Problems with Scrum

In Scrum, a sprint is a time-boxed iteration during which a cross-functional development team works to deliver a potentially shippable product increment. Sprints are typically short, ranging from two to four weeks, and are part of an agile framework that emphasizes iterative and incremental development.

Sprint Goal

The primary organizing element of a sprint is the Sprint Goal.

The Sprint Goal is a short, one-sentence description of what the team plans to achieve during the sprint. It provides guidance and direction to the team members, helping them understand the purpose of the sprint and how their work contributes to the broader objectives. The Sprint Goal is determined during the sprint planning meeting, which is one of the key ceremonies in the Scrum framework.

While the Sprint Goal provides a unifying focus, the individual backlog items (user stories, tasks, or other work items) selected for the sprint collectively contribute to achieving that goal. These backlog items are typically prioritized based on their importance to the product and are selected from the product backlog during sprint planning.

The absence of a fixed theme or topic for each sprint allows for flexibility and adaptability in responding to changing priorities, customer feedback, and emerging requirements. It also allows teams to address a mix of features, bug fixes, technical debt, and other work items based on the overall product roadmap.

Do a task from the next sprint?

If you see an easy opportunity to do a task that's part of the next sprint (and not the current sprint), should you do it?

• It seems the same problem as feature creep, where due to a lack of discipline, focus is not maintained on the current job, but wanders to other stuff
• It is likely not appropriate - Keep focusing on the current sprint
• Future sprints are not well-defined by this stage. That's also a reason for not doing such a job
• There probably was a reason why that task was not part of the current sprint
• Just as with feature creep: When the current sprint isn't finished completely in time, but a future job is, then why did you do that future job, and not the current job, that you were supposed to do?