A sprint is a box. Two weeks, usually: a fixed window of time that the team fills with work, empties and fills again. When I started running delivery teams, that box was a gift. Shipping was an event back then — releases took a quarter, sometimes two — and committing to working software every couple of weeks felt almost reckless.
Then teams got fast. DORA’s elite performers deploy on demand, multiple times per day, and even solidly high-performing teams ship somewhere between daily and weekly. I’ve watched teams push to production three times before lunch. Which raises an awkward question: if your team ships on Tuesday afternoon because the work was ready on Tuesday afternoon, what is the two-week box doing for you?1
Mostly, it’s overhead.
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That’s the short version of why “sprint” …
