One of the dangerous interpretations of agile is that, as long as your sprinting then agile just happens, but this just isn’t true. Teams that just run and run without and end goal are pretty much destined, at some point, to slip on something nasty, and end up landing on something soft. The something hard would probably be a customer deadline and the something soft could very well be the team’s reputation.

Sprinting should always be about the destination. A friend and colleague once told me that if his wife gets lost when driving she has a tendency to just keep driving, in the hope that at some point she’ll find herself on the right road. When on a car journey this can lead to a large petrol bill and an unexpected call to a loved one from John O’Groats. When on an agile journey this can lead to unhappy customers and stakeholders who don’t know when, if ever, they’re going to take delivery of something useful, or even functional.