What is Sprint ?

In an era where businesses operate at breakneck speed and customer expectations are ever-evolving, agile methodologies have become essential for software development projects. Agile development methodology focuses on Adaptive planning and change management. It focuses on developing and deploying the working software quickly in an iterative manner.
This means that instead of developing the product entirely in one go, the product is made iteratively in multiple short and incremental cycles. This article delves into the core concepts and in-depth explanation of Sprints in Agile with its benefits, key functionalities, and importance.

What is a Sprint?

In simplest words, “a sprint is a short and fixed time frame during which a specific set of tasks are meant to be performed”.
An Agile project will be broken down into a certain number of sprints, each sprint lasting for a fixed duration of time. Usually, each sprint runs for 2–4 weeks. A Sprint Planning Meeting occurs before the start of every sprint. That meeting defines what set of items could be developed and delivered in the upcoming sprint.

Every sprint has a predefined goal and is meant to be accomplished in such a way that the sprint would culminate with a potentially shippable product increment. During every planning meeting, a Sprint Backlog is created that has a subset of items from the original Product Backlog that the team aims to achieve and develop in the current sprint. The set of stages in a single sprint can be visualized in the below figure:

Sprint Stages

Sprint Roles:

Sprint is just a process in the scrum framework. Its task is to divide the workflow into small iterations. Therefore, a sprint team is no different from a scrum team. In simpler words, a scrum team is responsible for carrying out the sprint. Thus, a scrum sprint involves 3 roles. These 3 roles are as follows:

1. Product Owner: The product owner the face of the organization. He is responsible for all the interaction and communication of the stakeholders by ensuring the right balance among all. Besides this, the product owner is responsible for the release management of the model. He tends to decide whether the product needs to be delivered in iterations or continuous delivery. Alongside this, the product owner guides the development team on what functionalities are assumed to be delivered first and which ones must be given more priority.
2. Scrum Master: The scrum master acts as a leader who guides the development team. He facilitates the set of development activities done by the team. The scrum master is responsible for letting the persons outside the scrum team understand the scrum practices. It’s a common myth that the scrum master does not run the scrum events and only ensures that they are successful, but this is not the case. The scrum master focuses on Scrum principles and values and coaches the team members in every single sprint activity.
3. Development team: Developers do not mean that only coders will be the part of team. The development team consists of software engineers, UX developers, testers, Quality assurance engineers, architects, and business analysts. They are all professional members who have the responsibility to get the development job done. They take key sprint responsibilities and are responsible for sprint estimation tasks.

Sprint Workflow

1. Sprint Planning Meeting:-

This meeting is usually done before the start of every sprint. During this meeting, all the team members select some set of items (also called User Stories) from the Product Backlog. These items are collectively termed Sprint Backlog and are the ones that will be developed during this sprint. A sprint meeting involves:

1. The Scrum Master
2. Scrum Product Manager
3. Scrum Team Members.

2. Daily Stand-Up Meetings:-

Every day throughout the sprint, the team members conduct stand-up meetings (also called Daily Scrum). The meetings typically last 15 mins and the discussions revolve around all team members. Each member stands and answers some key questions:

1. What I did yesterday?
2. Are there any problems I’m facing
3. What I will do today ?

3. Implementation Phase: –

Every team member works on the set of small tasks he/she is assigned. The tasks are typically divided based on backlog such that the entire workload is divided among the members. This phase involves Development and Testing. The developers write code and the testers test whether it is as per the quality standards or not. The development team involves software engineers, QA, business analysts, Testing teams, and Architects. The development is done while prioritizing the functionalities as mentioned by the product owner.

4. Sprint Review: –

After the end of each sprint, all the team members present their work to the clients/stakeholders. The iteration product is operated in a real-world organization environment. In this meeting, the team gathers review and feedback from the clients and tend to rectify the changes, if any.

5. Sprint Retrospective: –

This meeting is held after the sprint review meeting. In this meeting, all the team members including the Scrum Master and Manager discuss the following topics:

1. The key takeaways from the sprint.

2. What things went well and what things didn’t ?

3. What problems were faced during the sprint ?

4. What other possible decisions could’ve been taken at that point.

5. Analysing the merits and demerits faced during the sprint.

The Retrospective meetings usually last for 1 – 2 Hrs.

6. Delivery of Incremental Product: –

At the end of each sprint, a fully functioning increment of the product is shipped for delivery. In Agile, the priority always remains customer satisfaction and fast delivery. The product increment must have satisfied all the quality standards and client requirements. The clients then look into the increment and address the changes they require, if any. These changes then will be discussed in the sprint planning meeting of the next sprint.

Sprint in Agile

Scrum Sprint Cycle: –

The fundamental concept of sprint belongs to the Scrum Methodology. All the stages and activities mentioned above function together and are collectively termed as Scrum Sprint Cycle. Throughout the sprint, effective collaboration and coordination on the sprint goal are crucial for success.

As depicted by the above figure, Product development is not just achieved through 1 single sprint. The entire fully functioning Software product undergoes a set of several sprints. Every sprint involves the aforementioned stages and activities and the collection of multiple such sprints results in the formation of the desired Software product.

You can get in-depth information about the Scrum Methodology and its processes through this article: Scrum for Beginners. However, there is a vast change in the development methodology from traditional development to scrum development. The latter is a much faster and more rapid one that focuses more on flexibility and rapid change management. You can refer to the key differences between scrum methods and classical methods in this article: Scrum vs. Waterfall.

Scrum vs. Sprint: –

Scrum and sprint are the same interleaved things, but they do have some differences. Let us understand the key differences between scrum and sprint.

Domain	Scrum	Sprint
Definition	Scrum is a framework in agile development methodology.	Sprint is just a time-boxed process within the scrum framework.
Task	Scrum involves the complete development of software.	Sprint involved the development and delivery of a working iterative product.
Duration	Scrum lasts for many months.	Sprint lasts for 2–4 weeks.
Objective	The objective is to develop a fully functioning complex software product while ensuring team collaboration, budget, and project deadlines.	The objective is to complete and deliver the iterative product to clients at the end of every sprint.
Meetings	Scrum meetings are held before every sprint to inspect the overall progress of the project.	Daily sprint meetings are conducted every 24 hours to analyze activities done by individual members.
Artifacts	There are 3 artifacts in Scrum: Product backlog, Sprint backlog, and Product increment.	Since sprint is just a process in the scrum, there is no such artifact other than the releasable increment product.
Benefits	A Fully functioning complex software product gets developed within budget and deadline and completely transparent working phases.	Regular feedback from customers and daily meetings ensure rapid change management and faster release of the product by continuous rectification of mistakes.

Conclusion: –

In short, Agile sprints are the Heartbeat of Agile development. They are taken into consideration when a product development is divided into multiple sub-operations and functionalities. All the functionalities are mentioned in the Product Backlog. At the start of each sprint, some functionalities are moved to Sprint Backlog which are meant to be completed in that sprint. The iterative collection of multiple such sprints forms a fully functional working product. Thus, the concept of the sprint is essential in Agile Development Methods.