The Ultimate Agile Sprint Planning Guide [2024]
How do you feel when someone mentions “planning”? Do you look forward to the opportunity or does the thought of making a plan send you running for the hills?
Sprint planning is a crucial part of the agile sprint cycle. It helps you and your team align around common goals, and sets you up for a successful sprint. Even if planning isn’t one of your strengths, the good news is that you can practice and get better over time with the help of some good advice.
We’ve combined our best sprint planning tips into an ultimate guide to agile sprint planning, with everything you need to run efficient and effective planning meetings.
What is agile sprint planning?
Agile sprint planning is a key ceremony in the agile sprint cycle. It signifies and prepares the team for the start of the sprint. Without this planning, there is a very real risk that the team would lack focus and fail to align on what is most important.
Effective agile sprint planning has three key parts; a sprint goal, an understanding of team capacity, and a prioritized set of backlog items. Each element depends on the other for success.
The idea is to align your team around a goal for the next sprint by agreeing on a set of backlog items that are achievable within the sprint and contribute to reaching the sprint goal. Gaining focus and clarity on what you plan to achieve will help your team to work better together and to deliver on objectives.
It is best to start with an agreed sprint goal. You can then prioritize work on the specific set of backlog items that your team has the capacity to complete, and that will contribute to making your sprint goal a reality.
How sprint planning fits within the Scrum process
We’re big fans of the Scrum process, and it’s hugely popular with many software development teams. While agile sprint planning can take many forms within the different agile methodologies, for the purposes of this guide, we’ll focus on agile sprint planning within the Scrum framework.
If your team doesn’t follow Scrum don’t worry — you’ll still find value in our preparation tips, meeting guide, mistakes to avoid, and sprint planning resources.
💡 Learn more: What's the Difference Between Kanban vs. Scrum?
Scrum roles: The people
There are three main roles within a Scrum team.
- Product Owner
- Scrum Master
- Development team
The Product Owner puts in the work upfront. They help prioritize the product backlog items and decide which should move to the sprint backlog. These important decisions guide the goals of the sprint and determine the tasks the team will tackle over the next sprint.
The Scrum Master acts as a guide, they lead meetings that help ensure that the Scrum framework is followed throughout the sprint to keep the team on track. The Scrum Master helps the team get the most out of the entire Scrum process and each individual Scrum ceremony.
The development team is made up of the various people who will complete the work agreed upon during sprint planning.
There are others that you might refer to during sprint planning, such as stakeholders, users, and customers. While these aren’t technically Scrum roles, they play a critical role in product development. Stakeholders should be brought into the process early and often, and customers should always be top-of-mind when making any development decisions. Some teams find User Personas to be a valuable way of keeping user value in focus.
Artifacts: What gets done
Artifacts are the things to get done — different breakdowns of what the team hopes to accomplish:
- Product backlog
- Sprint backlog
- Increments
Product backlog items are the tasks the team believes they need to accomplish in order to complete a product or specific improvement of a product. It is the big master list of everything that the team thinks they need to accomplish. The product backlog is flexible and iterative, and it will evolve as the team learns more about the product, stakeholder feedback, and customer needs.
The sprint backlog is more focused than the product backlog. The product owner moves the most important backlog items from the product backlog to the sprint backlog at the beginning of each sprint based on current issues, priorities, and customer needs. The team aims to complete all of the sprint backlog items over the course of the sprint.
An increment is a concrete stepping stone toward reaching the Product Goal. An increment must be verified as usable in order to provide value, which means that any work completed cannot be considered part of an increment unless it meets the Definition of Done (an agreement among the team of what “done” means). This is a formal description of the state of the increment when it meets the quality standards required of a product. Once the work completed satisfies the agreed Definition of Done, you gain an increment.
Scrum ceremonies: Where Sprint Planning fits
There are a number of ceremonies in Scrum that occur each sprint. This is where sprint planning fits within the Scrum process.
- Sprint planning
- Daily scrum (or standup)
- Sprint review
- Sprint retrospective
💡 Learn more: Agile Ceremonies: Your Guide to the Four Stages
Sprint planning is the first Scrum ceremony — it prepares the team for the sprint. The planning session sets everything into motion, aligning the team on what’s most important for this sprint. This is when decisions are made and key backlog items are moved from the product backlog to the sprint backlog.
The second ceremony repeats every day of the sprint. Daily standups bring the team together to discuss progress and blockers that might be getting in the way. By getting the concerns out in the open early, the team can avoid the frustration of delays and ensure work continues to flow.
The final two ceremonies happen at the end of the sprint. For the sprint review, the team comes together to determine the success of the sprint based on the “Done” work completed. It’s also a chance to bring in stakeholders to gather feedback on what's been accomplished so far. The sprint review ensures customer insights are always top-of-mind, stakeholders continually see progress, and guarantees the product never strays too far from what the stakeholders are looking for.
