How Sprint Planning brings laser-focus to your team

‍PROBLEM

How do you get a team to focus on the same goal?

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SOLUTION

Sprint Planning

The purpose of the sprint planning is to select the right set of product backlog items to work on during the sprint.

If the team feels that each has been discussed enough that the team is prepared to work on it.

(Going super in-depth for specific topics is often not necessary)

Preparation:

• The Product Owner has made sure that there is an objective for this sprint and the backlog has been prioritised accordingly.
• Optional: If the team has a Definition of Ready, then make sure enough Product Backlog Items are Ready.

Agenda (time box: 1 hour per sprint week):

• Sprint goal is defined. A short, one- or two-sentence, description of what the teams plans to achieve during the sprint. Written collaboratively by the team and the product owner.
• Team decides what to pick up, “pulls" the work. The team agrees what to work on in this sprint. (Optional: If there are stories which are not meeting the Definition of Ready-agreement, the team decides what to do with them.)
• Team agrees when the story is done. What will be shown in the sprint review? (Optional: Use a Definition of Done to make this crystal clear.)
• Decompose work planned for the first couple of days. Create subtasks together to units of one day or less.

If more than one hour is needed, finish the Planning and use the Retrospective to evaluate how you can improve next sprint.

The Sprint starts when the whole team believes the plan is achievable.

TEAM IMPACT

The ROI of Sprint Planning

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Checklist

1. Read and understand this tool.
2. Write down your teams current weekly process efficiency.
3. Implement the Sprint Planning in your team.
4. Measure the increase in productivity.
5. Share your improvement stats with us!

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