Leveling Up Your Sprint Planning: A Battle-Proven Method
As a Scrum Master, you know that sprint planning meetings are essential for setting the course for the upcoming sprint. However, you may have experienced frustration with the lack of guidance in the Scrum Guide on how to structure these sessions effectively. In this post, we present a battle-proven sprint planning agenda that can help you optimize your meeting time and get the most out of your team.
Close Last Sprint: Celebrate Achievements and Tackle Unfinished Items
Before diving into the next sprint, it’s essential to take a moment to reflect on what your team accomplished in the previous one. Celebrate the wins and discuss any unfinished items that need to be carried over. This discussion helps the team understand the progress made and what needs to be addressed in the upcoming sprint.
Clarify Team Availability: Ensure Everyone is on the Same Page
It’s important to clarify team members’ availability for the next sprint to avoid any surprises or delays. For instance, if someone is going on vacation or there are public holidays during the sprint, it can affect the team’s capacity to deliver on commitments. Therefore, ensure that everyone is aware of each other’s schedules and any potential conflicts that could arise.
Go Through Backlog Items: Prioritize and Prepare for the Sprint
The next step is to go through the backlog items and prioritize them based on their value to the project. The product owner should refine the backlog items ahead of the meeting to make sure they are ready for the team. The team should then discuss each item and ensure that they understand what is required to complete it. This discussion includes:
- Describing the backlog item: The product owner should explain the problem statement, not the implementation, to help the team understand the customer’s needs.
- Discussing notes: Team members should ask questions and clarify any doubts they have about the item. This discussion helps ensure that everyone is on the same page.
- Defining acceptance criteria: The team should work with the product owner to define the acceptance criteria for the item. This step helps ensure that everyone understands what “done” looks like.
- Estimating complexity: The team should estimate the complexity of the item relative to others, using a technique like Planning Poker. This estimation helps the team identify potential challenges and dependencies that could affect the item’s completion.
- Checking readiness: The team should use their definition of ready to determine whether the item is ready to be worked on. If it’s not ready, the team should add any missing information to the backlog item or remove it from the sprint backlog.
- Pulling more work: Once the team has discussed all the backlog items, they should decide whether they can pull more work into the sprint. This decision should be based on the team’s capacity, past performance, and the amount of work already planned for the sprint.
Agree on Sprint Goal: Align on the Business Objective
The sprint goal is an essential element of the sprint planning meeting. It describes the overarching business goal for the sprint and explains why the team is implementing the selected backlog items. It also allows the team to negotiate the scope of the sprint in case something is more complex than expected during the sprint. By aligning on the sprint goal, the team can focus on the most critical work and prioritize their efforts accordingly.
Start Next Sprint: Wrap Up and Get to Work
With a set of backlog items and a sprint goal, the team is ready to get started on the next sprint. Make sure that everyone understands their roles and responsibilities and that they are committed to achieving the sprint goal. By following this battle-proven sprint planning agenda, you can optimize your meeting time and increase the chances of achieving your sprint goal.
Assign Tasks and Define Deadlines: Establish Accountability
Once the sprint planning meeting is complete, the team should assign tasks and set deadlines for each backlog item. Assigning tasks helps establish accountability, and setting deadlines ensures that everyone knows when their work is due. The team should also track their progress during the sprint, using techniques like daily stand-ups, to ensure that they are on track to achieve the sprint goal.
Review and Adapt: Continuously Improve Your Process
The sprint planning meeting is just one step in the Scrum process. To continuously improve, the team should regularly review their progress and adapt their process. This review should occur at the end of each sprint during the sprint review and retrospective meetings. The sprint review is an opportunity for the team to showcase their work to stakeholders, while the retrospective is a chance to reflect on what went well and what could be improved.
Conclusion
Sprint planning meetings are essential for setting the course for the upcoming sprint. By following the battle-proven sprint planning agenda outlined in this post, you can optimize your meeting time and increase your team’s chances of achieving the sprint goal. Remember to celebrate your achievements from the previous sprint, clarify team availability, go through backlog items, agree on the sprint goal, assign tasks and define deadlines, and continuously review and adapt your process. By following these steps, you can ensure that your team is aligned, accountable, and working towards a common goal.
References
- Schwaber, K., & Sutherland, J. (2020). The Scrum Guide. Scrum.org.
- Cohn, M. (2017). User stories applied: For agile software development. Addison-Wesley Professional.
- Cockburn, A. (2005). Agile software development: the cooperative game. Pearson Education.
