Agile QuickTip: Avoid Starting Sprints on Mondays or Fridays

Avoid Starting Sprints on Mondays or Fridays

Sometimes a small change can make a big difference. Starting sprints on days other than Mondays and Fridays can make your scrum more valuable, and solve some common scrum problems for your agile team.

A lot teams will start their agile sprints on Mondays and end them on Fridays. This is a natural choice, mirroring the traditional working week, so you can see why teams opt for this routine. However, there are a number of reasons why Fridays and Mondays may not be the best day for finishing or starting your sprint.

1. Fridays are often a work from home day, so you might find that members of the team do not make it into the office.
2. For team members who work remotely or commute for work, Fridays are a frequent choice for a travel day.
3. A lot of times, people will leave work early on a Friday to start their weekend, avoiding the traffic or getting a head start on a night out.
4. In some countries, Fridays aren’t even a work day, which can have an effect on getting tasks completed or communicating with global businesses.
5. Holidays in the United States typically fall on Mondays making it a less than ideal day to start a sprint.

By changing the sprint start or end days, you can also avoid the issue of the ‘invisible sprint days’ on the weekend when teams scramble to get their sprint finished. Start your team’s agile sprint on Wednesdays or Thursdays, and then finish on Tuesdays or Wednesdays instead. In this way, you can give your full team the tools and time they need to finish the scrum as strong as they started.

This idea has helped a lot of teams, encouraging sprints to become less chaotic and a lot more transparent.

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