Can burnout happen when doing Scrum sprints continuously? [closed]

This is relatively normal and can sometimes be a complaint of our team members if projects continue for a long period of time.

The key to what we're talking about here is sustainable pace. If you and your team are able to sustain your pace over the long term, that's excellent -- you've achieve the hyperproductivity that all Scrum teams are striving for.

Alternatively, if you're finding that you overestimate how much work you can actually get done in a day, then you may need to reevaluate that during your retrospective. The amount of productive time in a day that a team chooses to recognize when doing their capacity planning for a sprint is referred to as a focus factor.

Henrik Kniberg has this to say:

The “default” focus factor I use for new teams is usually 70%, since that is where most of our other teams have ended up over time.

http://www.crisp.se/henrik.kniberg/ScrumAndXpFromTheTrenches.pdf

However, what it sounds like you're talking about is simply the nonstop momentum of sprint after sprint, not necessarily your productivity in a day. Here's some suggestions of things we have tried to deal with that:

• End the sprint on a Friday morning. Have your sprint review and retrospective in the morning and let the team work on something else the rest of the day to clear their heads. Pick up with Sprint planning on Monday.
• We introduced the notion of "lab days". These are entire days that the team is taken away from the project and they spend the day working on improving their own technical skills through research with each other and collaboration on specific technical topics. Most of the time they have absolutely nothing to do with the specific project and allow team members to think about lighter topics.

From Wikipedia on burnout: "burnout is largely an organizational issue caused by long hours, little down time, and continual peer, customer, and superior surveillance"

They might as well have an icon image of Scrum next to the definition of burnout.

If you think you can send someone onto something else for a brief diversion to fix burnout, you obviously haven't thought it through. Ever go on a vacation after being burned out and go back to work thinking, Wow! Now I'm refreshed and ready for another 6 months of this torture until I finally get a break again. Nope, what happens is you realize, Wow! My job sucks. Now I can really see how my stupid manager's micro-managing, development process is just another way of getting more out of me for less and life's too short for this... I should find something else to do or change jobs to something less stressful.

IMHO, short 2 weeks Scrum should be prohibited except in small doses, not more than 4-8 in a row. Use it as a tool for exceptional or critical things, not continually. Use common sense.