6 Biggest Sprint Misconceptions

Sprinting Ain't Complicated, It’s Complex

Olina Glindevi and I collaborated on creating a document visualizing the 6 Biggest Sprint Misconceptions. The collaboration was a smashing success, with people all over the world sharing the illustrated misconceptions with their teams and expressing their fondness for the creative drawings.

Here you can download the complete document:

6 Biggest Sprint Misconceptions

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In this article will discuss each of the misconceptions in more detail to elaborate on why they happen and what we can do about them.

Let’s start with the first one!

#1. You have to complete everything in the Sprint

The Sprint is a vehicle to support change ⁠— to enable flexibility and help deal with the unexpected.

This is not how the majority of teams see the Sprint. The Sprint is treated as a prison that forces teams to stick to completing everything that was initially added when we lacked information and understanding.

When you fill your plate at the beginning of the Sprint, you’re making the incorrect assumption that you can guarantee there won’t be surprises. You’re betting you can know everything you have to know before starting. You’re assuming you’re not overfitting your plans to reality by injecting fantasy.

Instead of setting yourself up for failure from the start, gradually pull in work during the Sprint as you discover and learn more. Don’t bite off more than you can chew from the start. Gradually nibble things off your plate and add more as necessary to achieve your goals.

#2. Changes to the Sprint are bad

Changes to the Sprint are necessary when you do complex work. It’s something natural that is supposed to happen as you encounter surprises and discover you didn’t know enough before starting.

Viewing changes as bad is a symptom of a fixed mindset that is incredibly discouraging for complex work. The fact you encounter surprises has to do with the nature of your work, not with your amount of expertise.

#3. Not finishing what you promised means you don’t know what you’re doing

As Woody Zuill says: “In the doing of the work, we discover the work we must do.”

Not finishing what you promised doesn’t necessarily have to do with your expertise but with the limits to what you can know before starting.

I recently read a brilliant comparison on LinkedIn (I would attribute the quote if I would remember who it came from): asking when a product will be finished before you start building is like asking for the wedding date when the first date hasn’t even been planned yet.

#4. You should plan your Sprint at full capacity

When you plan at 100%, you are acting based on the assumption you know everything there is to know. You leave no room for dealing with the unexpected. This is dangerous when you do complex work, as surprises are guaranteed.

Aside from leaving no room to deal with surprises, when you plan with more than 70% resource utilization, the waiting time quickly shoots up. In reality, you should probably plan at around 50% resource utilization if you want to optimize for flow efficiency. Because that 50% resource utilization is likely to turn out to be around 70% once you encounter the surprises you have to deal with.

#5. Doing Sprints Means rushing

Sprinting means moving at top speed. It’s hard to maneuver when you’re going full speed ahead. Making decisions and changing direction becomes difficult when you’re going full steam ahead.

Work at a sustainable pace so that when surprises do happen, you can suddenly accelerate to deal with them. You can’t accelerate further when you’re running at top speed.

#6. The Sprint Goal is optional

A team is a group of individuals who works together to achieve a common goal. Without a common goal, teamwork becomes difficult.

Without a common objective, following the plan will become more important than meeting the objective of the plan. When you do complex work, you want to empower the team to make decisions during the Sprint. To make decisions, the team has to know what we’re trying to achieve and why it matters.

The Sprint Goal provides intent: what are we trying to achieve, and why does it matter? Without intent, all the Scrum Team can do is follow the original plan, and when surprises happen, that won’t cut it.

All mistakes are related to the failure to understand what it means to be doing complex work

When you do complex work, it means:

• No matter your amount of expertise, there will be surprises.

• You’re limited by the fog of beforehand, what you can know before starting. Only by doing things can you move past this fog.

• When you try to analyze or plan too much, you inject the fog of speculation. The fog of speculation is an anchor that slows you down, formed by believing you know more than you do. The fog of speculation stifles the ability to respond to what you discover and learn.

Expect your velocity to be erratic and your burn-down charts to be messy. That’s part of the nature of complex work.

If you can achieve a perfectly predictable velocity and consistently straight burn-down chart, then you don’t need Agile or Scrum. You’re not doing complex work.

When you do complex work, you have to empower teams to make decisions because they have the best information and understanding of the situation. Control without being controlling is the name of the game. What makes this difficult is that it isn’t in your hands. It’s in theirs.