{"head":{"title":"What Is a Sprint in Agile Software Development? | OceanLab","description":"A sprint is a fixed time box, a month or less, in which a team builds and shows a working piece of the product. How sprints run, an example and mistakes.","canonical":"https://oceanlab.in/glossary/sprint"},"crumbs":[{"name":"Home","path":"/"},{"name":"Glossary","path":"/glossary"},{"name":"sprint","path":"/glossary/sprint"}],"slug":"sprint","term":"Sprint","aka":["iteration"],"category":"Running a build","short":"A fixed time box, one month or less and often two weeks, in which a team builds and shows a working piece of the product.","body":[["The Scrum Guide describes sprints as fixed-length events of one month or less, where a new sprint starts right after the last one ends. Each begins with planning, where the team picks work from the top of the ",{"href":"/glossary/backlog","text":"backlog"},", and ends with a review of what was built and a retrospective on how it went."],["The goal is a working, tested increment at the end of every sprint, not a pile of half-finished work. That is what the ",{"href":"/glossary/definition-of-done","text":"definition of done"}," protects."]],"why":["Short, regular cycles mean the buyer sees working software every couple of weeks and can change priorities based on it. Problems surface early. Over several sprints the team's ",{"href":"/glossary/velocity","text":"velocity"}," also becomes a useful guide for how much fits in the time left."],"example":["A team on two-week sprints shows a working search screen at the end of sprint three. The client sees it and realises filters matter more than sorting. Sprint four is re-planned around filters, and nothing built so far is wasted."],"inBuild":["Embedded engineers work inside the client's team, so they join the client's own sprints. On a product build, several sprints add up to one milestone."],"mistakes":[["Changing the sprint goal every few days, which turns sprints into a to-do list."],["Ending sprints with work \"almost done\" and rolling it over every time."],["Skipping the review, so the buyer never sees the product until late."]],"related":[{"href":"/glossary/backlog","label":"Backlog (product backlog)","detail":"The ordered list of everything still to be built or fixed in a product, with the most important work at the top."},{"href":"/glossary/velocity","label":"Velocity","detail":"The amount of finished work a team completes in a sprint, used to forecast how much fits in the time left."},{"href":"/glossary/definition-of-done","label":"Definition of done (DoD)","detail":"The shared checklist every piece of work must pass, such as tested, reviewed and deployed, before the team calls it finished."},{"href":"/glossary/user-story","label":"User story","detail":"A short description of a feature from the point of view of the person who needs it, and why they need it."}],"tools":[{"href":"/tools/sprint-velocity-calculator","label":"Sprint velocity calculator","detail":"Free tool"},{"href":"/tools/project-timeline-estimator","label":"Project timeline estimator","detail":"Free tool"},{"href":"/tools/team-size-calculator","label":"Team size calculator","detail":"Free tool"}],"links":[{"href":"/embedded-engineers","label":"Embedded engineers","detail":"OceanLab engineers working inside your team."},{"href":"/software","label":"Software by industry","detail":"Systems we build per industry, with guides and tools."}],"sources":[{"title":"The Scrum Guide (Schwaber and Sutherland, 2020)","url":"https://scrumguides.org/scrum-guide.html","checkedAt":"2026-10-25"}],"legal":false,"updatedAt":"2026-10-25"}