint planning.
Where PMs use this
Related terms
Scrum
A popular Agile framework that organizes work into fixed-length sprints with defined roles, events, and artifacts.
Sprint Planning
The meeting where a team selects and commits to the work it will complete in the upcoming sprint.
Velocity
A measure of how much work a team completes in a sprint, used to forecast future capacity.
Story Points
A relative unit for estimating the effort, complexity, and uncertainty of a user story.
Retrospective
A recurring team meeting to reflect on the last sprint and identify concrete process improvements.