Sprint or Marathon?

13/02/2009 by Simon.

I have spoken to many candidates, clients and other ‘agile authorities’ and one point where I find inconsistency is the disparity between the duration of sprints within a project. These sprints seem to range from 1 week to 3 months, and in my opinion 3 months is more of a marathon than a sprint.  I am beginning to wonder if the Agile Manifesto itself needs refactoring.  The principles it laid out seem to have not been disregarded but refactored somewhat and quite rightly so, as one of the key principles is adaptiveness.  This disparity of the length of sprints is just one of many idiosyncrasies that perhaps could be clarified if the Manifesto itself was given a ‘make-over’ to reflect the current trends.  Perhaps this would result in an improved standard of ‘agility’ rather than an ever increasing volume of diluted principles. In my opinion there seems to be a whole host of individuals who could do with an Agile MOT of sorts.  Certification keeps rearing its head, but is that really the way forward?  (Even I, as a humble recruiter, have passed the DSDM Agile Certified Project Leader Exam.) There must be a way of validating projects as Agile, and therefore being able to provide some quantifiable means of assessing people’s real experience rather than their classroom or paper copy knowledge.

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