A Scrum Team finishes its Sprint Review and Sprint Retrospective on a Friday afternoon. Its Sprint Planning for the next Sprint is booked for the following Wednesday, leaving two working days in between for "catching up". When does the next Sprint actually begin?
Professional Scrum Master I, objective 1. Understanding and applying the Scrum framework easy
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The options
Correct Immediately after the conclusion of the previous Sprint — so those two days are already inside the new Sprint
Correct. Sprints are back to back by design; there is no interval between them. Whatever the team does on Monday and Tuesday is Sprint work, done without the benefit of a Sprint Goal or a plan.
Not correct After a short hardening period, which is what those two days are for
Wrong. Scrum has no hardening or stabilisation period, and a team that needs one is telling you its Definition of Done is too weak to make the Increment usable.
Not correct Once the Product Owner has signed off the previous Sprint's Increment
Wrong. There is no sign-off step anywhere in Scrum. An item either meets the Definition of Done or it does not, and the next Sprint does not wait on anyone's approval.
Not correct At Sprint Planning on Wednesday, since Sprint Planning initiates the Sprint
Wrong, though it is the most defensible of the three: Sprint Planning does initiate the Sprint by laying out the work. But a new Sprint starts immediately after the previous one ends, so scheduling Planning two days late does not delay the Sprint, it wastes two days of it.
Why
Sprints are fixed-length events of one month or less and a new one starts the moment the last one concludes, which is what makes the cadence a heartbeat rather than a series of projects with gaps. The Sprint Retrospective concludes the Sprint; nothing sits between it and the next Sprint Planning except, in this team's case, two days that nobody planned.
Where this comes from
- Cited
- Scrum Guide section The Sprint
- What it says
- A new Sprint starts immediately after the conclusion of the previous Sprint.
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Practise Professional Scrum Master I
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