Regarding best practices of Scrum are there any “best weekday” to start/end Sprints?

Question

From my experience I always worked at companies in which the Sprints started on Mondays and ended on Fridays (regardless of the sprint size, obviously). Is there any good practice that says this is the best period to work on a sprint?

It seems to me that having the last day of a sprint on a Friday makes things harder, as people in general are already thinking on their weekend plans and the sprint is in its last steps to be delivered successfully, which could ask for some extra focus.

Answer 1

I have seen almost any day but Monday and Friday, because people want to leave early on Friday (assuming you have flex time) and might come in unpredictably late on Monday if they are contractors that went home over the weekend and only arrive in your city on Monday morning. Those days are also prime targets for single days off to have a long weekend and in some countries (US for example) Mondays are more likely to be off due to public holidays. So for our team and our sister teams in the organization, having review/retro/planning meetings on Tuesday/Wednesday or Wednesday/Thursday worked really well.

But as always, the best practice in Scrum is "ask your team, work together and find a solution".

Answer 2

Trying not to be facetious, but sounds like an "any day ending in 'Y'" type answer. You take your pick! My experience is not too early in the day, to allow for latecomers.

Answer 3

I didn't see any difference so far. But when having sprints end on Thursday, some complain that Fridays becomes less productive because a) they worked very hard on Thursday to prepare for the demo(which follows the completion of each sprint), so they're exhausted and want to relax next day b) weekend follows

Answer 4

We avoid the Monday/Friday combo for various reasons:

• A Monday start means the sprint planning happens a few days ago leading to a cold start where people clamor to remember their commitments
• A Friday end is equally bad - there’s a huge sense of rush. You may finish the work but you don’t leave any room for error or demos
• No time for retrospectives i.e. they’ll either happen on Friday or Monday (when folks struggle to remember)
• One may work over the weekends and still feel they made the sprint - it can become a bad habit to think one has 2 extra days, leading to an unhealthy work environment

On the contrary Tuesdays-Thursdays is the most preferred. Some just arbitrarily pick Wednesdays to avoid the problems above and keep the cadence smooth. After years of experiencing the above I’ve come to agree to this.