A way to build bonds in a team is to go through a shared challenging thing together and accomplish something everyone agrees is valuable.

Early stage startups get this basically for free--everyone needs to participate, and the reward is the company living another day.

This means that at early stage startups, you don't have to be shy about leaning into sprints; they are intense experiences that create deep bonds.

But this pattern gets harder as companies scale, because more of the effort goes into fighting the swirl, or in achieving ends that are mainly about optics.

In those situations, everyone will get tired and not feel like they accomplished anything: a recipe for burnout.