You know what Scrum teams, sprint planning, and halfpipe snowboarders have in common right? You’re probably thinking, “Ummmm, nothing pal!” Hint: It has to do with the sprint planning meeting. Hear me out.
I’m a self-described Olympic nut, if permitted I’d watch all of it. Seriously, if underwater basket weaving were an Olympic sport I’d be there.
This past February I was four hours into my latest Olympic-sized binge session. I was watching halfpipe snowboarding. I noticed one of the athletes was standing on the sidelines, on flat land, on their stationary board, tipping their body back and forth. It took me a minute to realize what they were doing, they were visualizing their run. Mentally reviewing each hit they would take on their way down the gigantic pipe.
You’re probably still thinking, “Ok, neat, but what does snowboarding have to do with Scrum?”. Here it goes.
Sprint Planning Meeting = Sprint Visualization
The Scrum equivalent of Olympic halfpipe run visualization is the sprint planning meeting. The sprint planning meeting is the chance for you and the Scrum team to create your sprint mentally. You can review the work you will do before you go screaming down that crazy, icy halfpipe that is your project sprint.
Below are nine killer things to include in your next sprint planning meeting agenda to ensure you hit that “sick” backside triple cork 1440 on your next sprint.
SPRINT PLANNING MEETING BONUS TIP: PREPARE
Just as a snowboarder trains off the slopes, a successful sprint planning meeting often begins before the meeting is even underway. The product owner can do their homework to ensure they go into the meeting with a cleaned up backlog and user stories pre-identified for the next sprint. This often takes the form of informal meetings and discussions with key individuals. It doesn’t have to be hard at all.
- Product owner grooms backlog
- Product owner has informal meetings and discussions
#1: OVERVIEW
In a lot of ways the sprint planning meeting is no different than any other meeting. It’s always a good idea to have an agenda everyone can see and make sure everyone is clear on the objectives of the meeting.
- Review meeting objectives
- Review meeting agenda
TOOL: Use this FREE sprint planning meeting agenda template to make your next meeting killer!
#2: RESET
The power of Scrum within Agile is found in continuous improvement. This portion of the meeting is your bridge between the sometimes gaping chasm of your last sprint retrospective and your current sprint. The Scrum team reminds themselves of any improvements they chose to implement as a result of the last retrospective. This is also a great opportunity to review new information and high-level product updates.
- Review action items from last retrospective
- Product owner reviews high-level market and product updates
- Record currently known issues
- Present new info that may impact plan
#3: REMIND
Take a few minutes in your sprint planning meeting to remind the Scrum team of the overall project vision and review the goals for the current sprint. It’s also a great idea to display the date of the next demo so it’s front of mind. One way you can do this is by using a simple whiteboard template.
- Remind team of project vision
- Remind team of demo date
- Review sprint goals
IDEA: Draw out your meeting agenda on the team whiteboard. Use post it notes to move stories and task from one phase/stage to the other as the Scrum team discusses.
#4: DETERMINE VELOCITY
Ensure the planned velocity of the team is displayed. Displayed demo dates and velocity will help the Scrum team stay focused and be reminded of these facts during user story discussion in subsequent steps. Also, take a minute to discuss team capacity during this sprint – any vacation time, company events, or potential unplanned lost time?
- Display planned sprint velocity
- Discuss sprint capacity
#5: PROPOSE THE STORIES
Ok, here’s where the rubber meets the road. Remember how the product owner was well prepared with a proposed set of user stories for the sprint? The sprint planning meeting is the forum for the product owner to propose these stories to the team. The team can then decide together what they will tackle during the upcoming sprint.
- Product owner presents proposed user stories
- Team decides which user stories to work on
- Stories that fit within sprint goal
- Stories that decrease technical debt or risk
- Miscellaneous improvement items identified in last retrospective
See How to Build Your Best Sprint Backlog with a Free Template
#6: DESCRIBE THE STORIES
Discussion should naturally arise during an effective sprint planning meeting. This step is where much of this discussion should occur. Here’s where the Scrum team fills in all the user story blanks. The goal is to make sure the team is on the same page and all new or previously unknown details are added to the stories before moving to the next step. This step takes less time the more the team has been continually reviewing and defining stories in the product backlog.
- Ensure user stories have sufficient detail and are accurate
- Ensure team understands user stories
#7: SIZE THE STORIES
It’s possible that with additional details some stories have now grown a bit large. In this phase of your sprint planning meeting the Scrum team subdivides those stories into smaller chunks if needed. After all stories are sized appropriately start writing tasks for each individual story. These tasks are the wood to fuels the team’s super efficient fire throughout the sprint so you can burn through user stories like no other.
- Team subdivides stories if needed
- Team creates tasks for each story
- Team makes final decision of what stories make it into the sprint
#8: REVIEW
Here’s where we tie a nice little bow around the meeting. Ensure any follow-up items that came up during the sprint planning meeting are recorded. Read the list to the Scrum team and ensure everyone agrees the list is complete. This is also a great spot to review the team’s pre-determined definition of done for a sprint.
- Record identified follow-up items
- Confirm the definition of done
#9: AGREE
Congratulations on holding an amazing sprint planning meeting! You’re on the last step, hopefully the easiest one. Here’s where you can ensure that everyone is 100% on board with the upcoming sprint. Another very powerful aspects of Scrum and Agile is helping teams feel ownership of decisions. Hopefully at this point the Scrum team has felt like they have been an active partner in planning your sprint. As a result the team will have full buyin on the work they will be doing.
- Obtain team consensus on sprint plan
SPRINT PLANNING MEETING BONUS TIP: GET TO WORK!
Get your planning done so you can get stuff done!
The whole reason for an Olympic snowboarder to visualize and plan out that perfect double cork 1080 is so they can nail their run. The whole point of your sprint planning meeting is so the entire Scrum team can actually get stuff done. So now go and do!
Agile and Scrum principles are customizable to all kinds of situations. I love to hear from my audience and I’d love to know what of the above worked for you, what didn’t, and any other thoughts you have. Leave me a comment below, and thanks for reading. Happy planning!