This time of year, it seems like everywhere we look folks are talking about new year goals, new habits, and hitting the ground running as soon as possible. We love goals, and we know that setting SMART goals is a key step in gaining traction on your highest priority initiatives. But even with goal setting and new year energy, it can still be challenging to integrate strategic annual goals with the reality of day-to-day work.
We're always experimenting to find new levels of efficiency and alignment with our work. One technique we’re exploring this year is sprints. We piloted sprints at the end of 2023, and our team is already seeing the benefits of this scrum-based approach to work.
Every team executes sprints differently, but the goal is the same: to bring more alignment between strategic goals while managing capacity, and to foster collaboration within and across teams.
If your team or organization could benefit from shaking up your approach to work, read on to learn about sprints and our experience so far.
Ready, Set, Sprint!
A key component of the Scrum methodology, a "sprint" is a defined time frame — typically two to four weeks — during which a team or org focuses on specific tasks and projects. These time-boxed sprints allow teams to connect and collaborate on the most important projects and goals, while providing some space for adaptation if priorities change.
Here’s how it works:
Step 1 – Sprint Planning: A team meets at the start of the sprint to select projects to focus on based on priority, team capacity, and organizational strategic goals. This sets the tone for what gets prioritized in the sprint. For example, if one of your sprint goals is to review lessons from the previous year with the team, the sprint might include “plan 2023 retrospective meeting.”
Step 2 – Sprint Execution: Throughout the sprint, teams and team members channel their efforts on those agreed-upon items. There's some flexibility allowed here – if new high priority projects come in, the team can develop a mutual level of tolerance for those changes. But ultimately, the idea is that everyone is clear about the goals, priorities, and actions to engage with during the sprint.
Step 3 – Sprint Close: At the end of the sprint, the teams reconvene to review the sprint success, discuss areas for growth, and adjust the sprint approach if needed for the next timeframe.
Sprint Best Practices
Like any methodology or process, there isn’t one perfect way to execute sprints. But there are some best practices that we can recommend.
Get Clear on Your Sprint Goals: Define clear and concise goals for the upcoming sprint to ensure a shared understanding of what needs to be achieved. Once goals are on the table, you might consider running a quick pre-mortem exercise to evaluate the efficacy of those goals.
Dig Into Your Project Backlog: It’s helpful to dedicate one or two goals (or a percentage of team effort) to backlog projects during a sprint, that way the whole org can chip away at long deferred work. Having a single source of backlog info with prioritization is a helpful tool for this.
Include Everyone: If possible, try to keep your whole org on the same sprint schedule. We’ve been impressed with how working on the same sprint timeline has resulted in more collaboration, creative problem solving, and internal support within and across teams at Echo.
Stick to Your Sprints: It sounds obvious but keep your project work organized within the parameters of your sprint. If a project isn’t completed within a sprint, don’t extend the sprint – just move the remaining project work to the next sprint.
Have a Sprint Manager: It’s helpful to have one person on the team who manages the sprint meeting and aggregates the agreed-upon goals for each sprint. This could be a rotating role within your team, or a project for a team member who is looking to add more management skills to their professional development.
What we really love about sprints – in addition to feeling clear and connected to our individual and overall goals – is that we can continue to develop our approach over time. Whenever a sprint ends, the team meets to review the sprint, discuss challenges, and come up with ways to address those challenges in the future. Even though this is a new approach to work for our team, we’ve already seen some drastic changes based on what works for us, and what we need to improve upon. The short, time-fixed nature of sprints allows for easy adaptability and iteration in the short term and over time.
Embracing the sprint approach is a great choice for teams seeking efficiency, adaptability, and continuous improvement. The structured nature of sprints allows teams to break down complex projects into manageable chunks, fostering a sense of focus and clarity. By committing to a specific set of tasks within a defined timeframe, teams create a rhythm that promotes predictability and transparency. And last but not least, the iterative nature of sprints also enables teams to gather feedback early and often, facilitating quick adjustments and improvements.
Does planning sprint meetings make you groan? Check out our tips for running engaging, effective meetings.