Sprint Planning Meeting
Every Sprint begins with a Sprint Planning Meeting. A Sprint is a timebox unit of work between 1-4 weeks where the team works together to deliver a potentially releasable, working product increment. The goal of Sprint Planning is to define the upcoming Sprint commitment (scope). The Development Team plans how they will complete the scope of work requested by the Product Owner. The Development Team has to be very confident they can complete all planned work before the Sprint begins execution. Attendees for the Sprint Planning meeting are the Development Team, Product Owner, and Scrum Master.
What happens during Sprint Planning?
Led by the Product Owner who will introduce the Sprint goal and the stories they wish to be completed by the end of the Sprint, the Development Team discusses how they plan to complete the work. But before committing to User Story development, the Development Team needs to confirm their overall capacity. If the team is running 2-week sprints, there will be 10 working days, assuming a normal Monday – Friday work week. Vacation, holidays, training, or other time off should be factored into the Sprint plan because it will impact the team’s capacity.
The Development Team will review each User Story and commit to the ones they can complete by the end of the sprint. They will discuss their plan describe the tasks needed to complete each story so they satisfy the team’s Definition of Done.
Sprint Planning Guidelines
- Sprints should be 30 days or less – between 1-4 weeks with a preference to the shorter timeframe. Most teams are successful with 2-3 week sprints.
- It is conducted at the beginning of each sprint. Generally 4-8 hours (2 hours for each sprint)
- The Product Owner creates the agenda, leads the session, and documents all of the output.
- Use the teams average velocity as guidance . Be sure not to plan to 100% capacity because the team may need to accommodate for any defect fixes.
Things to watch out for:
- Getting into too much detail
- Attempting to specify each feature in its full entirety
- Attempting to “Gold Plate” user stories
- Not identifying tasks for each user story where ever possible
- Lack of participation of the required attendees