The sprint retrospective gathers critical insights from team members about how the sprint went. What went well, what didn’t go so well, and what could be improved upon for next time? These valuable insights are what makes Scrum agile — the team is always thinking critically about the process and looking for ways to improve the work and how they work together.
We’ll talk about these ceremonies in more detail below when we discuss what happens after the sprint planning meeting.
The benefits of agile sprint planning
Agile sprint planning is a powerful meeting that should not be overlooked or underestimated. It is an opportunity to:
- Bring the whole team together and align around common goals
- Set context by starting the sprint with clear priorities
- Identify potential roadblocks before they occur
- Bring stakeholder feedback into the planning process
- Learn from previous sprints by considering sprint review and retrospective insights
- Consider team capacity and adjust accordingly to ensure that goals are achievable and that the team isn’t overcommitted in the upcoming sprint
- Account and plan for dependencies that may impact the flow of work.
How to prepare for a sprint planning meeting
We know we said that a sprint begins with sprint planning, but there are actually a few important steps you must take in order to prepare for the planning session. Unfortunately, you do need to do a little planning for the planning meeting.
Backlog refinement
Backlog grooming or refinement keeps your backlog healthy, up-to-date, and ready for sprint planning. A refined backlog will help ensure your team’s planning time is used efficiently and effectively since you won't have to waste time adding details to the backlog that could have been completed in advance before everyone came together.
The product manager should groom the backlog a few days before the sprint planning meeting to make sure it’s ready.
Tips for maintaining a healthy backlog:
- Ensure stories are in order of priority
- Prioritize items that bring the customer the most value
- Add detail to the highest-priority backlog items
- Split any user stories that are too big
- Delete any user stories that aren’t relevant anymore
- Create new user stories based on new or clearer needs
- Add items based on new stakeholder feedback
- Make adjustments based on bug fixes
- Assign more accurate estimates
💡 Learn more: Essential Checklist for Effective Backlog Refinement (and What To Avoid)
Be consistent
A consistent meeting time that’s scheduled well in advance will ensure that the entire Scrum team keeps the time slot open. Book your sprint planning meeting on the same day and at the same time every sprint so that no one forgets or double books.
Sprint planning is not a meeting to be shuffled around, delayed, or ignored — sprint planning meetings are essential to the success of every sprint. Ask your team about a specific, recurring time to meet, and ensure it works for everyone.
How to run a sprint planning meeting
While the agile method is flexible and collaborative, it isn’t chaotic; everything needs to begin with a plan.
1. Stick to a set sprint planning meeting duration
As with any kind of meeting, the team can be easily sidetracked without a timebox. After all, talking about the work that needs to be completed is often easier than actually completing it. It’s the Scrum Master’s job to keep the team on track and make sure the time limit isn’t exceeded.
Go into the sprint planning meeting well-prepared; a clear agenda and a well-refined backlog mean your team can get straight to planning.
Set a realistic timebox for the meeting and stick to it. We recommend that you avoid scheduling more than 2-3 hours for a sprint planning meeting, but as you become more skilled in sprint planning, you’ll better understand the length of time that works for you and your team.
2. Use estimates to make realistic decisions
You want your team to be as productive as possible, but overloading them can actually hinder productivity and focus. Unreasonable expectations are demotivating and overcommitted team members are more likely to make mistakes.
You need to understand the effort and time it will take to complete the goals you set out to accomplish for each sprint. Agile estimation techniques and story points provide a better understanding of team capacity, individual capacity, and what a reasonable workload looks like. Reasonable and realistic goals will help your team stay motivated and support a consistent flow of work.
3. Define clear goals and outcomes
What does the team aim to accomplish between now and the end of the sprint? Set clearly defined goals and outcomes that everyone understands. Do your goals align with what you learned from past sprints? Do they align with customer needs? Does everyone agree on what the next sprint will (roughly) look like?
Don’t assume that everyone is on the same page. Ask questions and encourage your team to speak up if anything is unclear. It’s better to clear up discrepancies or misunderstandings now rather than once the work begins.
Setting sprint goals effectively involves following the SMART framework, a well-regarded strategy in project management and goal-setting across various industries. The acronym SMART stands for:
- Specific: Clearly define what you aim to achieve. Avoid vague goals by pinpointing precise outcomes.
- Measurable: Establish criteria for measuring progress. This helps in tracking accomplishments and identifying areas that need adjustment.
- Achievable: Aim for goals that are challenging yet attainable with the resources at hand. Overambitious targets can demoralize a team if not realistic.
- Relevant: Ensure that each goal aligns with the broader objectives of the project. Irrelevant tasks can divert energy from what's truly important.
- Time-bound: Set a clear deadline to maintain urgency and focus. Sprint goals must coincide with the sprint’s limited timeline to ensure timely completion.
