Guide to Scrum Sprint Planning Meeting
Each Scrum development cycle starts with a sprint planning session in agile project management. Like all teams, Agile Scrum teams can often face issues with an unproductive, unstructured, or unfocused sprint planning meeting.
In this section, you’ll understand how a sprint planning session should be organized and why they’re so crucial to Agile Scrum teams. Beware of productivity setbacks and clear the way to more successful sprints.
Before we go deeper into the meaning of a sprint planning meeting, it is important to understand the way Agile Scrum sprints function.
How do sprints work?
Sprints are when a Scrum team works on a specific set of objectives and features prioritized during the development cycle. They can last between 1-4 weeks, and they are usually followed by a sprint overview and the sprint’s retrospective.
Let’s look at what a meeting is to plan a sprint.
What is a Sprint Planning Meeting?
The sprint planning meetings are time-bound occasions where the Product Manager, Scrum Master, and Scrum team members meet to decide which item on their backlog will be tackled during the following sprint. The primary outputs of the sprint planning meeting are the sprint’s goal and the backlog of sprint items.
- A sprint goal is simply a broad outline of the goals that the group hopes to achieve by the end of the race. It does not have to be overly detailed or go into day-to-day tasks.
- The sprint backlog comprises an inventory of features and functions identified by the product owner and other stakeholders as essential to the product’s growth and, ultimately, the deliverable(s).
Who attends the sprint planning meeting?
Sprint planning meetings is a joint plan session that includes the developer team, product owner, and the Scrum master. At the sprint planning session, the team will meet to decide which features are to be addressed during the next development cycle.
At the meeting for planning sprints, the role of each member of the team is as in the following manner:
- The product owner defines the sprint goals and objectives based on the roadmap of the product and the priorities of stakeholder stakeholders.
- The Development team communicates their capacity and bandwidth. This is crucial to effectively determining how much work could be completed in this sprint.
- Scrum masters ensure that Scrum procedures are adhered to, and any communication or productivity challenges are dealt with.
The meeting for the sprint planning session should establish the appropriate expectations, define the proper plan and outline how each item on the backlog is to be dealt with in every sprint.
Importance of an event to plan the sprint
Sprint planning meetings are an essential Scrum ceremony. But why do you have them? And what benefit do they have? Scrum sprint planning is the perfect chance for teams to get together and establish goals for the next cycle of development and be real about the capacity and bandwidth of the team.
Here are some methods Sprint planning can benefit Scrum teams:
- Creates clear and defined objectives: It must have a starting point and a finishing line for the Scrum Sprint to succeed. When the goals are defined and defined, it clears the route to a more successful sprint.
- Creates a platform for communication: Openness of meeting to plan a sprint will create a platform to share information about tasks and priorities.
- Collaboration, The idea of collaboration is that a Scrum sprint planning session should aid in bridging the gap between the product’s owner and the team working on the development.
Length of the sprint plan meeting
If you’ve ever been to an event that lasted for several hours with no clear strategy to be laid out, you’re aware of its importance that every meeting should be limited in time.
If you are planning a sprint, the best practice is to divide the duration of the race (in weeks) by two hours. For instance, a 3-week sprint should ideally be accompanied by a six-hour meeting limit. A two-week sprint should have an allotted time of four hours. This is referred to as a time box which is a period that is set aside to complete the goal.
The Scrum master leads productive conversations and assists the team in reaching an agreement before the meeting’s conclusion.
How do you run an effective sprint planning meeting
A sprinting plan may appear easy however it’s more complex than you imagine. In the beginning, there must be a framework and strategy that your team and you adhere to. It is recommended to discuss and develop a plan for meetings to ensure a clear understanding of the meetings’ priorities.
Sprint agenda template for planning meetings:
- Phase 1: The product manager announces the sprint’s priorities to the team. They could provide an overview of the goals of the sprint and the planned pace that the developers will be working at. During this sprint, a consensus must be reached between the product’s owner and the team members on which backlog items will be prioritized.
- Phase 2: What can we do to achieve this? After the focus has been established, the team can shift to the what. How can we accomplish the sprint’s goal? The participants can ask questions and discuss the speed to ensure they’re all on the same level. Ideally, notes from meetings during sprints should be recorded in a Project Management software, which all team members have access.
