Whit Morriss, who recently led the fantastic Plone commuinty “BBQ Sprint” in North Carolina, published a few great bullet points of sprinting wisdom titled “Get Your Sprint On.”

  • Don’t [work|code|drink] alone
    Sprints are social event above all and you plural are the main resource.

  • Socks, then shoes:
    Start at a starting point, move in a direction.
    1. Start with a plan
      your
      POA.  Maybe you POA is a part of a five year plan for world
      domination.  Maybe you just want to learn how to write better
      doctests.  All that matter is that you have a plan so you have a plan
      you can change.

    2. Focus
      the main things is keeping the main thing the main thing.
    3. Flow like water
      The A
      stands for adaptation as well as action… a project’s POA is
      determined by it’s participant’s needs and desires.   As new
      information becomes available, plans change.

    4. Do First Things First
      don’t expect to code features if your project don’t have tests, packaging, docs, buildscripts etc. 
    5. Do what you need to do
      If things aren’t working, adjust your POA to focus on making them work
  • Test first and [ask questions | talk trash] later
    Everyone
    has questions and opinions.  Make yours better by doing everything you
    can to test them before you disseminate. Sometimes the best question is
    “how do I test this?” rather than “How do I do this?” or “why doesn’t
    this work?”.

    As for opinions, sharing information is the
    greatest part of opensource.  The better the your information, the
    better you can contribute, the better F/OSS is.  Good tests are golden,
    talk is cheap.

Jon Stahl: More Sprint Wisdom – Getting Your Sprint On

Originally from Planet Plone by Jon Stahl