Sprint Planning Best Practices: Boost Your Team's Efficiency

Supercharge Your Sprints: Planning for Success

Want better sprint outcomes? This listicle delivers seven sprint planning best practices to boost your team's performance. Learn how to define clear sprint goals, right-size user stories, and establish team capacity. We'll cover effective backlog refinement, two-part sprint planning, relative estimation, and creating a backup plan. Mastering these sprint planning best practices improves collaboration, reduces roadblocks, and helps your team consistently deliver value, regardless of your agile experience.

1. Define Clear Sprint Goals

Defining clear sprint goals is arguably the most crucial sprint planning best practice. It lays the foundation for a successful sprint by providing the team with a shared understanding of the sprint's purpose and desired outcome. This involves collaboratively establishing a concise and achievable objective that defines what the team intends to accomplish by the end of the sprint. The goal should be specific enough to guide decision-making and prioritization, yet flexible enough to allow for adjustments during the sprint based on learnings and unforeseen challenges.

This practice ensures everyone is rowing in the same direction and understands why they are working on the selected user stories. A clearly defined sprint goal serves as a north star, enabling teams to make informed trade-off decisions, maintain focus, and measure the overall success of the sprint qualitatively. It's about achieving a valuable outcome, not just completing a list of tasks. This focus on outcomes aligns perfectly with modern agile and lean principles.

Features of Effective Sprint Goals:

• Single, cohesive purpose: The sprint goal unifies all the sprint backlog items under one common objective.
• Stakeholder and team alignment: It creates a shared understanding between the development team, the Product Owner, and stakeholders about what constitutes a successful sprint.
• Basis for prioritization decisions: The goal guides the team in making decisions about which tasks are most important and which can be deferred if necessary.
• Qualitative measure of sprint success: The sprint goal provides a benchmark against which the team can assess their progress and determine if they have achieved the desired outcome.

Pros:

• Creates a shared understanding of the sprint purpose.
• Helps teams make informed trade-off decisions during the sprint.
• Provides motivation and focus for the team.
• Makes it easier to communicate progress to stakeholders.

Cons:

• Can be challenging to articulate goals that are both meaningful and not overly restrictive, especially when dealing with complex projects.
• May create tension if business priorities change mid-sprint, requiring the team to re-negotiate the goal.

Examples:

• Instead of simply listing features, Spotify teams often define sprint goals like "Improve first-time user experience" to focus on delivering value to the user.
• Google’s sprint goals frequently center around specific metrics, such as "Reduce page load time by 15%," to ensure measurable improvements.

Actionable Tips for Defining Clear Sprint Goals:

• Write the goal in business or user value terms: Focus on the why – the impact the sprint will have on the user or the business. Avoid phrasing it as a list of tasks.
• Make it visible: Post the sprint goal prominently in team spaces, both physical and virtual (e.g., Jira dashboards, Slack channels), to keep it top of mind.
• Review the goal in daily standups: Start each daily scrum by reviewing the sprint goal to reinforce focus and ensure the team's efforts remain aligned.
• Ensure collaborative goal definition: Facilitate a discussion involving both the Product Owner and the development team to ensure everyone understands and buys into the goal.

Why This is a Top Sprint Planning Best Practice:

Defining clear sprint goals is fundamental to agile development. This practice sits at the heart of effective sprint planning because it ensures that the team's efforts are focused on delivering maximum value. By establishing a shared understanding of purpose and desired outcomes, this practice empowers teams to make informed decisions, navigate complexities, and ultimately deliver successful sprints. This practice is popularized by the Scrum Guide by Jeff Sutherland and Ken Schwaber and aligns with the goal-centric product management approach advocated by Roman Pichler. This best practice is essential for any team aiming to embrace agile principles and deliver valuable increments of work consistently.

2. Right-Size User Stories

Right-sizing user stories is a critical sprint planning best practice that directly impacts a team's ability to deliver value consistently. It involves breaking down large pieces of work (like epics or features) into smaller, more manageable units that can be completed within a single sprint, ideally within a few days or less. This practice ensures stories are small enough to estimate accurately yet large enough to deliver tangible value to the end-user. This balance is the key to predictable and sustainable sprint velocity.

