Sprint Calendar — S1 through S26

Two-week sprints. 26 total. 4 are buffer weeks. Start: Monday July 6, 2026. End: Sunday July 5, 2027.

The sprint is the atomic unit of progress in this fortress. Not the day, not the month — the sprint. Every second Sunday evening (7:00-7:30 PM IST) you sit down for the sprint retro, you close the previous sprint, and you open the next one. If you do only this ritual and nothing else, you cannot fail catastrophically. The retro is the tripwire.

Skim this file once now. Print the table if you’re a paper person (I know I said no paper for the lab notebook — this table is fine). Open it every second Sunday.

The 26-Sprint Table

Cadence: sprint runs Monday → second-following Sunday (14 days). Retro on the second Sunday evening. Next sprint starts Monday.

S#

Dates (2026-27)

Phase

Primary Deliverable

Load

Lab-NB Target

Notes

S1

Jul 6 – Jul 19, 2026

P0 Refresher

Toolchain installed; first Makefile + first gdb session

Heavy

4 entries

Onboarding week; light Zoho load

S2

Jul 20 – Aug 2, 2026

P0 Refresher

Rung 1 (c-toolchain-journal) ships

Heavy

4 entries

S3

Aug 3 – Aug 16, 2026

P1 C Language Deep

strsplit module + dynamic string; UB diary begins

Med

4 entries

Independence Day Aug 15

S4

Aug 17 – Aug 30, 2026

P1 C Language Deep

Bytecode VM (~500 LOC); Rung 2 API sketched

Med

4 entries

Ganesh Chaturthi

S5

Aug 31 – Sep 13, 2026

P2 Memory & Pointers

200-LOC bump-arena allocator; ownership-annotated linked list

Heavy

4 entries

S6

Sep 14 – Sep 27, 2026

P2 Memory & Pointers

Rung 2 (libprep) ships. Q1 BUFFER wk2 (Sep 21-27)

Light

2 entries

Buffer: rest or catch-up, not both

S7

Sep 28 – Oct 11, 2026

P3 DSA in C — pt 1

15 NeetCode problems in C (Arrays/Strings/Two-Pointers)

Med

4 entries

S8

Oct 12 – Oct 25, 2026

P3 DSA in C — pt 1

15 more NeetCode problems (Sliding Window/Stack/Binary Search/LL)

Med

4 entries

Diwali prep; end sprint soft

S9

Oct 26 – Nov 8, 2026

P3 DSA in C — pt 2

20 problems (Trees/BST/DFS/BFS/Heaps)

Heavy

4 entries

Diwali Nov 8 — scope by Nov 6

S10

Nov 9 – Nov 22, 2026

P3 DSA in C — pt 2

Rung 3 (NeetCode-75) ships

Heavy

4 entries

VALLEY ENTRY

S11

Nov 23 – Dec 6, 2026

P4 Systems — pt 1

6 syscall exercises (cat, wc, head, tail, cp, ls)

Med

4 entries

Wedding season

S12

Dec 7 – Dec 20, 2026

P4 Systems — pt 1

Rung 4 arch doc; nsh skeleton. Q2 BUFFER wk1 (Dec 7-13)

Light

2 entries

Wedding season peak

S13

Dec 21, 2026 – Jan 3, 2027

P4 Systems — pt 2

nsh: fork/exec + basic prompt; NY holiday sprint

Med

3 entries

Christmas/NY; use holidays wisely

S14

Jan 4 – Jan 17, 2027

P4 Systems — pt 2

Rung 4 (nsh) ships

Heavy

4 entries

VALLEY FLOOR

S15

Jan 18 – Jan 31, 2027

P5 Concurrency — pt 1

Pthreads exercises + deadlock repro

Med

4 entries

Republic Day Jan 26; long weekend

S16

Feb 1 – Feb 14, 2027

P5 Concurrency — pt 1

SPSC lock-free queue; Rung 5 design doc

Heavy

5 entries

Manager conversation (Q3 open)

S17

Feb 15 – Feb 28, 2027

P5 Concurrency — pt 2

Rung 5: single-conn HTTP server; benchmark harness (wrk)

Heavy

5 entries

S18

Mar 1 – Mar 14, 2027

P5 Concurrency — pt 2

Rung 5 SHIPS 🟧 HARD GATE #1. Q3 BUFFER wk2 (Mar 8-14)

Heavy

4 entries

Holi Mar 3-4; Zoho FY-end pressure

S19

Mar 15 – Mar 28, 2027

P6 ML Inference — pt 1

Naive matmul; roofline plot for your machine

Med

5 entries

Heat begins

S20

Mar 29 – Apr 11, 2027

P6 ML Inference — pt 1

Cache-blocked matmul (2-4x); llama.cpp reading tour

Med

5 entries

S21

Apr 12 – Apr 25, 2027

P6 ML Inference — pt 2

SIMD (AVX2 or NEON) matmul; head-to-head vs OpenBLAS harness

Heavy

5 entries

Heat peak; morning-only work

S22

Apr 26 – May 9, 2027

P6 ML Inference — pt 2

Rung 6 SHIPS 🟧 HARD GATE #2; 2000-word blog; quantization extension

Heavy

5 entries

Wedding surge; hydrate

S23

May 10 – May 23, 2027

P7 Production & Mastery — pt 1

Read valkey src/ + curl selected .c; CVE case study draft

Med

4 entries

S24

May 24 – Jun 6, 2027

P7 Production & Mastery — pt 1

First OSS PR opened. Q4 BUFFER wk2 (May 31 - Jun 6)