In practice, applying the SMART framework to sprint goals means your team is synchronized and focused on priorities that drive the project forward efficiently. By keeping goals relevant and achievable within the sprint's timeframe, you avoid misallocation of efforts and ensure progress is aligned with overall project ambitions.
Post your sprint goal somewhere that is easily accessible so that the team can refer back to it throughout the sprint.
💡 Learn more: How to Make the Most of Your Sprint Goals
4. Decide what it means to be ‘done’
What does “done” mean for any given backlog item, increment, product issue, or product as a whole? The team and your stakeholders need to agree on what done looks like in order to set realistic goals that meet the expectations of everyone involved.
As you set goals and choose which backlog items to complete for the next sprint, be clear about what it means to meet and complete the goals you want to accomplish.
5. Align sprint goals with product goals
Sprint goals should always align with your broader product goals. Your sprint may take a specific direction depending on current product issues, bug fixes, or customer concerns, but it’s important to keep an eye on the big picture.
Choose backlog items with care — make sure they relate to the larger product goal and that each works in sync to move development forward. Overlooking product goals in sprint planning could mean that each sprint looks more like a random selection of to-do lists that don’t connect back to customer needs, relate to product goals, or help you reach important increments. The result will feel like a lack of progress, which risks disengaging the team and other important stakeholders, like your users.
What happens next?
Now that the planning is done, you’re ready to implement your plan and complete the work. But that doesn’t mean that team members go off and work in isolation.
Daily scrum (or stand-up)
The daily scrum or stand-up is an opportunity for a collaborative agile team to maintain progress. It should be a quick check-in at the start of each day.
The team will discuss what has been done in the past 24 hours, any roadblocks they might have hit, and what the team hopes to accomplish the next day.
This critical check-in helps the team stay on the same page, helps to ensure the continued flow of work, and keeps the team on track to achieve sprint goals.
Sprint review
A sprint review meeting takes place at the end of a sprint. It's a chance for the team to review all of the “Done” issues for that period. The sprint review determines whether or not the goal for the sprint was achieved.
It’s a chance to demonstrate shippable working product increments to the team, and also an opportunity to bring in stakeholder feedback. This feedback gives you valuable insights to assess if you’re on the right track, or need to make changes in the next sprint. The sprint review is also excellent preparation for the next backlog grooming and sprint planning session.
💡 Learn more: Introduction to Sprint Reviews
Sprint retrospective
While the sprint review looks at what was accomplished and how to move forward, the retrospective examines your processes and how the team is working together.
What did you learn during the previous sprint? While retrospectives can take many forms, the goal is to discover what worked well, what didn't go so well, and what could be improved upon next time. Your team will use the insights gathered in the retrospective to improve how you work together and deliver value to customers in the future.
💡 Learn more: 5 Steps to Holding Effective Sprint Retrospectives
Agile sprint planning mistakes
It’s easy to fall into bad habits, especially as deadlines and product launch dates approach. Avoid these common agile planning mistakes to ensure your team is always making the most of the agile methodology and the Scrum process.
Unrealistic expectations
Choosing unattainable goals sets your whole team up for failure. Failing to meet your sprint goals sprint after sprint is damaging for team motivation and morale.
Use estimates to set reasonable goals as best you can. Consider team capacity, factoring in your past knowledge of how long tasks take to complete, how the team works, and potential roadblocks that could arise along the way.
Lack of context
Your team will benefit from an understanding of how the issues they’re working on fit into the bigger picture.
Depending on the tool you’re using to plan and manage your work, it can be difficult to see the contextual detail needed to plan and work with clarity. The more items you have, the more difficult and overwhelming it will be to organize and prioritize. Use tools that allow you to add context, depth, and customer insights with clean functionality to adapt your plan to the needs of your team and stakeholders.
Neglecting your backlog
We mentioned this point when we talked about what you need to do to prepare for sprint planning. It’s worth mentioning again because it’s a common mistake.
When you go into a sprint planning meeting without a well-managed backlog, you lack the clarity you need to plan effectively. Your time is valuable, and so is the time of your team, so it should be treated with care and used effectively.
A well-managed backlog is DEEP:
- Detailed appropriately
- Estimated
- Emergent
- Prioritized
💡 Learn more: The 4 Characteristics of a Good Product Backlog
Not allowing the plan to adapt
When you plan your sprint, you’ll do everything you can to prioritize the most important tasks for the length of the sprint. It’s important to try to stick to the plan as best you can, but you also need to adapt as you acquire new information.
Be ready to make changes on the fly should you hit roadblocks or acquire new information about customer needs, concerns, or product issues.
Failing to understand stakeholders
You need to understand the goals and priorities of stakeholders to be successful. Just because you’re happy with what you’ve accomplished doesn't mean your stakeholders will too.
