Why use iterations in Scrum?

Question

I am a Scrum Master in a 7 person team. We currently use one-week iterations for our sprints.I find that sprint planning overhead is huge (2 hours each week for entire team), and not nearly as productive as it should be. Our team members do not care what each task costs, they rely on one or two people with context to provide the estimates. It seems team-wide sprint planning is meaningless.Additionally, there has never been a sprint where we successfully completed ALL planned tasks. We always complete most of them, but there are always a few left over for the next sprint. It seems the time-boxed idea is not working at all, as we are never able to fully deliver. Maybe it has something to do with only two people contributing to estimates, but I don't see the team completing all features even if everyone contributes to the estimates.I know there are literally tons of books and papers that describe how wonderful iterative and incremental development are, but it just doesn't seem to bring enough goodness to our team.So my question is, how valuable exactly is it to keep a time-boxed iteration? If we just let one or two dedicated people maintain a strictly prioritized list and showcase deliverables as necessary, what's the downside of it?

Answer 1

Great question!

Sprints (or iterations) allow teams to work predictably by planning their work over a set time period. By keeping a shorter Sprint, like one week as your team has, it ensures fast delivery on small pieces of work and reduces cost and effort associated with larger chunks of work.

At the end of a Sprint, the customer gets to see an increment of work and give feedback on it, which means the team can make sure it's building the right thing and adjust quickly to changes.

As an Agile Coach or Scrum Master, I would ask the following questions:

Why isn't Sprint Planning productive?

Why does some of the team not seem to care about estimates?

What's leading to work not being completed in the Sprint?

And, most importantly:

Why is your team doing Scrum?

Please reach out if you'd like to dive into this further. Thank you!