Sprint Planning Meeting

One of the most important events in Scrum – is the Sprint Planning Meeting. A Product Owner, a Scrum Master and the Development team take part in it. Sometimes Shareholders also participate in it, but not very often.

The Product Owner describes the top-priority tasks of the Team during Sprint Planning Meeting. The Team ask a number of question in order to have a better understanding of the tasks and evaluate them prior to the Sprint.

The Product Owner mustn’t describe each element of the Product Backlog. It’s better to talk about the task that are going to be allocated between the two Sprints. For instance, if the Team is include 5 tasks in the current Sprint, then the Product Owner should talk about top-10 tasks from the whole Backlog.

Two artifacts of Sprint Planning Meeting:

• Sprint Goal;
• Sprint Backlog.

Sprint Goal – is a sentence or two, which describe what the Team is aiming to achieve during the current Sprint. The Product Owner describes the Sprint Goal together with the team.

Duration of a Sprint Planning Meeting

Scrum time is agile in every aspect, including the duration of a Sprint Planning Meeting. This duration depends on the duration of the next Sprint. It is calculated according to the following formula: 1-week Sprint = 2-hour Sprint Planning Meeting. A 2-week Sprint should be preceded with a 4-hour Sprint Planning Meeting, respectively.

Meeting format

The meeting is divided into two parts.

During the first part the Product Owner reviews the most important elements of the Product Backlog. The ones that need to be introduced and discussed. The Product Owner describes his vision. The discussion takes place, during which the tasks get clear shape and any ambiguity is excluded.

The Sprint Goal is created at the end of the first part of the meeting.

During the second part the Team creates the Sprint Backlog, evaluating the time necessary for each task. The Product Owner mustn’t interfere in this process. He should be nearby should the Team need him, but he mustn’t be present at the conference room. Sometimes he is present, but in this case the Scrum Master should be responsible for creating a calm atmosphere for the teamwork. A Product Owner not always understands all the details of this or that process and as a result he can panic.

Example

Let’s take a development of an Internet-store as an example.

What is needed: to implement all the main functions of a shopping cart, including adding, removing, modifying.

Other functions: payment feature, shipment tracking, adding gift wrapping

The global aim of any Sprint is to create a sort of a reference point for the “outer participants”. Almost always there are certain people, which need to know about the working progress of a Scrum Team, but which are not allowed to interfere with it in any way. Sprint Goal serves as a perfect measure point: was the aims reached, which elements are finished and which are not.

The second artifact is the Sprint Backlog, which is basically a todo-list used during a Sprint.

It is important for the Team to estimate the amount of work they will be able to complete. It is prohibited to describe the tasks like this: it will take 4 Sprints to finish the job, so the Team should complete 25% of overall tasks during the first Sprint.