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SCRUM duration

Last post 06:40 pm December 23, 2013 by Annamalai Ganapathy
7 replies
02:37 am December 18, 2013

Why we can't increase duration decided for particular scrum?

What will be happen if we do the same?


11:27 am December 18, 2013

> Why we can't increase duration decided for particular scrum?
>
> What will be happen if we do the same?

I assume you mean a Daily Scrum (or standup, as it is sometimes known).

A Daily Scrum is time-boxed to a maximum of 15 minutes. By definition a time-boxed event in Scrum cannot be exceeded. Timeboxing brings focus to a discussion and makes the best use of available time. In the case of a Daily Scrum, a development team of up to nine people can, if well-disciplined, chart the general course of their working day in that fifteen minute time-box.


01:21 pm December 18, 2013

Hi Yogi,
if you extend the Daily Scrum, it may happen that your team wastes time doing off-topic discussions. I have experienced a team which discussed topics of Retrospective, Backlog Refinement and Planning all during a very long Daily Standup. The two reasons they did this was 1) they did not timebox the Daily Standup and 2) they did not have Retrospectives, Backlog Refinement or Planning meeings.


11:16 pm December 18, 2013

Hi,

I am asking about scrum of 1month.


02:12 am December 19, 2013

Hi Yogi,

Please help us help you by giving more information.

Why do you want to extend the Sprint duration?
What problems do you think will happen if you keep extending the Sprint duration over a period of time?


02:16 am December 19, 2013



This question was asked to me in interview.

Why we can't increased time duration of scrum (1 month) & what will be the impact of doing so.


01:09 pm December 19, 2013

The impact will be a longer feed-back loop.

As each Sprint is a "small" project, if the Sprint is longer, you get less feed-back from the stakeholders and from the PO and you offer them less feed-back also.
Less transparency => less inspection => less adaptation.

If a Sprint "fail", you fail for more with longer Sprint => more risk for everyone.
And because managers don't want to have "big" failure, managers will try to minimize risk and managers will ask for more control on the scrum team.


06:40 pm December 23, 2013

Hi Yogi,

Here is my 2 cents.

1. As per Scrum Guidelines, a Sprint duration is time-boxed to maximum of 1 month. It can be lesser, but can't be more.

2. If the product owner feels that risk of having longer sprint (say a month) is high, he can reduce it to 2 weeks per sprint or less.

3. As a general rule, it is recommended to keep all the sprints to the same duration, so that Scrum Team can cope with the velocity, Definition of Done consistent. Also it throws of the scheduled events like Sprint Planning (next sprint), Sprint Review and Retrospective. These events are scheduled to occur in a specific time in a sprint, to reduce overhead and complexity.

4. If the stakeholders/managements wants to increase the sprint length because of the release or any other activities they wants to do, still it should be included as part of the next sprint instead of increasing the length and changing the schedule.


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