Looking for recommendations for suggested naming conventions for Sprints that occur between two PI's
Good morning/afternoon/evening!
- Backstory: I am a CSM and an RTE for our company.
- We deployed SAFe to our decentralized IT/OPS team late 2023.
- Today, all of Cambria is Scaled.
- We are currently in Sprint 5.4 of PI5.
Here's the BIG question I am seeking advice for:
- We will not begin our PI6 Planning Event until 1/12/2024. That said, there are two (2) additional Sprints between the end of PI5 and PI6 start.
- I am wondering what we should name those two (2) additional Sprints.
- My consideration is to call the 5.7 and 5.8.
- Is there an industry standard in which we should follow in naming those additional Sprint?
Thank you greatly for taking the time to read this and your potential replies!
~ Chris
Frankly it doesn't sound as though Scrum has been scaled: rather, it sounds as though organizational problems might have been. In Scrum, a Sprint is a Sprint is a Sprint. That's it. That's how empiricism is established and maintained. Achieve this first, with individual teams, and scale only as a last resort where there are integration dependencies for those teams to self-manage.
Wow Ian, I am humbled by your vast knowledge and greatly appreciate your response. You are correct after reading your response, that we are still trying ferociously to Scale and are far from completing that Org wide. That you for reminding me the a Sprint is a Sprint is a Sprint.
I now know how to proceed.
Thank you kindly for taking the time to respond to me today! I am truly honored! Have a great day sir!
- Is there an industry standard in which we should follow in naming those additional Sprint?
Nope, Scrum is intentionally incomplete, favoring decisions made by self-managing teams. As mentioned there are no special Sprints, such as 'design Sprints', 'hardening Sprints', 'Sprint Zeros', etc.
The first rule of scaling: Don't do it if you can avoid it. It adds complexity, meeting overhead, and integration challenges to work through. Until your organization gets Scrum working at the team level, perhaps you're just scaling dysfunctions.
There is no industry standard for naming sprints that occur between two PIs. However, a common practice is to name them using the PI number and a decimal value that increments with each sprint. In this case, the two additional sprints could be named 5.5 and 5.6.