Agile QuickTip: Begin and End Your Sprint in the Middle of the Day

Begin and End Your Sprint in the Middle of the Day

My latest Agile QuickTip is all about how ending and starting your sprints in the middle of the day might make your team way more effective.

Most scrum teams will end their sprints at the end of the day, and then start the next one the very next morning. Here is an idea that shakes up this traditional routine, and one which I’ve seen be really effective. Why not begin and end your sprints in the middle of the day?

Here’s how it works in practice.

Your team’s end of sprint activities — the review and retrospective — will take place in the morning, and then you start with sprint planning for the next sprint right after lunch, or early in the afternoon.

I’ve found this to be particularly useful for internationally distributed teams who are spread across the globe, as it allows them to maximise their overlap time where different countries are still all experiencing the working day, something which doesn’t happen if you call a meeting for 9am local time.

By starting and ending in the middle of the day, you can look back on the sprint immediately and start planning for the next one. This emphasis the focus of the day on Improvement. How to improve your processes; how to improve the product; and how to leverage what we’ve learnt to immediately start exploring way to make the next sprint far more effective.

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