Succeeding with Agile

Never Extend a Sprint

A second mistake you can make in how you execute sprints is not treating the timeboxes as strict. No matter what, sprints finish on time. Do not arrive at the planned finish date and decide you need to add a couple of more days to finish the work.

Now in the grand scheme of let’s say a year-long project, does extending the deadline of the first sprint by a couple of days really hurt? Yes, absolutely. If the team members decide to extend that first sprint, they have just learned that it is OK to miss deadlines. It’s not OK to miss deadlines, even deadlines so early in the project that missing them may not appear to have a big impact.

Keeping sprints strictly timeboxed reinforces the idea of continually moving the project ...