A short lecture by Mike Lyons defining the Scrum sprint: a recurring, time-boxed iteration (commonly 1–4 weeks, often two weeks) that establishes a team cadence. He explains sprint invariants (fixed length, team composition stability, committed scope/quality, protected focus) and notes sprints are continuous (no gaps) and not shortened for holidays—capacity is reduced instead.
And so now we have the first of our five events called the sprint. Now the sprint, sometimes called an iteration, but in, in scrum we call it a sprint. It's nothing more than a time box. It's, it's really just a set of time that is the same sprint over sprint. It can range anywhere from one to four weeks. Our preference is the shorter time box. Very common to have two week sprints or 10 working days. And the sprint lengths don't change. And every team should be synchronized to that same heartbeat. We like to call it a heartbeat because it sets a regular rhythm for the teams to get into. Every two weeks we have one of our other events, sprint planning. We have another event, Sprint Retro, for example. It sets the stage for all things. It's again that recurring time box. Now some key considerations within that sprint. Once the sprint starts, we want to commit to not making changes within that sprint. Scrum team composition needs to remain constant. We don't add and remove people during the sprint. The team commits together. Our quality goals don't decrease as the sprint goes on. Now scope also may be clarified and renegotiated, but it's committed within that sprint timebox. And then finally the team is protected to focus on the sprint goal. Now just a couple other points about the sprint. There's no gap between sprints. They just stay right on top of each other. So one sprint ends, another begins. We don't sort of change sprint lengths around, you know, national holidays or recognized holidays. So for example, here in the US we have holidays around Christmas and Thanksgiving. Very common. We don't shorten or extend sprint lengths through there. Instead we just reduce capacity. The same time box exists. So that's our first event, the sprint.
