What is Sprint?

In an Agile environment, work on the product is done in iterations of 1-4 weeks called Sprints.
This includes all the time spent in analysis, development, and testing.
At the end of each sprint, a working product is delivered to the customer.
Once the team has decided on the scope, it is fixed and never changed during the sprint.

How long should a sprint be?

One of the agile principles states, “Deliver working software frequently, from a couple of weeks to a couple of months, with a preference to a shorter timescale.”
Have a discussion with the team and stakeholders and decide on an appropriate sprint length.
Sticking to a shorter time frame keeps the work urgent and focussed. This mitigates the risk of overthinking & procrastination and more time is spent on developing the product.
Hence, keep sprints as short as it makes sense based on the needs of the organization, capabilities of the team, and the pace of change of the market.
The length of each sprint should be pre-decided and fixed i.e. each sprint should be of the same length.
If sprints have varying lengths then it will be difficult to determine the team velocity and work estimation of the sprint scope.

Ensure the team understands each user story

In the beginning, conduct a grooming session so that each team member clearly understands each user story and the acceptance criteria. Get all the doubts resolved so that they can work smoothly during the course of the sprint.

Encourage the team to tackle the large or challenging items first

This would reduce the risk of the unknown that could creep up later during the sprint.

Plan ahead for the next sprint

In the last 2-3 days of the sprint, prepare the backlog and story map for the next sprint’s planning session.

The 4 types of sprint meetings held in Scrum are:

When	Morning of Day 1
Who	Product Owner, Scrum Master, all Team Members
Inputs	Product Backlog, Story Map (the meeting would be futile without them so ensure it as a top priority for the meeting)
Activities	Estimate user stories, define sprint scope
Output	Team commitment to the sprint scope

It happens each day.

It is usually 15 minutes long.

In this meeting each team member answers 3 questions:

The goal is not to solve any problem but to bring the team up to speed.

When	Last day of the sprint
Who	Product Owner, Scrum Master, Team Members, others
Input	N/A
Activities	Review work done during the sprint Give product demo
Output	Feedback, direction on future product needs from PO

When	Last of the sprint, after the Sprint Review
Who	Scrum Master, Team Members
Input	N/A
Activities	Review what went well and what didn’t go well
Output	Plans to improve team performance

During each sprint, the activities of analysis, development, testing, and release are performed. Hence each sprint can be thought of as a mini-project.
After the sprint planning session is complete, the team commits to delivering the product by the end of the sprint and the scope is fixed. This illustrates the limit of the flexibility of scope in agile projects.
A sprint is a 1- to 4-week time span in which a new version of the product is developed. That is why Agile, in general, refers to this concept as iterations i.e. the team develops a new iteration of the product.