What defines a failed sprint ....

Over the years working with scrum teams the same discussion has always

arisen, sparked by the words ‘we will fail the sprint’.

I’ve debated many times ‘what defines a failed sprint?’.

Here’s some of the opinions you might hear when teams try to answer this

question “The sprint goal was not achieved” - often blamed on factors such as over committal or external impediments. “Every user story has not met the DOD before the end of the time box.” “The team over committed work.”

Is it really that simple to define a sprint as a failure?

The scrum guide talks about inspection and adaption in many areas but it does not mention failure, which leads me to believe defining success and failure isn’t always black and white. Each sprint is an experiment with scrum itself being an empirical process, and so I consider a failed sprint to be one in which we didn’t learn anything, didn’t inspect the sprint, and didn’t adapt in the next sprint to improve ourselves. Even if a team has achieved the sprint goal and delivered value, are they really succeeding if they’re not learning?

An example of a failed sprint on this basis might look something like this:

• The team achieve the sprint goal as far as they know.

• The team have a sprint review which is lacking in feedback from the PO or stakeholders.

• The team cancel the retrospective so they can finish some last bits and close the sprint.

Whereas a successful sprint could look like this, despite a sprint goal not being met:

• The team experienced some impediments during the sprint which they worked together to overcome but still missed the sprint goal.

• The team had a sprint review in which they were transparent and only reviewed work that had met the DOD.

• The team met for a retro and discussed what changes they could make in future sprints to improve their process. They agreed clear actions around these changes and put them in place in the up-and- coming sprint.

So, you’re hitting every sprint goal and commitment 100% of the time?

If so, I ask ‘is this team ever experimenting? Or are they simply setting themselves up for ‘success’ by setting easy goals and under committing? If this is the case, from where does improvement ever come?’.

Not everyone will agree on what constitutes a ‘failed’ sprint, but teams who inspect their progress will certainly improve faster than teams who don’t.

No matter how you define a ‘failed sprint’, be sure to ask yourself if that definition is helping your teams. Or if there is any benefit at all to defining what failing a sprint means for your teams.

For me, a failed sprint can’t be defined by a single goal or story but is defined by how learning and improving were treated.

How do you define failure in a sprint? Do you think we should do it at all?