How to Conduct Sprint Planning in 4 Basic Steps

By: Hajime Estanislao, PMP, CSM; Editor: Geram Lompon; Reviewed by: Dr. Michael J. Shick, MSPM, PMP, CSM

For project managers and scrum masters, sprint planning can feel repetitive and evolving, especially when priorities shift and deadlines come closer.

There are ways to make sprint planning seamless, focused, and effective. Imagine every sprint with clear goals, a well-prepared agile team, and a plan that aligns and engages everyone. Sprint planning is your way to unlock progress and results.

Sprint planning turns chaotic projects into organized cycles of collaboration. This article equips you with strategies to improve communication, resource management, and delivery. Agile teams can use these methods to enhance collaboration, execute tasks effectively, and continuously refine their processes.

Learn the essential steps, practical insights, and advanced tips for sprint planning. Let’s get started!

What is Sprint Planning?

Sprint Planning is a collaborative event in the Scrum framework that marks the beginning of a sprint. It brings together scrum team members like the product owner, scrum master, and development team to define the sprint goal, determine the work to be completed, and outline a plan for achieving it.

Sprint planning activities involve defining the sprint goal and determining the work to be completed, ensuring tasks are clearly understood and prioritized. Guided by the Scrum Guide, this event aligns the team and makes them focused and ready to tackle the sprint’s objectives.

Scrum teams facilitate transparency and collaboration during meetings, ensuring members agree on priorities and definitions of ‘done’ for tasks. This collaborative approach is a sustainable way to develop best practices and successful outcomes.

The goal of Sprint Planning

The primary goal of sprint planning is to select the right set of product backlog items to work on during the sprint and to discuss each item enough to feel confident beginning work. Unlike traditional project management, where the project manager dictates the workload, in Scrum, the team determines how much work they can realistically accomplish in the coming sprint.

Sprint planning techniques are used to select and discuss product backlog items. This collaborative approach makes the team committed and confident in delivering the selected product backlog items.

Who Attends Sprint Planning?

The product owner, Scrum Master, and Development team attend the sprint planning meeting. While outside stakeholders may occasionally be invited, this is rare and typically only happens if their input is needed for the planning process. During the meeting, the product owner plays a role by identifying candidate product backlog items and their relative priorities.

Sprint planning facilitates the planning process by helping the team organize and prioritize tasks efficiently. They propose a sprint goal and guide the team on which features to deliver next. The Scrum Master facilitates the meeting and manages the schedule. The development team assesses their capacity and commits to the workload they can handle for the sprint.

Roles Needed in Sprint Planning

Effective sprint planning requires the participation and collaboration of roles within the Scrum framework. Each role contributes uniquely to ensure the planning session is productive and aligns with project goals.

Sprint planning responsibilities include defining the sprint goal, estimating tasks, and prioritizing the backlog.

Development Team

The development team is responsible for delivering the increment of work planned during the sprint.

The team uses a sprint planning checklist to confirm necessary items are considered during planning.

Role in Sprint Planning:

• Collaboratively select and commit to the work they can complete during the sprint.
• Break down user stories or backlog items into manageable tasks.
• Estimate effort for each task, considering capacity and velocity.
• Identify potential risks and dependencies.

Product Owner

The individual is responsible for maximizing the product’s value and managing the product backlog.

The sprint planning meeting agenda guides the meeting, ensuring that necessary topics are covered efficiently.

Role in Sprint Planning:

• Present and explain prioritized backlog items to the team.
• Ensure backlog items are refined, clear, and aligned with stakeholder priorities.
• Define and agree on the sprint goal in collaboration with the team.
• Address questions about requirements and priorities.

Scrum Master

The servant-leader who facilitates Scrum processes and ensures the team adheres to Scrum principles.

The scrum master is responsible for sprint planning preparation, which includes organizing the backlog, setting priorities, and ensuring the team is ready for the upcoming sprint.

Role in Sprint Planning:

• Facilitate the sprint planning meeting, ensuring that it stays focused and productive.
• Help the team understand the scope and importance of the sprint goal.
• Support the team in estimating effort and identifying risks.
• Address any roadblocks or impediments that arise during planning.

Collaboration in Sprint Planning

While each role has distinct responsibilities, the success of sprint planning depends on collaboration and open communication among participants. Sprint planning best practices include setting clear goals, defining priorities, and ensuring everyone understands their tasks.

Advantages and Disadvantages of Sprint Planning for Scrum Masters and Project Managers

Advantages:

• Clear Direction: Establishes a distinct sprint goal, aligning the team on priorities and expected results.
• Enhanced Team Collaboration: Promotes full engagement from every team member, cultivating a sense of collective responsibility.
• Optimized Resource Allocation: Evaluates team capabilities, ensuring equitable distribution of tasks.
• Proactive Risk Management: Detects possible issues in advance, permitting timely interventions.
• Emphasis on Value: Prioritizes tasks that offer the most significant value to stakeholders, aligning efforts with backlog items.