Right-sized stories should adhere to the INVEST criteria (Independent, Negotiable, Valuable, Estimable, Small, Testable). They represent a vertical slice of functionality, meaning they deliver a complete piece of end-user value, even if it's a small one. Employing story splitting patterns and progressively refining work from epics to stories are essential techniques for achieving this granularity.

Examples of Successful Implementation:

• Atlassian teams often use a "one-week rule" where no story should take longer than one week to complete. This helps them maintain a consistent pace and avoid getting bogged down in overly complex tasks.
• Pivotal Labs popularized the concept of "micro stories," which are even smaller, taking only 1-2 days maximum. This extreme granularity allows for very precise tracking and rapid feedback loops.

Actionable Tips for Right-Sizing User Stories:

• The Thumb Rule: If you can't explain a user story with your thumb covering the description, it's likely too big and needs further refinement.
• Splitting Patterns: Apply common story splitting patterns such as splitting by workflow steps, data variations, quality attributes, or operations. This provides a structured approach to decomposition.
• Story Mapping: Use story maps to visualize the breakdown of larger features into smaller user stories. This helps ensure comprehensive coverage and identifies dependencies.
• Backlog Refinement: Conduct regular backlog refinement sessions between sprints to review, estimate, and split upcoming user stories. This proactive approach prevents bottlenecks during sprint planning.

Pros of Right-Sizing User Stories:

• Improved Estimation Accuracy: Smaller stories are easier to estimate, leading to more reliable sprint forecasts.
• Reduced Risk of Incomplete Work: Smaller chunks of work are more likely to be completed within the sprint, minimizing the chances of spillover.
• Enabled Frequent Integration and Feedback: Smaller, completed stories facilitate more frequent integration and feedback cycles, leading to quicker identification and resolution of issues.
• Increased Visibility of Progress: The completion of smaller stories throughout the sprint makes progress more visible and contributes to a sense of accomplishment.

Cons of Right-Sizing User Stories:

• Increased Tracking Overhead: Managing a larger number of smaller stories can increase the overhead associated with tracking and reporting.
• Risk of Losing the Bigger Picture: Focusing solely on individual stories can sometimes obscure the overall context and strategic goals.
• Potential Over-Fragmentation: Overly aggressive splitting can lead to fragmented work and make it harder to see the connections between different parts of the system.

Why This Practice Deserves Its Place in the List:

Right-sizing user stories is fundamental to successful sprint planning and overall agile execution. It enables better predictability, improved team morale, and higher quality deliverables. This practice directly addresses the core challenges of managing complexity and uncertainty in software development, making it a cornerstone of effective agile methodologies. This practice has been popularized by influential figures in the agile community like Mike Cohn (author of "User Stories Applied"), Bill Wake (creator of the INVEST acronym), and Gojko Adzic (known for his work on story splitting patterns).

3. Establish Team Capacity

Establishing team capacity is a cornerstone of effective sprint planning best practices. It's the process of realistically determining how much work a team can commit to during a sprint. This involves considering available work hours, individual team member availability, and accounting for non-development activities like meetings, support tasks, and the inevitable unexpected issues that arise. Accurate capacity planning empowers teams to commit to achievable sprint goals, fostering a sustainable pace and boosting the likelihood of sprint success.

This practice goes beyond simply counting available bodies. It requires a nuanced understanding of various factors influencing a team's true working capacity. Key features include accounting for planned absences and holidays, factoring in recurring meetings and ceremonies (like daily stand-ups and sprint reviews), leveraging historical performance data (velocity), and, crucially, incorporating a buffer for unforeseen tasks and interruptions. For example, Salesforce development teams often calculate capacity by starting with the total available days in a sprint, subtracting planned time off, and then multiplying the remaining days by six productive hours per day. Similarly, Spotify integrates a 20% buffer for unexpected work into their capacity planning.

Why This Matters for Sprint Planning Best Practices

Overcommitting to sprint goals is a common pitfall that leads to missed deadlines, demoralized teams, and eroded trust with stakeholders. Establishing team capacity is a proactive measure against this. By accurately forecasting capacity, teams can commit to a realistic workload, leading to a higher probability of successful sprint completion and increased predictability. This builds confidence within the team and strengthens trust with stakeholders who can rely on consistent delivery.

