Sprint Cycle Size

For Sprint 4 we shifted from a two week cycle to the recommended four week cycle. This was mainly due to requests/complaints from the test group for more time to work a test cycle (dev/build/drop/bug/fix).

There is an interesting sociological offshoot of this change. I have witnessed a plummet in the productivity and enthusiasm of the developers, myself included. Enough so that after one week I have serious concerns about our ability to deliver this cycle. The sense of urgency that comes with "less than two weeks to ship" is gone. Everyone has slipped back to a "put off to the end" approach to tasks. I, for one, find myself working on coding articles while doing an absolute minium to be able to say I'm focused on tasks at our daily standup.

The true test will come at the end of the sprint, tho.