A Scrum Team runs two-week Sprints and blocks eight hours for Sprint Planning every Sprint, because a member insists "eight hours is the rule". They routinely finish in three. What is the accurate position?
Professional Scrum Master I, objective 1. Understanding and applying the Scrum framework medium
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The options
Correct Eight hours is a maximum for a one-month Sprint, and for shorter Sprints the event is usually shorter
Correct. Every Scrum timebox is an upper bound, and the published figures are stated for a one-month Sprint. Finishing in three hours with a Sprint Goal agreed is a successful Sprint Planning, not a truncated one.
Not correct Correct as it stands — eight hours is the defined length of Sprint Planning
Wrong. Scrum defines a maximum, not a fixed length. Treating a timebox as a duration to fill is how events become endurance tests and teams start resenting them.
Not correct The timebox should be exactly four hours, because Scrum scales its timeboxes proportionally to Sprint length
Wrong, and it is the subtle one. Halving the figure for a two-week Sprint is a reasonable practice and a common rule of thumb, but Scrum does not define proportional timeboxes. It publishes maxima for a one-month Sprint and says shorter Sprints are usually shorter.
Not correct There is no timebox on Sprint Planning as long as the event ends with an agreed Sprint Goal
Wrong. Every Scrum event is timeboxed, and ensuring events stay within their timebox is one of the ways a Scrum Master serves the Scrum Team.
Why
Learn the timeboxes as maxima for a one-month Sprint and the questions become easy: Sprint Planning eight hours, Sprint Review four, Sprint Retrospective three. The Daily Scrum is the exception that gives the set away — fifteen minutes, whatever the Sprint length, because it is a daily event rather than a per-Sprint one. And the Sprint itself is the only one that is fixed rather than capped: one month or less, but the same length every time.
Where this comes from
- Cited
- Scrum Guide section Sprint Planning
- What it says
- Sprint Planning is timeboxed to a maximum of eight hours for a one-month Sprint. For shorter Sprints, the event is usually shorter.
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