Ensure your stakeholders are brought into your process early and often and help them understand how you work to provide them value. Gather feedback from stakeholders regularly to ensure your goals are aligned. A good time for this is during the sprint review. Just make sure those insights are transferred over to your next planning meeting.
Not choosing tools with a customer-centric approach
Successful product development delivers what the customer needs and wants. To build for your customers, it helps to use tools for planning and work management that makes it easy to keep them top-of-mind. Incorporating user story maps and customer personas into your planning helps you and your team prioritize the work that will deliver the most value first.
💡 Learn more: 10 tips for more effective user personas
Failing to incorporate retrospective insights into planning
Retrospectives are the best thing you can do to help your team work better together. During a retrospective, you're asking your team to be open and honest about how things went over the course of the sprint so that you can learn from each other.
Failing to learn from those insights means that the collective time spent in the retrospective has been wasted, and the feedback that your team has shared is devalued.
Incorporating the learnings you gain from a retrospective into your next planning session and into the next sprint, will support your team to improve every time, helping them gain work satisfaction and deliver better outcomes.
Virtual vs. in-person sprint planning
The advantages of remote work also bring challenges for collaborative planning. No matter the way your team chooses to meet, whether virtually, in person, or a combination of both, it’s important that you choose tools that meet the needs of your team.
Tips for virtual sprint planning:
- Be really prepared - communicate plans clearly ahead of time, so that everyone has clear expectations.
- Use a video conferencing tool that allows for breakout sessions
- Set up the interactive online resources you plan to use and include links in the meeting request.
- Online discussions don’t start as naturally as they would in person, so share discussion topics ahead of time, and consider preparing some ice-breakers.
- Ensure that you’ve accounted for time differences for teams that span time zones.
- Tech issues arise no matter how much advanced planning and testing you do. Always expect the unexpected.
Tips for in-person sprint planning:
- Book a meeting room with plenty of space for your team, and consider separate spaces for breakout sessions.
- Ensure that your meeting room will accommodate a shared view of your sprint plan - do you need a wall for sticky notes, or a screen to share a digital tool?
- If some of your team members work remotely, it’s difficult to involve them in the same way, so consider how this might work for your team. They won’t be able to read a whiteboard or sticky notes as easily, so a digital solution may be best.
- If you choose to plan your sprint ‘on the wall’, be sure to nominate someone to transcribe your plan into your work management tool at the end of the planning meeting.
No matter where your planning takes place, always remember to prepare your backlog ahead of time so that you can have focused and informed discussions during sprint planning.
Additional agile resources
We’re continually adding to our content library, which is filled with resources, how-to guides, product updates, and more.
📚 Add these to your list:
- Easy Agile Podcast Ep.20: The importance of the Team Retrospective
- Easy Agile Podcast Ep.18 Top qualities of an agile leader and team
- Easy Agile Podcast Ep.16 Enabling high performing agile teams with Adaptavist
- Being agile vs doing agile
- The Ultimate Guide to User Story Mapping
- The Ultimate Guide to Buyer Personas
- The Ultimate Guide to PI Planning [2022 SAFe Edition]
Using Easy Agile to improve sprint planning
Make your sprint planning smooth and effective with Easy Agile TeamRhythm. Transform your flat product backlog into a dynamic, flexible, and visual representation of the work to be done. Seamlessly integrated with Jira, with TeamRhythm you can:
- View your Jira stories, tasks, and bugs in context, aligned beneath their epics on the story map
- Drag and drop Jira issues from the backlog into a sprint
- Create new issues right on the story map
- Estimate issues on the story map, and gauge capacity with story point totals in each sprint swimlane
- Publish the sprint goal on each sprint swimlane, so it’s always top of mind
- Use filters to focus on the stories and issues that are most important now
- Group epics by a third level of hierarchy, to easily see how the work in focus contributes to the bigger picture
Easy Agile TeamRhythm also supports team retrospectives, with flexible and intuitive retrospectives boards created for every sprint. You can add retrospective items right from the sprint swimlane, so you don’t forget any important points. And you can turn retrospective action items into Jira issues that can be scheduled for future sprints, so you’re always getting better at what you do, and delivering for your customers.
Thanks for reading our ultimate agile sprint planning guide! If you have any questions about this guide, our other content, or our products, reach out to our team at any time. We love hearing from you.
We’ll continue to update this guide as we gain more agile planning insights, techniques, tools, and best practices.
Related Articles
WorkflowHow To Handle Sprint Planning Meetings Like a Pro
It’s time to get things done and hand over the project to the programmers. But before they get their hands dirty, someone must plan the Scrum sprint or iteration. The Sprint Planning meeting is one of Scrum’s ceremonies, and it's the sprint's opening event. 🎬
Let's walk you through the event and explain how to prepare and hold one successfully. You'll also learn who participates in Sprint Planning and why the meeting is so important.
