Sprint Planning Cheat Sheet

Purpose

The Sprint Planning meeting is a two-part meeting where the team commits to a sprint goal for the next two-week sprint with a complete sprint backlog of prioritized product requests, their tasks, and sizes. The first part of the meeting is when the Product Owner presents the highest priority stories from the Product Backlog and discusses them with the team so that there is a shared understanding of what the work is. The second part of the meeting is when the team determines how they will accomplish the work and makes their commitment for the sprint.

Attendees

• Delivery Team
• ScrumMaster (Owner)
• Product Owner
• Stakeholders (optional)

Agenda

Part One – What work needs to be done

1. Review the Product Vision and Roadmap (Product Owner)
   1. Product Owner reviews this to help focus the team.
   2. Should be brief – typically not more than 5minutes
2. Review and discuss Product Backlog items that are candidates for this sprint (Product Owner)
3. Capacity Planning (ScrumMaster)
   1. ScrumMaster reviews dates for next sprint with the team. Consider holidays, long meetings/trainings (half-day or longer), and vacation when calculating working days for each team member.
   2. Daily capacity used is typically 5 hours per team member.

Part Two – How that work will be accomplished

1. Pull backlog items (stories, bugs, etc) into sprint (Team)
   1. The Team, not the Product Owner, selects (in priority order) how many backlog items they feel confident that they can deliver at the end of the sprint.
2. If needed, review Definition of Done and update (ScrumMaster/Team)
3. Task out and estimate pulled backlog items (Team)
   1. For each item pulled into the backlog, the team breaks down the work into smaller
   2. Estimate each task in hours (16 hrs max). Most tasks should be able to be completed in a day.
4. Define sprint goal (Team and Product Owner)
5. Make commitment (Team)

ScrumMaster Responsibilities

• Ensure that the meeting happens each Sprint and that all needed attendees are present and participate
• Make sure everyone understand the purpose

Product Owner Responsibilities

• Prepare and bring an updated release forecast and update the attendees on the state of the backlog and forecast
• Prioritize the backlog and ensure the top priority stories are ready for the team

Team Responsibilities

• Commit to work to be done during sprint

Cadence/Duration

Sprint planning should be held on the first day of a new sprint. The recommended time for the Sprint Planning meeting is two hours per week of sprint (i.e. four hours for a two-week sprint).

Meeting Prerequisites/Preparation

Make sure that these are done before each meeting.

• Sprint Goal should be up-to-date and visible
• Current progress toward the Sprint commitment in the form of completed work, remaining work, and what is in progress
• Current Sprint Burndown chart indicating progress toward the Sprint Goal and ideal effort needed to reach the goal

Anti-patterns

These are patterns or behaviors that lead to inefficient or ineffective meetings. They should be addressed whenever found.

Get started on the right foot. Learn about private Agile training.