Pros:

• Prevents Overcommitment and Burnout: Realistic sprint goals reduce stress and prevent team burnout, promoting a sustainable pace.
• Increases Likelihood of Sprint Success: Delivering on commitments builds momentum and reinforces a culture of success.
• Builds Trust with Stakeholders: Predictable delivery fosters trust and strengthens relationships with stakeholders.
• Creates Sustainable Pace for Long-Term Productivity: Avoids the boom-and-bust cycles often associated with inconsistent workloads.

Cons:

• Potential for Limiting Team Potential: If applied too rigidly, capacity planning can stifle innovation and limit the team's ability to stretch their capabilities.
• Requires Honest Self-Assessment: Accurate capacity planning necessitates an honest evaluation of productivity factors, which can sometimes reveal uncomfortable truths about actual team output.
• May Reveal Uncomfortable Truths About Actual Team Capacity: Data-driven capacity planning may highlight areas for improvement that require addressing.

Actionable Tips for Implementation:

• Use Yesterday's Weather: Leverage historical velocity as a baseline for estimating future capacity.
• Account for Onboarding: Factor in ramp-up time for new team members.
• Regularly Revisit Capacity Assumptions: Team efficiency changes over time; revisit and adjust capacity estimates accordingly.
• Leverage Tools: Consider using capacity-based planning tools within Jira or other agile project management systems.
• Transparency with Stakeholders: Be open and transparent with stakeholders about how team capacity is calculated.

Influential Figures and Frameworks:

The concept of team capacity planning has been popularized by thought leaders like Mike Cohn (with his concept of the "focus factor") and David Anderson's work on capacity allocation in Kanban. The Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe) also emphasizes the importance of team capacity planning in its approach to agile at scale.

By embracing the practice of establishing team capacity, development teams can move beyond guesswork and create a more predictable and sustainable approach to sprint planning. This not only benefits the team itself by preventing burnout and fostering a sense of accomplishment but also strengthens the relationship with stakeholders through reliable and consistent delivery.

4. Conduct Effective Backlog Refinement

Backlog refinement, also known as backlog grooming, is a crucial sprint planning best practice that involves reviewing, clarifying, and prioritizing items in the product backlog before they enter sprint planning. This ongoing process ensures that the items at the top of the backlog are ready for implementation, meaning they have clear acceptance criteria, identified dependencies, and addressed technical considerations. Effective backlog refinement sets the stage for productive and predictable sprints, directly contributing to the overall success of the project.

This proactive approach distinguishes backlog refinement from the reactive nature of dealing with ambiguities during sprint planning. It involves progressively elaborating on requirements, clarifying acceptance criteria, discussing technical feasibility, and identifying dependencies early on. Features of a good backlog refinement process include scheduled sessions separate from sprint planning, allowing dedicated time for these crucial activities.

Examples of Successful Implementation:

• Amazon: Employs a "Working Backwards" approach, starting with the desired customer experience and working backward to define the necessary features and requirements. This customer-centric approach ensures that the backlog items are aligned with user needs.
• Shopify: Conducts "story kickoffs" involving developers, designers, and product managers collaborating on requirements before sprint planning. This collaborative approach ensures shared understanding and reduces the likelihood of misunderstandings later.

Why Use Backlog Refinement?

Backlog refinement streamlines sprint planning meetings by ensuring that the team only discusses ready-to-be-implemented items. It drastically reduces misunderstandings and rework by clarifying requirements and acceptance criteria upfront. It also allows time for research spikes if needed, ultimately improving estimation accuracy. This preparation enables the development team to focus on delivering value during the sprint, rather than getting bogged down in clarifying requirements.

Pros:

• Streamlines sprint planning meetings
• Reduces misunderstandings and rework
• Allows time for research spikes
• Improves estimation accuracy

Cons:

• Can consume significant time (typically 5-10% of team capacity)
• May lead to premature design decisions if done too far in advance
• Risk of requirements changing between refinement and implementation

Actionable Tips for Effective Backlog Refinement:

• Schedule regular refinement sessions: Ideally weekly, to maintain a consistent flow of ready backlog items.
• Limit attendance to essential participants: Keep sessions efficient and focused.
• Focus on items likely to be addressed in the next 2-3 sprints: Avoid refining items too far in advance.
• Create a "definition of ready" checklist: Ensure all backlog items meet a consistent standard before entering sprint planning.
• Consider the Three Amigos approach: Incorporate business, development, and testing perspectives for a well-rounded understanding of each item.