What's a Sprint Planning meeting?
Sprint Planning is a Scrum meeting. It kicks off a sprint, so it occurs on the first day of a new sprint. If applicable, it should occur after the Sprint Review and the Sprint Retrospective from the previous iteration.
Sprint Planning aims to decide the deliverables for the upcoming sprint and define a plan to develop the work.
The entire Scrum Team (the Product Owner, the Scrum Master, and the Development Team) collaborates during Sprint Planning.
Can you imagine a successful project without planning? 🙅 We can't either, so we don’t start a Scrum sprint without planning it.
To plan a Scrum sprint, you need to decide:
- The sprint's duration — remember that a sprint is a timebox
- The sprint goal, which is its purpose and represents the product increment's value to the customer
- The work that the Development Team can complete during the sprint, what work items the team should do first to achieve the sprint goal, and how long they should take considering the team's capacity
Additionally, Sprint Planning should motivate the team and set realistic expectations.
By the end of the Sprint Planning meeting, the team must produce the following outcomes:
- A shared understanding of the sprint goal. This goal is the guideline for evaluating the Development Team's work once the sprint is over.
- The Sprint Backlog. This artifact represents the conversation between the Development Team and the Product Owner on the to-do work. It's the result of a balance between customer value and development effort.
Now, each Sprint Planning meeting requires some preparation. Read on about who should do it and what it entails.
How do you prepare for Sprint Planning?
The Product Owner should follow these steps to set the foundation for successful Sprint Planning:
- Combine the output of the previous Sprint Review, feedback from stakeholders such as management and customers, and the product vision
- Update and, if necessary, refine the product backlog
- Know the customer value that the development team needs to create in an increment
So, once all the preparation is over, it's time for the Sprint Planning meeting to take place.
How should the meeting go?
- The Product Owner indicates the Product Backlog items — and corresponding priorities — that they consider the next sprint's best candidates. Items can be user stories, tasks, or bugs. The Product Owner proposes those items according to customer value and product vision.
- Based on effort estimates and the Product Owner's proposal, the development team selects the product backlog items to work on during the current sprint. By promoting those items to sprint backlog items, developers agree on the sprint goal with the Product Owner.
- Although optional, the team might discuss dependencies between items and who should work on each one of them.
Very few steps, right? However, some practical actions should add on to these steps. Discover what those actions are below.
How do you execute a successful Sprint Planning meeting?
1. Limit the meeting's duration. ⏳ Sprint Planning shouldn't take longer than 1-2 hours per sprint week. That means the meeting shouldn't take more than 2-4 hours for a two-week sprint.
2. Let the Scrum Master be the guardian of time. They're the ones responsible for ensuring that the meeting happens within the defined timebox.
3. Hold the meeting on the same day and at the same time every time. 📅 Team members can be quite busy and have full agendas. That's why reserving a slot in every participant's agenda is a good practice.
4. Define valuable, clear outcomes. 🎁 Those, together with a clear sprint backlog, increase the Development Team's motivation. Producing the right outcomes is pure satisfaction, and a clear work plan is the recipe to achieve that.
5. Make sure that the Scrum Master guarantees these things. First, that the conversation between the Development Team and the Product Owner is fruitful. They should all agree on the sprint goal. Second, that the developers make good choices when moving product backlog items to the sprint backlog. Selecting an item that is feasible for the sprint duration, team capacity, and workload is a good choice.
It might seem easy, but this is not all there is to do during Sprint Planning. There's a bunch of things to avoid.
If we were to give you some advice...
Make effort estimates against the development team's capacity. To decide on the amount of work that the team can accomplish in a sprint, consider the team's capacity. (And remember, estimates are just that — estimates.) Developers consider their previous experience, yet each sprint is unique and might change over its course. However, considering team capacity improves the accuracy of effort estimation. Additionally, story points might help the team with effort estimation.
Consider that the development team's ability to estimate should improve over time. Therefore, the team should not critique less accurate effort estimates after the sprint. Otherwise, the team will take much longer to estimate or provide much bigger estimates next time.
Don't try to plan every single thing during Sprint Planning. Leave the idea of coming up with the most complete, perfect Sprint Backlog ever at the front door. After all, Scrum is all about flexibility, and "Better done than perfect." So, a Sprint Backlog that’s complete enough to get developers started is just what it needs to be. Remember that solving complex problems requires a learn-by-doing approach, which turns planning into an equally complex job.
Figure out a realistic expectation for the sprint's outcome. Setting unrealistic expectations for the increment that the development team can produce over a sprint is not a good idea. It might make developers frustrated that they couldn't deliver, which can seriously affect their motivation and performance. On the other hand, realistic expectations set the team for success and a sense of accomplishment. Besides, they facilitate the conversation between the developers and the Product Owner so they can agree on the sprint goal.
