Sprint Planning: How to Run an Effective Meeting

While Agile frameworks are known to reduce focus on overhead planning, successful projects still require some degree of preparation. In Scrum, sprint planning helps you define goals, deliverables, and action items for upcoming sprints. 

Effective sprint planning provides a sense of direction and purpose, keeping the team focused and motivated. 

In a nutshell:

• Sprint planning aligns teams on the work that needs to be executed and the steps for completing them 
• Executing a sprint planning meeting involves reviewing product goals, defining sprint goals, building a sprint backlog, and assigning work 
• You can improve the quality of your sprint plan by using project management software, estimating work, and getting acceptance from the whole team

What is sprint planning?

Sprint planning is a Scrum event held at the beginning of a sprint to set expectations for upcoming work. The team collaborates to define sprint goals, determine what work can be accomplished within the sprint, and outline the steps for completing the necessary tasks. 

💡 Sprint planning is an event in Scrum, an Agile framework.

Who’s involved in a sprint?

The following players participate in sprint planning meetings:

• Product owner: The product owner is one of the heads of the product development team. They are responsible for the product backlog, prioritizing backlog items and translating them into development tasks. 
• Scrum master: In Scrum, the Scrum master acts as the project manager. They facilitate the project and ensure adherence to Scrum practices, values, and principles throughout its duration. 
• The Scrum team: Your team makes the action happen. They execute the tasks the project requires. With their knowledge of on-ground work, they collaborate with the product owner and the Scrum master to ideate actionable steps for product goals. 

How to prepare for a sprint planning meeting

To ensure that your meeting runs smoothly, review your product backlog, product roadmap, and team availability beforehand. 

Review your product backlog and roadmap

Before conducting a sprint meeting, evaluate your position on the product roadmap. Determine what your goals are in relation to the roadmap, then shortlist the backlog items that will deliver the most value. 

Narrowing down the possibilities for upcoming work will save time during the upcoming meeting.

You should also organize your chosen product backlog items before the sprint planning meeting. Sort items by priority, identify dependencies between items, and provide detailed descriptions and acceptance criteria. 

Measure your team’s capacity

How much work you can assign depends on your team’s availability. Before the meeting begins, review the team calendar and identify any commitments that coincide with the upcoming sprint. This makes it easier for you to calculate how much energy your team can reserve for upcoming work. 

Determine team velocity

Velocity refers to the amount of work a team can complete within a given sprint. Typically, you calculate velocity by analyzing how many story points your team completes per week. Story points are point value estimates of task complexity.

With a good understanding of team velocity and team capacity, you can maximize the amount of work you assign for the upcoming sprint. 

How to conduct a sprint planning meeting

During a sprint planning meeting, expect to discuss the product roadmap, product backlog, sprint goal, sprint backlog, work estimates, and task delegation. Let’s go over each of these steps.

1. Do a team check-in

One of the main goals of a sprint planning meeting is to motivate the team about upcoming work. Start the meeting with a brief check-in to assess how each member of the team feels. 

This will allow you to gauge their bandwidth for upcoming work and understand what needs you might have to accommodate. 

It’s also important to set an agenda from the start to ensure a smooth meeting. Discuss your meeting goals at the beginning so everyone knows what to expect and can prepare their contributions. 

2. Discuss product roadmap and backlog items

Once the team is settled, the first order of business is discussing the big picture. Suggest which product backlog items to tackle, then get the team’s confirmation. 

Align the team with your position on the product roadmap and outline your suggested steps for meeting the next milestone. 

3. Define sprint goal

After analyzing the product roadmap and backlog, narrow your objectives down to a specific sprint goal. This will give your team a clearer direction for upcoming work. 

The concept of SMART plays an important role in setting sprint goals. SMART stands for

• Specific
• Measurable
• Achievable
• Relevant
• Time-bound

Following SMART ensures that you set attainable goals that provide measurable results and contribute to your larger organizational objectives.

Make sure your sprint goals align with your team’s bandwidth. This is where your prior evaluation of team capacity comes in handy. Refer to the team calendar for availability. You should also ask your team members for honest answers about their energy levels. 

Building your sprint goals around your team’s capacity ensures quality work and prevents burnout. 

4. Build the sprint backlog

Sprints exist to set a steady pace for product development work. Once you’ve defined your sprint goal and identified relevant product backlog items, estimate how much work you can do within the sprint period. From there, you can create your sprint backlog. 