Popularized By:

The importance of backlog refinement has been emphasized by influential figures in the agile community:

• Jeff Sutherland: A co-creator of Scrum, highlighted its importance in ensuring sprint success.
• Roman Pichler: A renowned product management expert, provided valuable techniques for effective product backlog management.
• Dean Leffingwell: Formalized the concept within the Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe).

Backlog refinement is an essential component of effective sprint planning best practices. By investing time in refining backlog items, teams can significantly improve the efficiency and predictability of their sprints, leading to higher quality deliverables and increased customer satisfaction. This process is a critical investment for any team striving to maximize its agile potential.

5. Implement Two-Part Sprint Planning

Two-part sprint planning is a powerful technique that can significantly improve the effectiveness of your sprints. This best practice, championed by agile thought leaders like Ken Schwaber, Jeff Sutherland, and Mike Cohn, enhances sprint planning by dividing it into two distinct segments: defining the "what" and determining the "how". This separation allows teams to effectively balance business needs with the technical realities of implementation, making it a crucial component of successful sprint planning best practices.

The first part of the planning session centers around the what – selecting and understanding the user stories for the sprint. This is primarily a product owner-led discussion, focusing on the business value and desired outcomes. Stakeholders are encouraged to participate in this segment to ensure alignment on the sprint goals and priorities. Crucially, this stage establishes the why behind the work, providing context and motivation for the development team. Key questions addressed include: What user stories deliver the most value? What are the acceptance criteria for each story? What dependencies exist between stories?

The second part delves into the how – the technical implementation details. This segment is team-led, allowing developers to collaboratively break down the selected user stories into actionable tasks. This empowers the team to own the implementation process and leverage their technical expertise to devise the most effective approach. Discussions in this part revolve around task estimation, resource allocation, and potential technical roadblocks. Key questions include: What tasks are required to complete each user story? How long will each task take? What technical dependencies exist?

Features of Two-Part Sprint Planning:

• Clear separation: Distinguishes between high-level goal setting and detailed task breakdown.
• Distinct leadership: Product owner leads the "what" discussion; the development team leads the "how" discussion.
• Flexible attendance: Different stakeholders can attend the segment most relevant to them.

Pros:

• Ensures business objectives are clearly defined and prioritized before diving into technical details.
• Allows stakeholders to participate in the value-focused discussion without needing to attend technical deep dives.
• Gives the development team autonomy over their implementation approach, fostering ownership and engagement.
• Creates natural breakpoints in potentially long planning sessions, improving focus and productivity.

Cons:

• Can create an artificial separation between business and technical concerns if not carefully managed.
• Requires disciplined facilitation to keep discussions focused and on track.
• May lead to slightly longer overall planning time, although the improved clarity and focus often offset this.

Examples of Successful Implementation:

• Scrum.org's Professional Scrum training emphasizes the importance of separating these concerns.
• Spotify's "squads" often schedule these as separate meetings with a gap in between for reflection and refinement.

Actionable Tips:

• For complex projects, consider scheduling the two parts on different days. This allows for adequate reflection and preparation.
• Explicitly discuss the "why" behind the sprint goal before diving into the "what" (user stories).
• Invite stakeholders only to the first part unless they have a specific need to participate in the technical discussion.
• Document key decisions and agreements from part one before starting part two to maintain clarity and alignment.
• Use different facilitation techniques for each part. For example, a collaborative brainstorming session might be suitable for the "what" discussion, while a more structured approach may be appropriate for the "how" discussion.

Two-part sprint planning deserves its place among sprint planning best practices because it promotes a shared understanding of both the business value and the technical feasibility of the sprint backlog. By explicitly separating the "what" and the "how", teams can ensure alignment on objectives, empower developers, and ultimately deliver more value through focused and effective sprints. This approach is especially valuable for larger teams, complex projects, and organizations seeking to optimize their agile processes.

