The Sprint Lifecycle

This page walks through a single two-week sprint, day by day, so everyone knows what happens when. Dates are illustrative - the shape repeats every sprint.

The two-week map

gantt
    title EmeSoft 2-Week Sprint
    dateFormat  YYYY-MM-DD
    axisFormat  %a
    section Plan
    Sprint Planning            :done, p1, 2026-01-05, 1d
    section Build & Verify
    Development + unit tests    :active, d1, 2026-01-06, 7d
    Code review (Quality Eng.)  :active, q1, 2026-01-06, 7d
    Test automation (Quality)   :active, t1, 2026-01-07, 7d
    section Stabilize
    Hardening / bug-fix         :h1, 2026-01-13, 2d
    section Close
    Sprint Review (demo)        :r1, 2026-01-16, 1d
    Retrospective               :rt1, 2026-01-16, 1d
    section Ongoing
    Backlog refinement          :ref, 2026-01-08, 5d
    Daily Scrum                 :crit, ds, 2026-01-06, 9d

Phase by phase

Day 1 - Planning

The team commits to a Sprint Goal and pulls a realistic set of “Ready” items into the Sprint Backlog. The Architect/Dev Lead confirms each item has a design sketch and tasks; the BA confirms acceptance criteria reflect the stakeholders’ (Product Owner’s) priorities.

AI touchpoint: estimation assistance and capacity modelling - the team reviews AI-suggested story points and a forecast of likely completion, then decides. See Project Manager and Stakeholders (Product Owner).

Days 2–8 - Build & Verify (in parallel)

Development, code review, and test automation run concurrently, not in sequence. A story is not “thrown over the wall”; the Quality Engineer reviews PRs as they open and builds tests against acceptance criteria from day one.

AI touchpoints: pair-programming and unit-test generation for Developers; automated first-pass review, security scanning, and test-case/script generation for the Quality Engineer.

Days 9–10 - Stabilize

Feature work stops; the team fixes defects found in verification, finishes documentation, and makes the increment demo-ready. No new scope enters.

AI touchpoint: defect triage and clustering - AI groups related failures and suggests likely root causes to speed up fixing.

Day 10 - Review & Retro

The Sprint Review is a working demo to stakeholders, followed by feedback that reshapes the backlog. The Retrospective turns the team’s experience into 1–3 concrete improvement actions.

AI touchpoint: AI drafts the review summary and release notes from merged PRs and tickets; in the retro, AI clusters themes from sprint metrics and team input so discussion starts from data.

Continuous, all sprint long

• Daily Scrum (15 min) keeps the plan synced and surfaces blockers.
• Backlog refinement (a few hours mid-sprint) keeps the next sprint’s items “Ready.”
• CI/CD runs on every push: build, tests, security and quality gates.

The Definition of Done gate

Nothing is “Done” until it clears the gate below. AI accelerates each check; humans own the sign-off.

flowchart LR
    PR[Pull Request] --> CI{CI green?}
    CI -->|no| FIX[Fix] --> PR
    CI -->|yes| REV{Code review passed?}
    REV -->|no| FIX
    REV -->|yes| TEST{Acceptance tests passed?}
    TEST -->|no| FIX
    TEST -->|yes| DOC{Docs & AC met?}
    DOC -->|no| FIX
    DOC -->|yes| DONE([Done - mergeable & demo-ready])