Effective Sprint Planning

1. In the ideal Scrum world, end of the sprint planning team will have the details to start the sprint
execution but in the real world because of some issues even though the sprint planning is
completed and the backlog may not have all the details but business point of view those
Userstories may be very important and needs to be delivered early. Typical issues faced by the
scrum teams where Userstories are prioritized in the current sprint but still clarity is not there
because of various reasons like:
 Customer not provided all the details
 Dependency Userstory is not ready
 Architecture is not ready
So team may not start the Userstories from the first day of the sprint and they may need to have
some wait time to solve the above issues which will result in low velocity or team needs to spend
more time to meet the commitment.
What better can be done in Sprint Planning?
Each sprint begins with a sprint planning meeting. For a one month or four-week sprint this
meeting should last eight hours. For a two-week sprint, plan for about four hours. As a general
rule of thumb, multiply the number of weeks in your sprint by two hours to get your total sprint
planning meeting length. Sprint planning is a collaborative effort involving a Scrum Master, who
facilitates the meeting, a Product Owner, who clarifies the details of the product backlog items
and their respective acceptance criteria, and the Entire Agile Team, who define the work and
effort necessary to meet their sprint commitment

2. Instead of having the 4 hours Sprint planning at a stretch on the first day of the 2 weeks Sprint,
it can be split into two, 2 hours meeting.
First part of the Sprint planning can be done in the 2nd week of the last sprint where Product
owner and Scrum Master can perform below things:
 The Product Owner defines the Sprint Goal.
 Based on this goal the relevant entries in the Scrum Product Backlog are chosen by the
Product Owner.
 These entries are updated and broken into smaller stories so that they can be
completed within one Sprint.
 If any of the Userstory is not clear during the backlog grooming Scrum Master can reach
them to get the clarity before the 2nd part of the Scrum Planning.
Second part of Sprint planning can be done on the Sprint planning day. The expectation is Scrum
Master and Product owner should have gathered the information which was not clear in the 1st
phase planning. In the 2nd part of the planning meeting below thing can be performed to have
solid backlog for the scrum team.
 Team will estimate the userstories.
 Product owner can prioritize the backlog
 Based on the capacity available in the team the no. of userstories will be finalized by the
team for the Sprint.
 Team can have two stretch goal Userstories in the backlog. In case of any issues in the
prioritized backlog or team is able to finish the userstories early compared to the planned
estimation, then team cantake the stretch goal userstory which will help in increasing the
velocity of the team