What is a sprint?
A sprint is a fixed-length timebox — usually one to four weeks — where the team commits to a defined slice of work and ships it by the end. It's the heartbeat of scrum and most agile flavours.
The four moments of a sprint
- Sprint planning — the team picks the work and agrees a goal. See our sprint planning guide.
- The sprint — the team ships. Daily stand-ups keep everyone aligned.
- Sprint review — demo what shipped to stakeholders.
- Retrospective — inspect the process and decide what to change. Use our free retro template generator.
How long should a sprint be?
- 1 week — for fast-feedback teams or early-stage products.
- 2 weeks — the most common choice. Long enough to ship something meaningful, short enough to stay accountable.
- 3-4 weeks — only for teams with very long-cycle work. Risk: too much can change in a month.
Common sprint mistakes
- Variable length — sprints have to be fixed-length to make velocity meaningful.
- No goal — a sprint without a sprint goal is just a backlog dump.
- Adding work mid-sprint — kills predictability. New scope waits for the next sprint.
- Skipping the retro — without it, the team never improves.