At this time of the year, many people like to slow down and reflect. It seems as good a time as any then, to take offense at the word “sprint” in the context of software development.

I firmly believe that words have meaning, semantic diffusion be damned. Merriam-Webster defines sprint as “to run or go at top speed especially for a short distance”. Most software development doesn’t go just “a short distance”. And as far as I know, nobody ever won a marathon by running 422 consecutive 100m sprints. So the sprint analogy breaks down pretty badly.

The marathon analogy isn’t any better, however. Runners often hit a wall between 30 and 35 kilometers, also known as the man with the hammer. This is due to depletion of glycogen stored in the muscles, which forces the body to transition to alternative energy sources, like breaking down fat. Since this is much less efficient, the runner’s body struggles to maintain the same level of performance.

The equivalent in software development is known as a death march. The team is pushed to their limits at the expense of work-life balance, the well-being of its members, and the quality of the work they produce.

This isn’t a good model for what we want to happen. We want a sustainable pace that developers can keep up for as long as it takes to complete the project. We need them sharp to do their best work. Sleep deprived or stressed out people don’t perform well and software development is hard enough as it is.

So let’s not talk about sprints anymore, shall we?

What then, is a good alternative?

Well, the word “sprint” is used in software development in the context of Agile methods, in particular Scrum. Agile methods are iterative in nature: they split up delivery into small pieces. The word iterative comes from iteration, which is exactly the word that eXtreme Programming and other Agile methods use instead of “sprint”. Turning to Merriam-Webster again, we find that iteration is “a procedure in which repetition of a sequence of operations yields results successively closer to a desired result.” That sounds about right.

Exercise for the reader: What’s wrong with the phrase “best practices?” (And why do we always seem to need more than one?) Hint: look up the Cynefin framework.