How to run an effective Sprint Planning session with Easy Agile User Story Maps

When everything is “top priority”, nothing ships. Two weeks before planning, teams pull in different directions; work starts, but no one can name the one outcome you’ll deliver together.

If that sounds familiar, this session is for you.

In this on-demand session, Hayley Rodd (Easy Agile) and Andreas Wengenmayer (catworkx) show a practical way to align on outcomes, cut the noise, and keep delivery moving. You’ll see how to make priorities visible, surface dependencies early, and keep a single, living view of progress. We demo the flow in Jira with Easy Agile Programs, but the lessons apply to any tool you use today.

Why this matters now

• Goals live in slides, backlogs live elsewhere, and priorities change mid-cycle. Teams are busy, yet progress feels brittle.
• Dependencies show up late, reviews balloon into status theatre, and the roadmap quietly drifts from the original intent.
• Leaders ask for visibility; teams want fewer interruptions. Both are possible with a clearer shared view.

What you’ll walk away with

• A 5-step checklist to connect strategy to execution
• How to choose 3–5 objectives and prioritise with a simple business value scale
• How Release Train Engineers, Product Managers, Product Owners and Engineering Managers align on outcomes
• Mapping dependencies early and tracking progress in real time in Jira
• Using PI Objectives and a lightweight review rhythm to stay on course

Speakers

Hayley Rodd - Senior Partner Manager, Easy Agile
Helps customers and partners turn strategy into shipped work inside Jira.

Andreas Wengenmayer - Practice Lead, Enterprise Strategy Planning, catworkx
Advises enterprises on strategy, portfolio planning and delivery alignment.

Further Reading and Resources

• Free Goal-Clarity Canvas & Template
  An easy one-pager to turn vague goals into a clear outcome statement, success measures, and ownership. Includes guided prompts and a printable template you can use with any team.
• How We Simplified Our OKRs - and Got Better Strategy, Alignment, and Execution
  The inside story of how Easy Agile reduced OKR bloat, focused on outcomes, and improved cadence. Practical tips, examples, and pitfalls to avoid.
• The Ultimate Guide to PI Planning + Free Template
  A step-by-step guide to running effective increment/quarterly planning: roles, agenda, dependency mapping, and anti-patterns. Comes with a free downloadable template you can adapt to your context.

‍

Team retrospectives are an effective way to help your team be agile and work better together. So we were thrilled to work with Chris Stone, The Virtual Agile Coach to bring you his top tips, strategies, and hacks for continuous improvement.

In this live and interactive session, we learned:

• how to take actionable insights from retrospectives
• how to create a safe and inclusive environment for retrospectives
• and gained tips, strategies, and hacks for continuous improvement.

Bought to you by Easy Agile TeamRhythm, helping you and your team be agile in Jira with story mapping, sprint planning, retrospectives and more.

SEE MORE

Learn to positively refocus your team retrospectives with renowned Agile expert and coach, Richard Cheng and Easy Agile Co-CEO, Nicholas Muldoon.

⚽️ ⚽️ ⚽️ ⚽️

Ted Lasso, the fictional soccer coach of the struggling AFC Richmond, brings a tenacious sense of positivity to his team. In this supportive environment Ted creates a team that grows and thrives together.

This is what we need for our retrospectives.

So many of our retrospectives today are focused on:

- What we are doing wrong- The mistakes we keep making
- The issues we keep encountering
- What’s preventing us from succeeding

This session will focus on:

- Understanding the need to celebrate the wins
- How to create a safe, open space for retrospectives
- Retrospective techniques to help our teams celebrate, learn, and grow
- How ScrumMaster uses the retrospective to create great self
- awareness and problem solving on our teams
- Review a ScrumMaster checklist for using retrospectives to grow our teams

By the end of the session, we’ll learn how to Ted Lasso our retrospectives and turn our retrospectives into fun, effective, and inspiring sessions that help our teams kick goals!