Sprint planning. The beast. The most heaviest event.
Let’s check what Scrum Guide recommends:
“The work to be performed in the Sprint is planned at the Sprint Planning. This plan is created by the collaborative work of the entire Scrum Team.
Sprint Planning is time-boxed to a maximum of eight hours for a one-month Sprint. For shorter Sprints, the event is usually shorter. The Scrum Master ensures that the event takes place and that attendants understand its purpose. The Scrum Master teaches the Scrum Team to keep it within the time-box.
Sprint Planning answers the following:
- What can be delivered in the Increment resulting from the upcoming Sprint?
- How will the work needed to deliver the Increment be achieved?
The Sprint Goal is created during the Sprint Planning meeting. It is an objective set for the Sprint that can be met through the implementation of Product Backlog. It provides guidance to the Development Team on why it is building the Increment.”
To sum it up the Sprint backlog. the Sprint goal and common understanding of how the development team creates the anticipated Increment will be delivered by the end of the meeting.
The Sprint backlog contains all of the stories planned for the Sprint and predefined work for the first few days of the Sprint.
Lack of proper refinement or getting too much into the details can result in catastrophic meeting. To overcome these challenges we do regular high-level refinement sessions with the senior developers and architects. Once the stories are ready to being brought to the team for the Sprint planning, enough information is gathered to be able to drive a meaningful conversation on the planning session.
Stories will be picked up by small groups of developers formed spontaneously on the meeting. Each group goes away and defines what needs to be done to deliver the solution and a provides a rough estimate. We can consider it as a more fine granulated group refinement session.
Once it is done the Scrum team gathers again and determines what should go into the Sprint backlog and the groups explain all individual items to the whole team. When it is done the Sprint Goal gets crafted.
By the end of the meeting everyone in the Scrum team has a common understanding of the deliverables.
In the next post we will talk about the Daily Scrum.