What is a Sprint?
A sprint, also known as iteration or timebox, is the basic unit of development in Scrum. The sprint is a timeboxed effort; that is, the length is agreed and fixed in advance for each sprint and is generally between one week and one month, with two weeks being the most common.
Each sprint starts with a sprint planning event in which a sprint goal is crafted, and a sprint backlog emerges, containing intended work for the upcoming sprint. Each sprint ends with two events:
- Sprint review (progress shown to stakeholders)
- Sprint retrospective (identify lessons and improvements for the next sprints).
Scrum emphasizes valuable, sound output at the end of the sprint that is done. In software, this likely includes that products are fully integrated, tested and documented, and potentially releasable.