10 Best Practices to Build Seamless Sprint Cycles for Software Development

• By Katy Flatt
• 20-05-2024
• Software

Sprints are integral to agile product management, fueling efficiency and innovation. This approach enables teams to work faster and keeps costs low without sacrificing quality.

Basically, a sprint is a way to organize your workload.

But they’re also so much more than that.

Effect sprint cycles make for better bug detection, increased agility, improved customer and employee satisfaction, and can even help boost revenue by getting your offerings flawlessly to market ahead of your competitors.

Building seamless sprint cycles for software development requires thorough planning. Here's how to nail it every time.

The Science Behind Sprints

Software development projects are often complex and span several months. For example, building an enterprise software application can take 12 months or longer and involves several steps, such as a thorough analysis, planning, design, testing, and deployment.

Many of these tasks are filled with unknowns, and things like technological advancements or changing user requirements can pose additional challenges.

The result? Even longer development cycles, unexpected delays, and a higher risk of scope creep. These factors can affect both your team and the end user.

Working in sprints makes it easier to navigate these complexities. With this approach, you'll take one step at a time and learn from continuous feedback, which allows for incremental improvements.

These shorter development cycles can mitigate risks and enable your team to:

• Detect and address issues early on
• Respond quickly to new information
• Release new features and updates more frequently
• Make adjustments on the go
• Reduce debugging time
• Focus on what matters most
• Avoid burnout and wasted effort
• Stay on schedule, resulting in a faster time to market

Simply put, sprints can help your team work smarter, not harder, and deliver faster. This strategy also enables data-driven decision-making, resulting in fewer errors and better outcomes.

Running sprints can lead to cost savings, too, by catching mistakes early and making room to incorporate scope changes and feedback.

How to Plan and Manage Sprint Cycles for Better Results

Sprint planning is all about setting small, manageable goals. You also need to choose the right key performance metrics (KPIs) for each goal—and determine how you will track them.

Next, you'll schedule meetings before and after each sprint. This allows you to plan things out, collect and offer feedback, and decide on the next steps. Some teams also hold stand-up meetings every morning to set expectations for the day.

A typical sprint can take up to a month, but may also take place in just one or two weeks. It all depends on the complexity of the project.

Consider your team's capacity, too. Since each member will have specific tasks, you need to ensure they can handle the workload.

Now that we have covered the basics, let's discuss the best practices for implementing Sprints.

1. Do the Pre-Work

Pre-sprint preparations involve setting SMART project goals, discussing strategies, and assigning roles. Next, determine who is responsible for what.

According to ScrumAlliance, Scrum, the most common agile framework, defines three roles within a team:

• Product owner: This individual oversees project management tasks such as goal-setting, backlog updates, stakeholder communication, and feedback collection.
• Scrum master: The scrum master guides the team, conducts meetings, and offers coaching, supporting the product owner's efforts and ensuring smooth project execution.
• Development team: Typically comprising three to nine members alongside the product owner and scrum master, the development team includes programmers, testers, software engineers, business analysts, and other relevant roles. Each member contributes specific expertise while collectively pursuing project objectives.

Define these roles within your team, then assign tasks to each member. Now is also a good time to build the product roadmap, discuss dependencies and bottlenecks, and confirm assumptions.

2. Hold an Initial Sprint Planning Meeting

The initial sprint planning meeting will answer two questions:

• What work can be completed within one sprint?
• How is your team going to complete that work?

Be realistic about how much work your team can accomplish in a given period. Analyze their past performance and set realistic expectations.

During this first meeting, you'll also create a sprint backlog, or a list of tasks to be completed throughout the project. Determine which ones have priority and how much time and effort it will take to tick them off the list (known as story points).

Say you have a team of five people who can productively work six hours per day.

Multiply the number of team members (five) by the number of productive work hours (six), then subtract the hours spent working on other projects and attending meetings. Take into account things like coffee breaks, holidays, sick days, and other factors that can interfere with work.

This should give you an estimate of how much time your team can dedicate to a single Sprint.

3. Create a Sprint Backlog

The sprint backlog plays a crucial role in the scrum methodology. It can be established either before or during the initial meeting and should be regularly updated as the project advances.

This task list acts as a primary reference for all project stakeholders. It outlines the specific assignments for each team member during a particular sprint, resulting in:

• Higher productivity
• Increased accountability
• Reduced burnout
• More accurate forecasts for future sprints
• Better project estimates

The data in this document will come from the product backlog, which includes the features, updates, bug fixes, and other work items. Basically, it provides a high-level view of the project.

The Sprint backlog, on the other hand, focuses on specific work items, such as creating user profile pages or generating reports within an app. Each work item represents a task or set of tasks that can be completed within a sprint.