This Scrum artifact will serve as an easy reference for all work the team is required to deliver within the sprint. It breaks work items down into specific, actionable steps, clarifying expectations for upcoming sprint work. 

Once you’ve built the sprint backlog, assign tasks to the team members who can execute them best.

5. Set a date for the sprint review

Once everything is in order, set a date for the sprint review. This is a collaborative meeting that allows the Scrum team to showcase their incremental progress to stakeholders. 

Setting a sprint review date during the sprint planning meeting reminds the team of the stakes and quality expectations. It also gives them time to prepare any future insights and questions.

Sprint reviews typically occur on the last day of a sprint. However, you can schedule one a day before to leave more room for the sprint retrospective.

How long should a sprint be?

Sprints exist to set the pace for ongoing development work. They break down the big picture of product goals into smaller pieces. Finishing these pieces gives your team a sense of accomplishment, boosting motivation for future work.

The length of a sprint is arbitrary. The most common practice is using two- to four-week sprints, but the best strategy is to build the timeframe around your team’s and their project’s needs. 

Sprint planning best practices

Here are a few tips for streamlining and maximizing your sprint plan.

Use a project management software 

Project management software helps streamline sprint planning by providing a centralized hub for all project-related information. Shortcut offers multiple useful tools, including the following: 

• Roadmaps: With Shortcut, you can automatically connect tasks, stories, and projects to product roadmaps and gain a real-time view of your progress. 
• Timelines: The timeline view helps your team visualize progress in chronological order. This helps with measuring team capacity and assigning deadlines. 
• Backlogs: Shortcut comes with customizable product and sprint backlogs that can be directly connected to your product roadmap. 
• Burndown charts: Shortcut’s burndown charts show you work completed against time remaining within a sprint. 

Estimate upcoming work

Providing clarity on the effort, time, and complexity of each sprint backlog task helps your team members visualize upcoming work. 

To estimate work, you can use the following criteria: 

• Story points: Use story points to assign a point value estimate of the effort required to execute a given task. 
• Definition of done (DoD): Set clear DoD criteria to ensure that the team is on the same page about when a work item is ready for deployment. 
• Time: Paint a picture of the effort required by estimating the time needed to complete a task. However, since pace can vary from person to person, you might get different estimates across the team. 

Get acceptance from the whole team

Everyone’s contributions should hold equal value. As such, it’s important to ensure the entire team is aligned on the sprint plan. 

Higher-ups like the Scrum master and the product owner might have clearer ideas of stakeholder expectations, but team members know how ground-level work happens. Facilitate discussions that help everyone arrive at a healthy compromise. 

Encourage team members to speak during meetings. After presenting each idea, ask for feedback. This will help you devise a sprint plan that aligns with the entire team’s needs.

Set a sprint planning meeting timeframe

It’s a bad idea to let your sprint planning meeting meander. Time spent on sprint planning meetings is time removed from actual development work.

Instead, set a duration for the meeting beforehand. Knowing how long the meeting will last will force you and your team to figure out how to convey your points concisely. 

The maximum duration for a sprint planning meeting is eight hours. Typically, Scrum teams set aside two hours of sprint planning for every week in the upcoming sprint. 

Incorporate feedback from sprint reviews and retrospectives

Agile is an iterative process. You will get the best possible product by acknowledging feedback from Scrum events.

Sprint reviews have Scrum teams, and stakeholders reflect on the outcome of a sprint. These events typically center on the product itself and the features that were previously delivered. Incorporating sprint review feedback into sprint planning helps you build a product that better aligns with your stakeholders’ needs. 

Sprint retrospectives are team meetings that discuss the highs and lows of a past sprint’s workflow. Incorporating feedback from sprint retrospectives helps you ideate processes that increase team efficiency. 

Leave room for flexibility

While having a solid sense of direction is good, overplanning might waste time. Because requirements, circumstances, and expectations are subject to change, it’s impossible to perfectly plan for everything. Emphasize agility during sprint planning and leave room for flexibility. 

Summary

While Agile was designed to help teams navigate ambiguity, navigating an Agile project shouldn’t have to be ambiguous as well. A sprint plan can help you provide clarity and structure to upcoming sprint work. 

With proper sprint planning, the team becomes aligned on sprint goals, tasks, and quality expectations. It makes work more predictable, increasing their focus and motivation.

Shortcut helps you navigate Agile projects with ease. The platform comes with product roadmaps, backlogs, reporting, and third-party integrations to help you plan and execute your sprints effectively. 

Read the Shortcut pricing page for more information.