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https://dzone.com/articles/sprint-planning-practice
I once worked as a Scrum Master at a company which was part-way through an agile transition. It was an
interesting place...they had decided, as a matter of company policy, to have one-week Sprints. Chances are you're
thinking the same thing I did when I started there. Scrum recommends a Sprint length of between two and four
weeks, and with good reason. Any longer than a month and the inspect/adapt cycle becomes too attenuated. On
the other hand, anything less than a couple of weeks won't give a big enough sweep of prior activity for a team to
"inspect and adapt". Not only that, but ultra-short cycles can make the relative overhead of Sprint Planning,
Reviews, and Retrospectives too high to be viable.
When I voiced these concerns, it was put to me that the development team was too reactive and that tighter
development cycles would permit better control. The One Week Rule had come down as an edict from senior
management and I was expected to deal with it. The logic ran like this: if Sprints were good, having more Sprints
more often must surely be better.
And so it was that every Monday morning a planning session would be conducted. The Product Owner dutifully
turned up with the subset of the Product Backlog he wanted the team to deliver. The team made their estimates
and a Sprint Backlog was negotiated, along with a Sprint Goal. By the time planning was over there was a set of
agreed user stories, and a commitment to deliver a potentially releasable increment of value.
So I coached the team to use the Sprint Backlog as a trading space for this unplanned, high-priority work. Nothing
came in unless something was moved out of equivalent size. We could then show that even though velocity was
being maintained or sometimes improved, product burn-down was poor, and the release train would be affected
accordingly. We could predict that this situation would hold for as long as the team was expected to deal with BAU
work. Without that information we wouldn't have been able to say where we were. With it, we could engage more
fully with our stakeholders and encourage them to make informed decisions. I say that's one up for agile practice,
and one up for Ike.
A Sprint Goal is agreed which represents the overall outcome of the work. The goal should be an
overarching statement of business value, and to which all individual pieces of work will make a contribution.
Sprint Planning, Part Two:
The team figure out how they will actually do the work they committed to in the first part of Sprint Planning.
This can involve identifying tasks for each user story.
The team will plan out enough tasks to allow work on the Sprint Goal to start. There's no need to plan out all
of the tasks that will need to be done during the Sprint. Task planning should be an ongoing activity for the
team and it should be subject to continual revision.
The team will prioritize the Sprint Backlog so that the risk of not meeting the Sprint Goal is minimal. This
should take into account any external dependencies that must be resolved before the work can be
completed.
If the team have questions about the requirements, then the Product Owner should be contactable and able
to answer them before the planning session ends.
Cherry picking. Don't allocate work to team members during planning, or allow them to "cherry pick"
certain pieces of work. An agile team should be cross-trained and as the Sprint progresses, the next
available team member should action the next highest priority item from the Sprint Backlog. If your team
does have skill silos - and the vast majority do - plan to remove those silos instead, for example by pairing
members and adjusting the budget accordingly.
Confusing emergency or BAU work with story points delivered. When emergency or BAU work is
traded into Sprint scope, it counts as team velocity (since the team was not idle) but it does not count as
work done on the project. Don't confuse velocity with burn-down.
Precocious harvesting of points. Don't allow undone work to count for any points delivered in the Sprint.
Work is either done or it isn't, as per the Definition of Done. Move the work into the Product Backlog and reestimate it accordingly.
No Product Owner. If the Product Owner isn't present for a Sprint Planning session, you can't negotiate
the business value that will be delivered. Unclear Product Ownership is a contra-indication to Scrum and
suggests that a Kanban type model may be more appropriate.
Conclusion
The beginning of a Sprint provides a new opportunity for getting things right. Unfortunately, Sprint Plans tend to be
as ephemeral as the morning dew. However this is no reason to feel despondent or cynical about the process of
Sprint Planning. A carefully crafted plan captures what was originally hoped for, and provides a point of
comparison for where we stand in relation to our ambitions. If nothing else, it provides material for reflection in the
next retrospective. That's why planning matters. Agile practice rests on the three legs of transparency, inspection,
and adaptation...not on the assertion that the plans themselves are ever likely to last.