David Alfaro: Scrum Costa Rica

“Inertia is a non-quantifiable property of matter by which it remains at rest or in uniform motion in the same straight line unless acted upon by some external force.”

“Sprints are short running races in athletics. They are roughly classified as events in which top runners will not have to “pace themselves”, but can run as fast as possible for the entire distance.”

Let’s mix Physics, Athletics and Software Development: Scrum’s Sprints are meant to have an increment in the team’s metabolism so we can run as fast as possible in a motion near to uniform. Once we start to “run as fast as possible” , we feel the inertia that help us to complete the race. A race against time.

So, let me point out two specific features related to a Sprint:

• In athletics, I normally see that the longer the sprint’s distance is, the lower the racer’s velocity is.
• In physics, gravity acts as the external force that finally stops the uniform motion.

Sprint Duration and Gravity
For a good use of your team’s inertia, you will find out that a two week sprint is the best, look a this post of Tobias Mayer about it. In a three week sprint (or longer), you will see your team not running as fast as possible through all the sprint stretches. Why so? Because external forces start creeping around you. Examples of those forces are: errands and meetings that are not related to your project. The false sensation of “we still have plenty of time to finish this task” is like that gravity that slows you down.

Uncertainty is something to expect. However, in longer sprints, uncertainty become a strong hindering force. In shorter Sprints, uncertainty becomes tamable and even beneficial to get “the agile edge“.

The Sprint Review is as rewarding as winning a race could be. Why do you have those rewards not so often?

Two Weeks Sprints are highly recommended. One week sprints are specially great in those cases when product definition is in its very early stages. In that way, the Product Owner can shape better what he wants by seeing highly frequent increments of the product.

If iterations are so often, you need to keep Planning, Preview and Retrospective meetings in a proportional timeboxing. You can’t have a eight hour Planning Meeting for a One Week sprint.  These meetings are vital and also have to be effective.

Doing Scrum is not running like a mad. It is running effectively little and smart races that are part of a big circuit or championship. That championship is explaining by the Roadmap, which I will post my comments about it very soon.

Keep on tuned!