Ask HN: My company is forcing 1 week sprints. What should I do?
5 mcsolid 12 5/8/2025, 11:41:41 PM
The leadership of the company I’m at is forcing all teams to do 1 week sprints instead of 2 because they believe that they can get more out of the teams and get better visibility into progress. We’ve debated for months that teams aren’t getting enough upfront time to plan while still taking on the same meeting load as 2 week sprints basically every week. All the engineers, leads and product leads want to as well. I don’t know what to do anymore. All the teams are getting burned out from meeting overload and not enough prep time. Any advice?
That said.. just break the tasks down to as small and granular as possible and take on fewer.
Or quit, I guess, if the difference between 1 and 2 week sprints is a deal breaker for you.
Usually I find I want improved traceability of the work, and so that means clearly calling out:
planning, defining, scoping and building.
If those on the left are poorly completed that in the right will suffer.
Anyone still sticking to Scrum is already behind the times on creating an enjoyable work environment. If they are pushing for shorter sprints, they are doubling down on what makes it bad, not what makes it good.
I'm all for trying to make a place better before giving up, but this is one of the few leadership decisions that are an exception to my ideals. I would just walk out the door, no hesitation.