Don’t worry, while a sprint shares the same spirit as its namesake in track and field by encouraging a burst of speed, it actually has nothing to do with physical activity when used in project management.

A sprint is simply a short–typically two weeks–time period where preselected tasks are completed. Within each sprint, teams are responsible solely for the items selected for inclusion in the respective sprint.

Why use sprints?

By constraining the workload to only desired tasks within a predefined time period, teams are able to become more efficient. This is possible due to the isolation allowing teams to focus only on the tasks at hand, without getting distracted by other tasks.

How do you use Sprints?

Each sprint cycle begins by selecting tasks off of a backlog. The tasks can then be aligned and assigned based off of the work within each task.

As tasks are executed, their respective statuses are updated to help keep everything organized. Typical statuses include: Backlog, To-do, In-Progress, and Done. There can be additional statuses based off of a teams workflow, however, the ones listed above capture the overall process to ensure that tasks can be appropriately grouped. Some other statuses may include: On Dev, Ready for QA, Deployed to Stage, and Deployed to Production. The goal of choosing a status is to utilize something that anyone can look at and immediately know what stage a task is in.

Upon the completion of the sprint, there may be a review called a retrospective. Retrospectives are where the team reviews how the sprint was executed in an attempt to determine what went well and what could have been done better. This retrospective review helps teams learn how to improve their execution during software development projects, or really any type of project to be honest.