Have a well-refined product backlog. It must be detailed enough to allow the Development Team to understand what the work items are about. You don't want to waste precious Sprint Planning time splitting work items into a maximum of one per day. Define and follow a backlog refinement process and ensure that Product Backlog items meet your definition of ready.
Propose a clear sprint goal. 🎯 The Product Owner must be very clear on the expected customer value for the increment. Otherwise, the development team might choose a set of product backlog items that don’t relate to one another. The result could be unexpected outcomes and a low sense of accomplishment.
Clarify the definition of done with the Development Team. Knowing what work done means in the current sprint helps the developers meet the expectations. That's because they can better understand what to do to create the increment. Also, a clear definition of done makes the Development Team more confident when estimating effort.
Strong Sprint Planning makes your project stronger
If you're following the Scrum framework, Sprint Planning is not a choice. Nevertheless, if you ever feel tempted to skip it, bookmark this article and read the following. 📑
It's easier to understand the sprint goal, to-do work, and sprint outcomes with a successful Sprint Planning meeting. If the team doesn't know where it's heading and how to get there, it gets really tough to satisfy customer needs. It's equally hard to deliver your customers valuable increments if you don't organize work by priorities.
Sprint Planning is about instilling clarity and organizing work before it's too late in the iteration. It's also about involving the whole team in preparing for all the effort that a sprint demands. A note: Keep in mind that a sprint plan must fit into a sprint's timebox and consider the team capacity.
Easy Agile TeamRhythm is perfect for Sprint Planning. It's a fast, straightforward, visual, and collaborative tool that allows you to:
- Drag items directly from the product backlog onto the user story map
- Register effort estimates in user stories
- Edit story point estimates
- Prioritize user stories in each sprint by ordering them inside the respective sprint swimlane
- Analyze sprint statistics to ensure that the planned work doesn't exceed the team's capacity and the sprint goal is realistic
- Visualize what the team will deliver and when by arranging user stories into sprint swimlanes
Let us know if you have any questions about Easy Agile TeamRhythm. We highly recommend it to your Scrum project, and our customers recommend the same.
Agile Best Practice9 Tips to Help You Ace Your Sprint Planning Meetings
The sprint planning meeting helps agile teams plan and get on the same page about each sprint. It’s an opportunity to decide on prioritization based on the product vision, issue urgency, stakeholder feedback, and knowledge from the previous sprint.
The goal of the meeting is to determine which backlog items should be tackled during the upcoming sprint. The team, guided by the product owner and Scrum Master, decide which items from the product backlog should be moved to the sprint backlog for hopeful completion over the coming weeks (sprint duration).
Sprint planning plays a critical role in the Scrum process. The meeting ensures teams enter a sprint prepared, with work items chosen carefully. The end result should be a shared understanding of sprint goals that will guide the next sprint.
While sprint planning should occur before any type of sprint, for the purposes of this article, we will focus on sprint planning sessions for Scrum teams. Continue reading to learn our top tips for a successful sprint planning meeting. 🎉
How does the sprint planning meeting fit into the Scrum framework?
Scrum is a hugely popular agile methodology used in product development. The process involves a series of sprints that are improved upon and adjusted based on continual feedback from customers, stakeholders, and team members.
The sprint planning meeting sees the entire team comes together to decide what work they hope to complete over the upcoming sprint. The product owner helps decide which priority product backlog items move to the sprint backlog. This is an incredibly important phase that guides the team’s goals over the next two weeks.
The Scrum Master acts as a Scrum guide. They help the development team stay on track in each sprint, ensuring everyone gets the most out of the process. The Scrum team works together to complete the amount of work decided on during sprint planning. To ensure everyone remains on track and on the same page, daily stand-ups are held each day. This provides an opportunity for team members to address any issues or potential bottlenecks that could keep work from running smoothly.
Following the sprint, a sprint review takes place, which gives stakeholders an opportunity to provide feedback. Finally, a sprint retrospective meeting gives the team an opportunity to assess and improve upon their process. The Scrum concludes and begins again with another sprint planning meeting.
Here are some tips to make sure each sprint planning meeting sets you up for success:
1. Reserve the same time for sprint planning ⏰
Book your sprint planning meeting on the same day and at the same time every two weeks to ensure your entire team keeps that time slot available. Sprint planning is vital to the success of each sprint — it’s a meeting that shouldn’t be shuffled around.
Pick a time that works for everyone involved, asking for feedback from your team about when is best. Schedule the meetings well in advance in everyone's calendar so that no one forgets about it or books other engagements.
2. Set a sprint planning meeting duration and stick to it ⏳
Sprint planning is important, but that doesn’t mean it should take forever. Set a time limit for your meeting, and do your best to stick to it. If you are well prepared with an agenda and refined backlog, you should be able to get straight to planning.