6. Use Relative Estimation for More Accurate Sprint Planning

Relative estimation is a crucial sprint planning best practice that helps teams more accurately gauge the effort required for completing tasks. Instead of assigning absolute time values (e.g., 2 hours, 1 day), relative estimation involves comparing work items to each other using abstract units like story points, t-shirt sizes (S, M, L, XL), or a simple numerical scale. This approach acknowledges the inherent uncertainty in software development and avoids the pitfalls of false precision. By focusing on the relative size of tasks, you create a more flexible and adaptable sprint plan.

This method is particularly valuable during sprint planning best practices as it promotes team discussion and shared understanding of the work involved. Through discussion and comparison, the team arrives at a consensus on the relative size of each task, leading to a more realistic sprint backlog. This is a key differentiator from individual estimation, where biases and varying experience levels can significantly skew the predicted effort.

How Relative Estimation Works:

Teams typically use a scale like the Fibonacci sequence (1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, etc.) for story points. A smaller number represents a simpler task with less uncertainty, while a larger number signifies a more complex task with potentially more unknowns. During sprint planning, the team discusses each task and assigns story points relative to a baseline task, often referred to as a "reference story." For instance, if a simple bug fix is assigned 1 story point, a more complex feature might be estimated at 5 story points, indicating it's roughly five times more complex than the reference story.

Features and Benefits of Relative Estimation:

• Comparison-based: Focuses on relative complexity rather than attempting to predict exact time.
• Handles Complexity and Uncertainty: Explicitly considers factors beyond just effort, like risk and uncertainty.
• Team-based Approach: Fosters collaboration and shared understanding of the work.
• Increased Accuracy: More accurate than absolute time estimates, particularly for complex tasks.
• Accounts for Varying Skill Levels: Naturally incorporates differences in team member capabilities.
• Avoids False Precision: Eliminates the illusion of certainty that can accompany time-based estimates.

Examples of Successful Implementation:

• Mountain Goat Software: Uses Planning Poker, a gamified estimation technique, for collaborative relative estimation.
• Basecamp: Employs a simplified three-point scale (small, medium, large) for streamlined estimation.

Pros:

• More accurate for complex work
• Accounts for team member skill differences
• Avoids false precision
• Builds team consensus

Cons:

• Initial learning curve for stakeholders
• Requires recalibration with team changes
• Potential for misuse as performance metrics

Actionable Tips for Implementing Relative Estimation:

• Establish Reference Stories: Use a set of previously completed stories as anchors for comparison.
• Re-estimate When Necessary: If requirements change significantly, revisit the estimations.
• Prioritize Consensus over Precision: Focus on agreement on relative size rather than exact numbers.
• Try Estimation Techniques: Experiment with Planning Poker, Team Estimation Game, or silent voting.
• Avoid Anchoring Bias: Encourage independent thinking before group discussion.

Why Relative Estimation is a Sprint Planning Best Practice:

Relative estimation deserves its place among sprint planning best practices because it fosters a more realistic and adaptable approach to planning. By acknowledging the uncertainty inherent in software development and focusing on relative complexity, teams can create more accurate sprint backlogs, improve predictability, and ultimately deliver better results. This approach is highly beneficial for Engineering Managers, Scrum Masters, Agile Coaches, Product Owners, CTOs, Software Development Teams, Jira users, DevOps Leaders, and Team Leads in Agile environments, ensuring everyone is on the same page and working towards a common goal. It also empowers Atlassian Marketplace buyers seeking tools and plugins that support effective sprint planning.

7. Create a Sprint Backup Plan

Effective sprint planning isn't just about mapping out the work for the sprint; it's also about anticipating potential roadblocks and opportunities. That's where creating a sprint backup plan becomes a valuable sprint planning best practice. This practice involves identifying and prioritizing additional work items that the team can pull into the sprint if they complete their committed work early or encounter unexpected blockers. This proactive approach maintains team momentum, respects the sprint boundary, and prevents the disruption of mid-sprint scope changes.

A sprint backup plan doesn't mean overcommitting. The core sprint goal and committed work remain paramount. The backup plan acts as a safety net and an opportunity for overachievement, offering flexibility without derailing the sprint's focus.

How a Sprint Backup Plan Works:

The foundation of a good backup plan is a prioritized list of "stretch goals" or additional tasks, clearly delineated from the committed sprint backlog. These items should be fully refined and ready for implementation, minimizing preparation time if they're needed. Ideally, these are smaller, independent tasks that can be completed within the remaining sprint capacity. When the team finishes their committed work ahead of schedule or encounters a blocker that prevents progress on a specific task, they can pull in a stretch goal, ensuring continuous forward momentum.