Light

2 entries

Summer travel

S25

Jun 7 – Jun 20, 2027

P7 Production & Mastery — pt 2

PR iteration + reviewer conversation; 3 mock studies

Med

4 entries

S26

Jun 21 – Jul 5, 2027

P7 Production & Mastery — pt 2

Rung 7 SHIPS (merged PR + blog); M13 pitch versions all written

Med

4 entries

Fortress complete

Legend: Load = expected personal-time hours in the sprint. Light = 12-18h, Med = 18-24h, Heavy = 24-30h. Lab-NB = lab notebook entries (predict-then-measure). Buffer weeks are shown in bold in the row and count as 0-6h optional.

Sprint Cadence Ritual

Every Sprint’s Monday morning (10 minutes, ~6:45 AM IST):

  1. Open this file. Confirm S# and dates.

  2. Open 01_month_by_month.md for the current month’s deliverables.

  3. Write the sprint’s headline in the sprint template below.

  4. Commit SPRINT_S{N}.md to your ongoing workspace (any repo).

Every Sprint’s second Sunday evening (30 minutes, 7:00-7:30 PM IST):

  1. Retro: what shipped, what slipped, why (see template).

  2. Update the KPI dashboard (05_kpi_dashboard.md).

  3. Update the slippage log (bottom of this file).

  4. Set the next sprint’s headline.

  5. Close the laptop by 8:00 PM. Do not spiral.

Sprint Template (copy to SPRINT_S{N}.md at each sprint start)

# SPRINT S{N} — {START_DATE} to {END_DATE}

## Headline (one sentence, verb + object + acceptance)
E.g., "Ship the bump-arena allocator with 100% test coverage and zero ASan complaints."

## Deliverables (checkbox list, max 5)
- [ ] ...
- [ ] ...

## Load estimate this sprint
- Weekday hours available (Mon-Fri × ~1.5h): __
- Weekend hours available (Sat 3-4h + Sun 2-3h): __
- Total estimate: __ hours
- Contingency: __ hours if things break

## Lab notebook target
- __ entries (predict-then-measure)

## Risks this sprint (max 3)
- ...
- ...

## Sunday retro fields (fill at end of sprint)
- **Shipped:**
- **Slipped:**
- **Root cause of slip (if any):**
- **KPI dashboard updated?** Y/N
- **Slippage log updated?** Y/N
- **Sleep last 14 nights avg (h):**
- **Daily 30-min habit hit-days out of 14:**
- **One thing to change next sprint:**

Slippage Log (append at each retro; keep forever)

The slippage log is where you get honest with yourself. Don’t rewrite history. If a sprint slipped, name why. Patterns emerge in 3-4 entries.

## Slippage Log

### S{N} — {DATES}
- **What slipped:** (deliverable name)
- **Amount:** (days late / dropped)
- **Root cause (pick one primary):**
  - [ ] Overestimated my personal-time hours
  - [ ] Zoho work spiked (crunch / oncall / release)
  - [ ] Health (sleep debt, illness, injury)
  - [ ] Family / life event (wedding, travel, emergency)
  - [ ] Wrong scope (deliverable was 2x what I thought)
  - [ ] Blocked on tool/environment (compiler bug, machine died, etc.)
  - [ ] Distraction / motivation (Netflix, other side project, procrastination)
  - [ ] Valley of Despair (M5-M7)
- **Corrective action next sprint:**
- **Do I need to invoke the reset protocol?** Y/N — see `99_pre_mortem/09`

Slippage Thresholds — Green / Yellow / Red

Not every slip is equal. Use these thresholds to know when to keep going, when to slow down, when to stop.

Signal

Color

Action

0-1 slipped sprints in the last 4

GREEN

Keep going. Small slip is not failure.

2 slipped sprints in the last 4

YELLOW

Look at pattern. Scope-cut the next 2 sprints by 30%.

3+ slipped sprints in the last 4

RED

Invoke reset protocol. Read 99_pre_mortem/09. Life > roadmap.

A hard-gate rung slips >1 week (Rung 5 past Mar 21, 2027 or Rung 6 past May 16, 2027)

RED

Do not power through. Reset. Scope down. Ship a smaller version.

5+ consecutive days of missed daily 30-min

YELLOW

Sleep first. Return small. Do not front-load Saturday to compensate.

Sleep average dropped below 6.5h for 2+ weeks

RED

Health file 13_discipline/08. Compiler waits. Body doesn’t.

Buffer Week Rules

Four buffer weeks exist by design (S6 wk2, S12 wk1, S18 wk2, S24 wk2). They are not “extra sprint capacity.” They are non-negotiable pauses.

  1. If you are on-track (no red/yellow flags): use buffer to rest, read a non-C book, sleep 8+ hours, see friends. Do not ship a rung during a buffer week — that’s a broken buffer.

  2. If you are yellow-flagged: use buffer to catch up ONE deliverable. Not two.

  3. If you are red-flagged: buffer becomes a reset week. Read 99_pre_mortem/09. Reduce next sprint’s scope by 40%.

The temptation will be to always use the buffer to push more code. Fight this. The whole point is that a 13-month plan without a rest week is a 3-month plan pretending to be a 13-month plan.

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