Change the name 'sprint' to something else#25

The name ‘sprint’ gives out a wrong notion that scrum teams have to run fast/ sprint. Should the guide adopt a more neutral wording for describing an iteration? maybe a cycle or word iteration itself.

I believe Sprint is not a fitting label too.

Scrum is meant for complex work. This means stumbling, discovering, observing, reaponding to changes, experimentation, learning.

In short, all things you can’t do that well while running constantly at full speed, a.k.a. Sprinting.

It is more akin to being lost and slowly driving to establish your bearings and every now and then picking up speed when you discover something you want to follow-up on swiftly.

But the majority of the time you won’t be Sprinting as that is not a sustainable pace, which is part of the current Scrum Guide.

The term Sprint was decided in the early days of Scrum, when it was an entirely different beast than it is now.

I think we’re sweating the small stuff here…

I disagree.

Framing matters and creates first impressions that work in your favor or against you.

cheap vs affordable
luxurious vs expensive

etc.

Timebox?

When I first came across Scrum (circa 2004, pre-guide), having fixed time-boxes to establish rhythm and shifting focus from “when will the next milestone be reached?” to “what and how much should we attempt in the next timebox?”

• Sprint is problematic because it emphasises going as fast as you can.
• Iteration is problematic because sometimes you don’t iterate — so it blurs that term.

Timebox seems more neutral.

I think both ‘Sprint’ and ‘Timebox’ are too project-phase oriented, which causes problems with teams doing incremental projects instead of iterative products. What about calling it something like a ‘Value identification Iteration’…something that indicates its supposed to be an experiment/learning exercise…

Sprint is a perfect name, Scrum is about flow, nothing is more about flow than a Sprint. If you think the name Sprint is inappropriate, you don’t understand Scrum.

I guess you never Sprinted for a long time. It is definitely not about flow.

Running a marathon, that is more like being in a flow. When you Sprint, you hit a wall at some point and you are not in a flow.

Humans are built for long distance running. See horse vs. man race.

I think the idea is, a Sprint is relatively shorter than a traditional waterfall project lifecycle. Even though when you look at several series of Sprint, it is like a marathon because every Sprint needs to be a sustainable pace.

It is just a word and a label. Sprint may not be an ideal word, itteration may be better. However, I rather focus on the intention of what the Sprint is there to achieve, or what risk it is trying to actively control. I just don’t get hung up on the label.

It is too late to change it as it will just confuse many people. Look at refinement changed from grooming, yet so many people still use grooming.

@Brett : agree with the grooming, though it does seem to get better the people that call it grooming are less and less. But they do exist still.