Working in Weekly Sprints Works for Us After 7 Years of Trying

3 points by JohanCutych ↗ HN
We had a great conversation about why working in sprints works for us now after 7 years of trying and why it might be the best way to work for you.

Link to the whole conversation in comments.

So why it works for us now? It allows us to portion the big ideas into smaller chunks, set measurable goals, and then assess how each of the sprints contributed to the bigger goal.

It makes us accountable both in terms of tasks for given weeks and for the actual results the sprint delivers.

It's also easier for us to focus on things that matter and don't get distracted throughout the week. Many opportunities occur every day, but if we set our sprint, stick to it and the opportunity is really great, we just put it into the next one.

We work in weekly sprints. Each Sunday we talk about the past sprint and set a new one. The discussion is abstract, we chat about business in general and then get to the specific task setting. That's why it's Sunday - you can already work on Monday. With a clear head.

We are a remote team so we do syncs when we feel like they're needed. Sometimes more, sometimes less.

We tried many other ways in the past. We also tried sprints before, but it never worked. Why?

The most important lesson we learned is that we always overestimated what can be done in one week so the sprints prolonged themselves to the next week. And then it doesn't make any sense.

We are still learning to set clear and measurable goals for each week that bring us closer and closer to our big dream.

4 comments

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At the end of the day you have to find what really works for your own team but this is a good inspiration.

I agree with what Marek said in the video - this approach (if adjusted to the particular team) would probably work for at least 90% of people. The truth is that not even close to 90% actually give it a try!

Why do you have meetings on sunday?
We can have really long conversations about many things related to business that can get quite abstract, and lead us to something new or help us straight our thoughts.

But doing these on Monday completely kills the whole work flow, it kind of depletes our mind capacity for that day.

And we find these talks really valuable so we do them on Sunday, in a relaxed and friendly way with the outcome of having set sprint