The Staging Sprint.

Well, you will find no google result for ‘Staging sprint’ related to agile. Because, I just named it couple of days back, when a client manager asked me what I would call this. I actually said ’Parking sprint..mmmm, Lets say Staging sprint’.

Yes, Staging sprint is the sprint where I park all the stories that would be handled in the NEXT sprint, every sprint. This enables me to,
• • Classify the stories for the next sprint. ( Earlier I used to navigate the backlog and hand pick them.. laborious)
  • Track the size ; so that I can say immediately, when to stop adding stories for next sprint (given that you know your velocity).

So, to conclude: the staging sprint is a sprint with no end date in which we will accumulate stories during a sprint, and move all the stories to the next sprint, while planning for a next sprint.

To illustrate, in a team that has monthly sprint, we collect stories to the staging sprint all along the month of March; and move all these stories to April sprint during sprint planning. It is true that team may choose to push a few stories back to Back log or to Staging sprint. Ie, team will keep a story in backlog if that story has a dependency or blocked OR move to staging sprint if that story could be handled in the month of May.

It was immediately adopted in other teams and being practiced.