We recommend scheduling no more than 2-4 hours for sprint planning. Let the Scrum Master be in charge of ensuring the team stays on track and completes planning in the allotted time.
3. Complete backlog refinement before sprint planning begins 📝
Complete your backlog refinement ahead of your sprint planning meeting. Otherwise, you will spend far too much time adding details, estimating, or splitting work.
The sprint planning meeting should be reserved for planning and goal setting. While the backlog shouldn’t be set in stone, it should provide team members with enough details to move forward with planning instead of refinement.
4. Incorporate stakeholder feedback from the sprint review 😍
What insights did stakeholders share throughout the sprint or during the sprint review? You are designing this product for them, so incorporating their feedback is crucial to the end result.
Make sure every decision is based on customer needs. After each sprint, share your product goals and sprint goals with your stakeholders and adjust per their feedback.
5. Incorporate sprint retrospective insights 💡
Sprint retrospectives are a critical part of the agile process, providing a time for the team to discuss how they can improve. There are lessons to be learned every time you complete a sprint or iteration. Agile continually takes what a team learns and turns those experiences into actionable improvements. So, ignoring these lessons would be very un-agile of you. 🤔
How did the last sprint go? Was each team member satisfied with the process, and what was accomplished? What changes did your team decide would make the next sprint more effective? Use these insights to make each sprint better than the last one.
6. Clearly define what success looks like ✅
Set clearly defined goals, objectives, and metrics. What is the definition of done? How will the team know if they are successful? You should leave the sprint planning meeting with a clear idea of what needs to get done and what success looks like.
7. Use estimates to make decisions based on team capacity 📈
Overloading your team or any individual beyond their capacity does far more harm than good. The team will be more likely to make mistakes, and morale will diminish as goals remain consistently out of reach.
Use agile estimation techniques and story points to better understand workload and capacity. How much work and effort is needed to accomplish your goals? Ensure you set realistic and reasonable goals based on your best estimations.
8. Align sprint goals with overall product goals 🎉
Ensure you have a goal for the sprint and that all backlog items relate to the end goal. Your sprint goals should work alongside your overall product goals.
Failing to prioritize your objectives can result in a random selection of to-dos. Completing disconnected backlog items will still get work done, but it will result in unexpected outcomes and a low sense of accomplishment for the team. Each backlog item should be chosen with a clear purpose that relates to your product and sprint goals.
9. Leave room for flexibility 💫
Any agile methodology is flexible by nature, and Scrum is no exception. If there isn’t room for flexibility, something has gone seriously wrong.
It's important to acknowledge that not everything will always go to plan. You will continually find new information, stakeholder insights, and dependencies that the team will need to adjust to along the way. Ensure the team understands they need to be flexible and that they are supported throughout each sprint.
Sprint planning made easy
The effectiveness of sprint planning can make or break the coming week for a Scrum team. It’s important for the development team to take the necessary time to prepare for each upcoming sprint. This means going into the meeting with clear goals, objectives, stakeholder feedback, and a refined backlog.
Make the most of your sprint planning and do it with ease using Easy Agile TeamRhythm. Transform your flat product maps into dynamic, flexible, and visual representations of the customer journey. Story points will help your team make decisions and account for capacity while keeping the customer top-of-mind.
Learn more about the benefits of user story mapping and read our ultimate guide to user story maps.
Workflow5 Steps to Holding Effective Sprint Retrospectives
The retrospective is a critical part of the agile process, providing an outlet for teams to discuss how they can improve. A sprint retrospective comes at the end of each sprint and offers the team an opportunity to assess their processes.
What went well? What didn’t go so well? What does the team need to do to improve next time? Agile is all about learning and iterating. Every time you complete a sprint, there are lessons to be learned. Agile continually takes what a team learns — the good, the bad, and the bland — and turns those experiences into actionable improvements.
This post will dig into sprint retrospectives, including the benefits, how they fit within the Scrum process, how to run an effective sprint retrospective meeting, and common mistakes to avoid.
The purpose of the sprint retrospective
The sprint retrospective is a dedicated time for team discussion. The time is allotted at the end of each sprint so that all team members can examine what went well and what needs to change. It’s all part of the greater agile methodology of continually improving your processes as you learn more. There’s no one set way of doing things, and there’s always room to become more efficient and effective.
A sprint retrospective:
- Encourages a continuous improvement mindset
- Creates a safe space for sharing positive and constructive feedback
- Gives everyone on the team an opportunity to express thoughts, ideas, and experiences
- Provides feedback in real-time after each sprint
- Brings the team together around common goals
- Exposes any issues from the previous sprint that are holding the team back
- Informs leadership of success and potential roadblocks
- Helps product owners make decisions for the next sprint planning
- Sets the team on a positive path for moving into the next sprint
How the sprint retrospective fits within the Scrum process
The type of retrospective you hold depends on the type of sprint or agile methodology your team practices. One of the most common methodologies in software development is the Scrum framework.
