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I think it comes from Jeff Sutherland's Agile Programming Methodology,
called Scrum http://jeffsutherland.com/scrum/index.html where work is
planned into month long interations called Sprints. (Jeff must have
terrific stamina if he thinks that the thing to call a month-long race
is a Sprint )

These days we do them shorter -- as in a 4 days Sprint before Pycon.

Anybody know the etymology for sure?

Laura