Sprint Left Athletics and Joined the Office
To sprint is to run at full speed over a short distance. Software teams borrowed the word in the 1990s for short bursts of focused work.
To sprint is to run flat out over a short distance. The word left the track in the 1990s: agile software teams adopted *sprint* for a fixed short period of concentrated work, and it has since spread to almost every kind of office. The metaphor is deliberate — you cannot sprint indefinitely, which is the point most workplaces forget.
- To run at top speed. *He sprinted for the bus.*
- A short fast race. *The hundred-metre sprint.*
- A fixed work period. *A two-week sprint.*
- Sprint finish — a burst of speed at the end. *A dramatic sprint finish.*
Word forms
| Form | Word | Example |
|---|---|---|
| Verb | sprint | Sprint the last lap. |
| Past | sprinted | She sprinted away. |
| Noun | sprint | A short sprint. |
| Agent | sprinter | A world-class sprinter. |
| Opposite | marathon | A marathon effort. |
- He sprinted the last two hundred metres.Athletics.
- The team plans work in two-week sprints.Software.
- It is a marathon, not a sprint.A very common idiom.
Sprint or marathon?
- Sprint — maximum effort, short duration, full recovery afterwards
- Marathon — sustainable pace, long duration
- The idiom — warns against treating a long task as a short one
- In work — a sprint that never ends is simply overwork with a friendlier name
- In sport — sprinters and distance runners have measurably different muscle profiles
Of Scandinavian origin, related to Old Norse *spretta*, to jump up. It appears in English athletics writing in the 1800s and moved into business vocabulary in the 1990s.
What is a sprint in software development?
A fixed period, usually one to four weeks, in which a team commits to completing a defined set of work.
Where does it is a marathon, not a sprint come from?
It contrasts the two race types to argue for pacing. The phrase became common in business writing in the late twentieth century.