A Scrum team has three types of roles:
- Product Owner
- Scrum Master
- Development team
At the beginning of each Scrum, the product owner decides which items from the overall product backlog are moved to the sprint backlog to be completed over the upcoming 2-4 week sprint. The exact sprint timeframe is set in advance.
The Scrum is made up of four distinct ceremonies or events:
- Sprint planning
- Daily Scrum or stand-ups
- Sprint review
- Sprint retrospective
After planning is complete and the team knows which backlog items they are going to tackle for the current sprint, the work begins. The team checks in throughout the sprint via a daily scrum or stand-up meeting. This quick but essential check-in allows the Scrum team to discuss their progress and address any potential roadblocks on a daily basis.
The sprint review meeting takes place at the end of the sprint; it’s an opportunity for Scrum team members to showcase the work accomplished during the sprint. This could be an internal presentation or a more formal demo to stakeholders.
Last comes the incredibly important Scrum retrospective. During this time, the team can discuss what went well and what could be improved so the upcoming sprint can run more efficiently. Anything that’s learned along the way or discovered in the retrospective is brought into the next sprint planning session. This Scrum process repeats until there are no more product backlog items or the product is complete.
How to run an effective sprint retrospective meeting
The retrospective is a critical part of the agile process that should be treated with care and respect. Go in with a plan. Winging it might get you by, but everyone will get more out of the process if the person or people leading the retrospective is prepared.
Use our strategies below to run effective retrospectives that everyone looks forward to.
1. Ensure everyone’s voice is heard
The loudest voices in a sprint retrospective often get the most attention and speaking time, but they don’t necessarily have better insights than anyone else. Each person involved in the sprint process should be given an opportunity to speak.
If you find a few people are dominating the conversation or that some people never contribute, switch up your strategy to include everyone. Go around the room one by one with a question that each person needs to answer, such as “What do you think went well in this sprint?” or “What was your biggest challenge?”
2. Start, stop, continue
The 'Start, Stop, Continue' retrospective format can be expressed in many forms, but the general practice is the same. At the end of a sprint, you decide what you want to start doing, what you want to stop doing, and what you want to continue doing as you move into your next sprint. It’s a simple format that covers both what went well and what didn’t go so well.
Other versions of this exercise include the Rose Bud Thorn exercise, where participants share something positive, a budding opportunity, and a negative to improve upon. There’s also the Anchors and Sails exercise, where participants share what put wind in their sails (went well) and what anchored them down.
3. Establish specific action items
The retrospective is a waste of time if you don’t leave with specific action items. What is your team going to do about the issues brought up in the meeting? Ensure you keep track of the issues and the positive feedback people provide so that you can turn them into actionable tasks or goals before the meeting is complete.
You can’t implement absolutely every change that is brought up, but the discussion should give you a place to start. Work with the team to figure out what changes will provide the most impact. You can use an impact effort matrix or similar agile tools to make informed choices.
4. Retrospective the retrospective
Every now and again, take the time to review your retrospective. Ask for feedback from all team members on how the process could improve. What would make the experience easier on the team? What would they like to see implemented? What hasn’t been working during your recurring retros?
Wow, that’s getting a little meta, but it’s an important step. You need to continually assess your retrospective as well to make sure you’re getting the most out of the experience.
One thing to watch for: When people are bored, they engage less, which means it’s important to switch things up. You don’t want your retrospective process to run stagnant or lose its effectiveness.
5. Review action items at the next sprint retrospective
Make sure the hard work of your retrospective pays off. At the beginning of the next retrospective, take a small bit of time to review your previous action items. What goals and action items did you leave the last retrospective with? Did you accomplish what you set out to do, or do you still need to work at it?
Common retrospective mistakes to avoid
Avoid these common mistakes when running sprint retrospective meetings:
❌ Allowing a few people to dominate the conversation
❌ Not empowering softer voices
❌ Jumping to conclusions without a thorough discussion
❌ Asking the same questions over and over without mixing things up
❌ Forgetting about or not implementing the action items of the previous retrospective
❌ Skipping a retrospective due to lack of time or resources
❌ Forgetting about stakeholder and customer needs
❌ Failing to improve upon your retrospective process
Put your retrospective ideas into action with Easy Agile TeamRhythm
Sprint retrospectives help the entire team learn from each experience and improve. Doing them effectively means evaluating the retrospective itself, empowering voices, and listening to them.
We’re passionate about putting the needs of the customer first and foremost. Easy Agile builds products specifically designed for Jira users to help agile teams work more efficiently and effectively.
Easy Agile TeamRhythm supports the work of your agile team from planning right through to retrospective, encouraging continuous improvement so you're always getting better at what you do, and delivering better for your customers.