Sprint Planning + FREE Cheat Sheet

We are dissecting Scrum to take a look at it piece by piece.

Today it’s the turn of Sprint Planning.

Sprint Planning is one Scrum’s FIVE EVENTS (what we used to refer to as CEREMONIES)

The others being Daily Scrum Sprint Review Sprint Retrospective

And the one that wraps them up and ties them in a bow:

The Sprint

The start of Sprint Planning marks the beginning of the sprint.

And the purpose of Sprint Planning … well.. let’s get that straight from the Scrum Guide:

“The work to be performed in the Sprint is planned at the Sprint Planning.”

Fair enough. And who’s involved?

“This plan is created by the collaborative work of the entire Scrum Team.”

We’ll look at that collaboration in a moment.

… after we’ve talked about the inputs and outputs to Sprint Planning.

The most obvious inputs and outputs are:

Input: The Product Backlog.

Outputs Sprint backlog Sprint goal

Less obvious…. but the Scrum Guide is here to help:

The input to this meeting is the Product Backlog, the latest product Increment, projected capacity of the Development Team during the Sprint, and past performance of the Development Team.

This mention of capacity reminds us that, in Scrum, the Product Backlog comes with certain assumptions:

That the list of task is prioritised: - Highest Priority towards the top

And that the teaks - at least the highest priority tasks - have been Estimated -

The Scrum Master calls the meeting.

The Development Team - and here the S-Guide is clear - ONLY the Development team… select high-priority items from the (top of) the backlog. They may or may not select the absolute highest. Part of the “art” of Scrum is to select coherent items.- items that make sense to develop together.

Sounds like it might be a boring meeting for the Product Owner, Not a bit of it:

“The Product Owner can help to clarify the selected Product Backlog items and make trade-offs.”