Are Your Sprints Still Truly Valuable?

Bart has been in ecommerce for over 20 years, and can't imagine a better job to have. He is interested in all things agile, or anything new to learn.

  Agile  

A decade ago, a two-week sprint felt fast. Teams planned work, committed to goals, and delivered software in predictable increments. Compared to the long release cycles that preceded agile, the sprint was a breakthrough. It created structure, focus, and regular opportunities for feedback. In all actuality, it was fast.

Today, software development operates in a very different environment. Developers use AI to generate code, tests and documentation in minutes. Automated pipelines provide continuous feedback, integration and deployments. Features can move from idea to production faster than ever before. In many organizations, the biggest constraint is no longer building software; it’s deciding what to build next.

Yet many teams still organize their work around sprint boundaries created for a slower era. A customer issue is identified on Monday. The team agrees it should be addressed. Then someone says, "We'll pick that up next sprint." Everyone agrees that this is as fast as they can go.

But on average, it’s at least three weeks until the issue can be fixed. The delay is rarely technical, more often, it is procedural. This raises an uncomfortable question: Are sprints still helping teams become more agile, or are they becoming a process that teams follow simply because they always have?

The sprint solved important problems. The question is …

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