Sprints help software development teams to keep pace with the implementation of new iterations. Everyone in the team must be clear about what focus on during a Sprint and be aware of what has precedence.
Before any Sprint, the project team participates in a Sprint Planning session. This session is one of the crucial elements of Scrum reality. This post “unpacks” this meeting and offers some helpful tips to make your next Agile Sprint Planning more efficient, effective, and painless.
Sprint planning is a canonical Scrum event that kicks off a Sprint. Its purpose is to define what can be delivered in the Sprint and how that work can be achieved. This planning process is run in collaboration with the entire Scrum team.
Seems easy. However, this event is rather critical and should be done with a full measure of the seriousness of responsibility as the meeting establishes the product development goal and plans for the upcoming Sprint.
If Spring planning agenda is successful, it will identify the essential strategic items:
The plans are discussed within the meeting and should be attended by the Product Owner, Scrum Master, and the entire team. The attendance of outside stakeholders is optional.
During the Sprint Planning meeting, the PO presents the features with the highest priority, often using an appropriate product management tool with the planning functionality.
Participated team members ask questions; they turn high-level user stories of the product backlog into the more detailed tasks of the sprint backlog. In fact, the Product Owner should not describe each item being tracked on the product backlog.
As the key goal of Agile Sprint Planning is developing main details regarding the team’s planned work during the next Sprint, so the team should plan the solving of the following issues during this meeting.
As the basis of the team’s meeting agenda, the following items can be used:
Sometimes it’s quite easy to “hang” in the work during the Scrum Sprint Planning.
The level of information you are aware at the start may be low, and much of it is based on assumptions. According to Scrum, you cannot plan upfront; you can learn by doing, and then feed that information back into the process.
User stories that actually describe the work from a customer point of view re-focus defects and improvements on the outcome the customer is seeking.
User stories with clear and measurable results let you know when you are done. This clarity on the work the team is focusing on allows everyone to get the transparency needed to get started on the work.
Agile Sprint Planning is an essential ceremony for teams to conduct in order to perform good work. What are your secrets of running a Sprint Planning meeting? Would you like to share them?