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We have been doing 1 week Sprints and the development team is quite reluctant to go ahead with continuing 1 week sprints. various reasons include

  • Team is feeling stressed in getting things done in a week
  • The team has just 3 days focused working frame where they can completely dedicate their time. Half of Monday and friday being utilized for planning and review/retro
  • Thus thinking of shifting it to 10 days sprint instead of 2 weeks.
  • Would be good to know if anyone had tried 10 days sprint and would like to know the schedule template for the same. Thanks a ton
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  • The standard is two weeks or 30 days. Shorter Sprints inherently have more overhead and produce smaller increments.
    – Todd A. Jacobs ♦
    Jun 27, 2018 at 14:46
  • Normally a 10-day sprint is a 2-week sprint (removing weekends). The advantage there is keeping the events occurring at the same day and time. It is also worth pointing out that your event time scales. The Scrum events (aside from the Daily Scrum) should be half as long for a 1-week sprint as they are for a 2-week sprint.
    – Daniel
    Jun 27, 2018 at 15:33
  • In my industry (software development) 10 day Sprints are the norm. Five day Sprints are for advanced teams with slick processes. One-day Sprints are the higher plane :)
    – onedaywhen
    Jun 28, 2018 at 9:44

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Team is feeling stressed in getting things done in a week

If you are struggling to complete stories in a week then you could consider trying to make the user stories smaller. If that is not practical then a shift to a 2 week sprint makes sense.

The team has just 3 days focused working frame where they can completely dedicate their time. Half of Monday and friday being utilized for planning and review/retro

The Scrum Guide recommends the length of ceremonies is reduced based on the sprint length. For example, sprint planning is time-boxed to 8 hours for a 4 week sprint, so we would expect it to be around 2 hours for a 1 week sprint. I would also expect the retrospective to be around 45 minutes and the sprint review around 1 hour when doing 1 week sprints.

If you decide to go for a 2 week sprint then typical ceremony lengths might be time boxed to:

  • Sprint planning 4 hours
  • Retrospective 1.5 hours
  • Sprint review 2 hours

Remember that the time-box is a top limit to the time you should spend. You can spend less time than this.

I have found that some teams like to spread out the Scrum ceremonies over a couple of days while other teams prefer to compress them in to one day. You may want to consider doing your review and retrospective in the morning and then sprint planning after lunch on the same day.

I would also recommend you consider moving your sprint start/finish away from Monday/Friday. There are a number of disadvantages of holding Scrum ceremonies on those days:

  • People are often tired by Friday and find it more difficult to focus
  • Mon/Fri are the most common days to take holiday
  • Monday is statistically the most common day that people are off sick
  • Mon/Fri are common days to work from home
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  • Of course, there's nothing in the Scrum Guide that mandates the Retro being held at the end of the Sprint :)
    – onedaywhen
    Jun 28, 2018 at 9:42
  • And there's nothing saying that the sprint has to start and end on the same days the week does... Why not start your Sprint ready on a Thursday and avoid end of week deployments?
    – Liath
    Jun 28, 2018 at 12:41
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Monday & Friday are not ideal days for ceremonies. Spread them or cluster them on whatever days you like and iterate as needed. 2 week (10 work days) sprints are frequently viewed as the default for a reason - it works for many organizations. The overhead (meeting time) is manageable and gives the team room to work. Also, address things that could reduce work time: interruptions, unplanned work, PTO, etc. Make sure the organization understands and values the team's framework.

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