Can I make the sprint planning better?
Download as DOCX, PDF0 likes117 views
The document discusses issues that Scrum teams often face during sprint planning when user stories are prioritized but lack clarity. It proposes splitting the sprint planning meeting into two shorter sessions to address these issues. In the first session at the end of the previous sprint, the product owner defines the sprint goal and selects backlog items while the Scrum Master works to clarify any unclear stories. In the second session on the planning day, the team estimates stories, the product owner prioritizes, and the team selects stories for the sprint along with stretch goals to increase velocity.
Can I make the sprint planning better?
- 1. In the ideal Scrum world, end of the sprint planning team will have the details to start the sprint execution but in the real world because of some issues even though the sprint planning is completed and the backlog may not have all the details but business point of view those Userstories may be very important and needs to be delivered early. Typical issues faced by the scrum teams where Userstories are prioritized in the current sprint but still clarity is not there because of various reasons like: Customer not provided all the details Dependency Userstory is not ready Architecture is not ready So team may not start the Userstories from the first day of the sprint and they may need to have some wait time to solve the above issues which will result in low velocity or team needs to spend more time to meet the commitment. What better can be done in Sprint Planning? Each sprint begins with a sprint planning meeting. For a one month or four-week sprint this meeting should last eight hours. For a two-week sprint, plan for about four hours. As a general rule of thumb, multiply the number of weeks in your sprint by two hours to get your total sprint planning meeting length. Sprint planning is a collaborative effort involving a Scrum Master, who facilitates the meeting, a Product Owner, who clarifies the details of the product backlog items and their respective acceptance criteria, and the Entire Agile Team, who define the work and effort necessary to meet their sprint commitment
- 2. Instead of having the 4 hours Sprint planning at a stretch on the first day of the 2 weeks Sprint, it can be split into two, 2 hours meeting. First part of the Sprint planning can be done in the 2nd week of the last sprint where Product owner and Scrum Master can perform below things: The Product Owner defines the Sprint Goal. Based on this goal the relevant entries in the Scrum Product Backlog are chosen by the Product Owner. These entries are updated and broken into smaller stories so that they can be completed within one Sprint. If any of the Userstory is not clear during the backlog grooming Scrum Master can reach them to get the clarity before the 2nd part of the Scrum Planning. Second part of Sprint planning can be done on the Sprint planning day. The expectation is Scrum Master and Product owner should have gathered the information which was not clear in the 1st phase planning. In the 2nd part of the planning meeting below thing can be performed to have solid backlog for the scrum team. Team will estimate the userstories. Product owner can prioritize the backlog Based on the capacity available in the team the no. of userstories will be finalized by the team for the Sprint. Team can have two stretch goal Userstories in the backlog. In case of any issues in the prioritized backlog or team is able to finish the userstories early compared to the planned estimation, then team cantake the stretch goal userstory which will help in increasing the velocity of the team