What is Sprint Planning?

Why Sprint Planning:

Remember is Scrum we work in baby steps. Sprint Planning is the event where we plan what we can achieve as a Scrum Team in Two weeks. We need all members of the team in the Sprint Planning. Giving a sports analogy this is the meeting on the day of the big game in the locker room.

Agenda:

1. OPENING   – Welcome, Parking Lot, Working Agreement, Action Items  for meeting
2. WHAT CAN WE DO IN THIS SPRINT –  This is a discussion between the PO and the team to decide how many Product Backlog items can be completed in this sprint.
3. THINK ABOUT PLANNED vs UNPLANNED WORK
4. DECIDE A SPRINT GOAL- Collectively the team and PO write a sprint goal defining the purpose of the sprint.
5. TASK BREAKDOWN- The team members work in groups to break down tasks for each Product Backlog Item. (This can take a while)
6. SPRINT FORECASTING AND CONFIDENCE VOTE. Scrum Master checks with the team if they feel comfortable with the work they have planned.
7. CLOSE – Clear Parking Lot. Assign names to Action Items and do a Retrospective on how the meeting went.

10 Smells of an InEffective Sprint Plan

1. The team pulls stories that do not have acceptance criteria
2. The meeting finishes really quickly
3. The meeting goes forever 6 to 8 hours
4. Everyone has laptops open and no one is talking to each other
5. Team members are being told what to do
6. Stories and Acceptance Criteria are being written for the first time here
7. The team is estimating the story here for the first time
8. The Scrum Master is controlling the entire meeting
9. New Team members feel lost
10. Managers are sitting idle watching the plan instead of participating in it

Note: In Distributed teams sometimes the sprint planning is done over two days. Esp when you have PO in one country like the USA and the team in completely opposite time zone like Singapore.