Sprint Archaeology

ELI5 - The Vibe Check

You open a ticket from four sprints ago trying to figure out why a feature works the way it does, and the description just says 'per discussion.' There's no discussion linked. There's no discussion anyone remembers. Sprint archaeology is digging through old boards, closed tickets, and half-finished comment threads hoping to unearth the actual reason a decision was made, like an archaeologist reading pottery shards instead of a decision record.

Real Talk

Sprint archaeology is the practice of investigating historical sprint boards, closed tickets, and past PR discussions to reconstruct the reasoning behind an existing implementation, usually because the decision was never formally documented. It's a common time sink on teams without disciplined architecture decision records or changelogs, and it tends to worsen the longer a project runs without one.

When You'll Hear This

"I spent the morning on sprint archaeology trying to figure out why this flag exists." / "Save someone future sprint archaeology, write the why in the ticket, not just the what."