4. Review and Refine Your Sprint Backlog

A sprint backlog is a living document that changes as the project goes on.

Let's assume you're building a fitness tracking app. The sprint backlog initially includes specific tasks, such as implementing features that allow users to monitor their heart rate, water intake, and daily steps.

During the sprint, your team members suggest adding new features to enhance the user experience. Or they may recommend subtle changes that could make a big difference.

The stakeholders approve their ideas, and the product owner updates the sprint backlog accordingly.

With that in mind, conduct sprint reviews to refine your backlog regularly. Do it after each sprint or as often as needed.

What matters most is to ensure it reflects the feedback and insights gained during the development process. Or the changing market conditions and other factors.

5. Schedule Meetings Throughout Each Sprint

Regular meetings are essential to sprint planning for development teams, enabling continuous feedback. They should include the entire team and focus on specific aspects of the sprint cycle.

Stand-up meetings, for example, enable team members to update each other on progress and raise any challenges they encounter. These brief daily check-ins can streamline work and enhance accountability.

In contrast, sprint planning meetings occur before each sprint and typically last a minimum of two hours. In these sessions, your team will review the product backlog, establish objectives, and plan accordingly.

Retrospective meetings occur at the sprint's conclusion. They serve as a forum to review progress, pinpoint obstacles, and brainstorm improvements for future endeavors.

6. Maintain Open Communication

Scrum emphasizes self-reliant teams that operate somewhat autonomously. Thus, fostering open and clear communication is crucial.

It's vital for your team members to feel empowered to express their viewpoints. If, for instance, someone disagrees with an idea, they should feel at ease raising their objections.

Utilizing collaboration tools such as Slack, Asana, Trello, or Microsoft Teams is a beneficial approach. These platforms facilitate teamwork and real-time feedback exchange, enhancing communication efficiency and potentially decreasing meeting requirements.

7. Draft a Working Agreement

Create a working agreement to set clear guidelines for your team. This document will outline their rights, duties, and responsibilities, such as attending meetings and using specific communication channels.

Team working agreements are rather short and should be placed in a visible location. They are also specific to each team and may change from one project to the next.

Make sure you cover the following:

• Expected work hours and response time
• Preferred tools and communication channels
• Meeting guidelines
• Definition of "Done"
• Version control rules
• Guidelines for handling conflict
• Workplace etiquette

For instance, you should define the "Done" criteria for tasks and user stories.

The Definition of Done (DoD) depends on the project and can mean different things to different people. That's why you need to ensure everyone is on the same page.

Encourage your staff to brainstorm ideas and contribute to the agreement. Request their feedback—and act on it. After all, these guidelines will directly impact their work.

8. Encourage Autonomy in Your Team

Allow your team to make decisions without constantly seeking permission. The point of working in sprints is to get things done faster and more efficiently. But that won't be possible if you micromanage your staff.

The developers on your team have relevant skills and experience. Trust their judgment, and empower them to take ownership of their work.

While it's true that every team has its weaknesses, you can address these issues during meetings. If someone makes a mistake, the scrum master will look into it before the next sprint.

9. Use Sprint Planning Tools to Keep Your Team Organized

Sprint planning is an ongoing process that takes a lot of work. It's even more challenging for hybrid or remote software development teams, given the differences in time zones.

Luckily, there are plenty of tools you can use to keep your team organized. Let's see a few examples:

• Jira: Plan and organize tasks, monitor project progress, and create product roadmaps.
• ClickUp: Use this platform to improve collaboration, assign tasks, manage backlogs, and chat live with your team members.
• Zenhub: Automate sprint planning, create project roadmaps, and generate velocity reports all on one platform.
• Shortcut: Manage your sprints and projects, automate routine tasks, and measure team performance in real time.

Consult your team members before building your tech stack. They may already be familiar with some of these tools, which can reduce the learning curve.

10. Make Data-Driven Decisions

Many of the tools listed above enable users to collect sprint data. Leverage these insights along with feedback from meetings to plan better and better sprints every time.

For example, you can measure team velocity, sprint burndown, time to market, escaped defects, and other key metrics. Another option is to conduct surveys to see how your team members feel about their work and what they would change.

Fresh, accurate sprint data can help identify areas for improvement and detect issues early on. Plus, it provides the insights you need to set smarter sprint goals based on your team's capacity and performance.

Optimize Your Sprint Planning for Better Results

Working in sprints can streamline software development, but you need to do it right. Set realistic goals and expectations, narrow down your focus, and plan things out based on data.

Also, make time for regular meetings and daily stand-ups so you can check on tasks and keep your team organized. Encourage your staff to provide feedback, share ideas, and embrace change.