Features of a Robust Sprint Backup Plan:

• Prioritized 'stretch goals': A ranked list of desirable, yet non-essential, work items beyond the main sprint commitment.
• Clear delineation: A visible distinction between committed work and stretch goals within the sprint backlog.
• Option to pull forward future work: The ability to incorporate tasks originally planned for future sprints when capacity allows.
• Alternative paths when blockers emerge: Readily available tasks to pivot to if primary tasks become unexpectedly blocked.

Examples of Successful Implementation:

• Netflix: Development teams utilize a "ready queue" of fully prepared backlog items, allowing them to seamlessly pull in additional work when capacity allows. This exemplifies the "always ready" aspect of agile development.
• Microsoft Azure DevOps Teams: Employ "stretch stories," clearly marked in their sprint backlog, providing visibility and transparency to the entire team and stakeholders.

Pros of Implementing a Sprint Backup Plan:

• Maintains team momentum: Keeps the team productive even when committed work is completed early, avoiding downtime and context switching.
• Provides flexibility without disrupting sprint focus: Allows for adjustments without compromising the sprint goal.
• Allows teams to overachieve without overcommitting: Provides a path for exceeding expectations without jeopardizing the core sprint commitment.
• Creates options when unexpected blockers arise: Offers alternative tasks to work on, preventing delays and maintaining progress.

Cons to Consider:

• May create pressure to rush through committed work: Team members might feel pressured to finish quickly to tackle stretch goals, potentially impacting quality.
• Can confuse stakeholders about actual sprint scope: Lack of clear communication about the backup plan can lead to misunderstandings about deliverables.
• Risk of team pulling in work without proper preparation: If backup items aren't fully refined, they can introduce unexpected delays and complexities.

Tips for Implementing a Sprint Backup Plan as a Sprint Planning Best Practice:

• Clearly distinguish between committed work and stretch goals: Use labels, tags, or separate sections in your project management tool.
• Ensure backup items are fully refined and ready to implement: Minimize preparation time to maximize the benefit of the backup plan.
• Consider having smaller, independent items as backup work: This allows for easier integration and minimizes dependencies.
• Maintain the sprint goal focus even when pulling in additional work: Ensure that any additional work aligns with the overall sprint objective.
• Be transparent with stakeholders about the distinction: Communicate clearly about the committed work versus stretch goals to manage expectations.

Why This Deserves Its Place in the List of Sprint Planning Best Practices:

Creating a sprint backup plan demonstrates proactive planning and risk management. It empowers teams to adapt to changing circumstances, optimize their productivity, and consistently deliver value. By following these best practices, organizations can significantly improve the effectiveness of their sprints and enhance their overall agility. This approach, popularized by thought leaders like Marty Cagan and incorporated into frameworks like SAFe (Scaled Agile Framework) with its concept of "stretch objectives," is a hallmark of high-performing agile teams.

7 Best Practices Comparison Guide

Ready to Elevate Your Sprint Planning Game?

Mastering sprint planning best practices is crucial for any agile team striving for peak performance. We've covered seven key strategies in this article, from defining crystal-clear sprint goals and right-sizing user stories to establishing team capacity and implementing effective backlog refinement. Remember, utilizing two-part sprint planning, employing relative estimation, and creating a sprint backup plan are equally vital for success. By consistently applying these sprint planning best practices, you'll empower your team to achieve higher predictability, increased velocity, and a sustainable pace, setting the stage for continuous improvement and delivery of exceptional results.

These practices aren't just theoretical concepts; they are the building blocks of high-performing agile teams. The benefits extend beyond individual sprints, impacting the overall success of your projects and contributing to a more positive and productive team environment. By investing time in improving your sprint planning process, you’re investing in the long-term health and success of your entire development cycle.

Ready to take your sprint planning to the next level and unlock your team’s full potential? Umano provides actionable, real-time insights into your team’s performance across your entire agile workflow, integrating with tools like Jira to help you refine your sprint planning process. Visit Umano today to learn more and start optimizing your sprints for maximum impact.