Disadvantages:

• Time-Consuming: It can be time-intensive, particularly if the product backlog is poorly prepared.
• Dependency on Accurate Estimates: It depends on the team’s precise estimation of effort and capacity, which can occasionally result in overcommitment or undercommitment.
• Potential for Scope Creep: If the sprint goal is not strictly followed, additional tasks may be included in the ongoing sprint.
• Challenges with Distributed Teams: Effective communication and collaboration can be challenging for remote or distributed teams.
• Requires High-Quality Backlog: A backlog that has not been efficiently refined before the meeting can cause postponements and vague priorities.

Reasons You Need to Know When Doing Sprint Planning

Sprint planning is the cornerstone of effective sprint execution in the Scrum framework. It ensures alignment between team members, sets realistic goals, and creates a structured path for delivering value. Without a well-thought-out sprint plan, teams risk misaligned priorities, missed deadlines, and reduced productivity. Understanding sprint planning is essential for scrum masters, project managers, and team members to promote collaboration, improve efficiency, and achieve desired outcomes.

The process provides valuable sprint planning insights to help teams refine their approach and continuously improve.

• Ensures everyone is aligned on the sprint goal and priorities.
• Helps the team set realistic expectations for what can be achieved within the sprint.
• Encourages active collaboration among team members, creating a sense of shared ownership.
• Identifies potential risks and dependencies early, allowing for proactive mitigation.
• Improves team accountability by assigning clear responsibilities for tasks.
• Balances team capacity with workload to avoid burnout or underutilization.
• Enhances adaptability by maintaining focus on delivering incremental value.
• Promotes continuous improvement through reflection on the previous sprint and lessons learned.

Preparing for Sprint Planning

Preparing for a sprint planning meeting ensures the team is well-equipped to make informed decisions about the upcoming sprint. This preparation involves several steps. Sprint planning readiness is foundational for a successful meeting, ensuring participants are adequately prepared.

First, the product owner must confirm that the product backlog is well-refined, with items clearly defined and prioritized. This allows the team to focus on the most valuable tasks.

Next, the Scrum Master should inform the team of the meeting’s agenda and objectives. Finally, the development team should review the product backlog items in advance, allowing them to come prepared with questions and insights, leading to a productive discussion.

Ensure a Defined Leader

A leader is essential for a successful sprint planning meeting. Typically, the product owner or Scrum Master takes on this role, guiding the team through planning. Sprint planning leadership involves directing the meeting, ensuring the team stays on schedule, and facilitating discussions.

They should thoroughly understand the product backlog, the team’s capacity, and the sprint goal. By leading the meeting, they help the team align on priorities, make informed decisions, and set a path for the sprint. This leadership ensures team members are engaged and contributing, leading to successful sprint planning.

Complete Backlog Refinement Regularly

Regularly refining the product backlog is a cornerstone of sprint planning. This involves reviewing and updating the backlog to ensure accuracy, relevance, and priority. The product owner should work closely with the development team to refine the backlog, breaking down large items into smaller, more manageable tasks and estimating the effort required to complete each task.

Regular backlog refinement helps ensure the team works on the most valuable tasks. By keeping the product backlog well-organized and up-to-date, the team can focus on delivering high-priority items that provide the most value to stakeholders. The product owner plays a role in this process, collaborating with the development team to make backlog items clearly defined and aligned with project goals.

Breaking down large items into smaller tasks makes the work more manageable and allows the team to estimate the effort required more accurately. This, in turn, helps the team plan and prioritize their work effectively, ensuring commitment to a realistic workload for the upcoming sprint. Regular backlog refinement sessions or backlog grooming are practices for maintaining a healthy and actionable product backlog.

Focus on Functionality, Not Just Tasks

When planning a sprint, focus on the functionality that needs to be delivered rather than just the tasks that need to be completed. This involves understanding the project requirements and goals and identifying the key features and user stories that must be delivered.

Focusing on functionality helps ensure the team delivers value to the customer. By prioritizing features and user stories that align with the project’s goals, the team can work on the most impactful tasks. Understanding the project is essential for effective sprint planning, as it provides the context to make informed decisions about what to work on.

Identifying features and user stories helps prioritize the team’s work. The team should work together to understand the functionality that needs to be delivered and how it will be achieved.

Incorporate Stakeholder Feedback from the Previous Sprint

Integrating stakeholder feedback from the previous sprint for sprint planning is usually performed. This involves reviewing and using the feedback to inform the planning process, ensuring that the team addresses the stakeholder needs.

Stakeholder feedback ensures the team is delivering value to the customer. Reviewing feedback from the previous sprint, the team can identify areas for improvement and make necessary adjustments. This iterative process helps to refine the product and align it more closely with stakeholder expectations. By continuously incorporating feedback, the team can adapt and improve, delivering a product that meets the changing needs of its users.

Sprint Planning Meeting Structure

The sprint planning meeting is an event in the Scrum framework where the team comes together to plan the upcoming sprint. The meeting should be structured to ensure the team effectively plans and prioritizes their work.

The sprint planning meeting should be time-boxed so the team stays focused. Typically, it lasts about two hours and lasts for a two-week sprint. The Scrum Master facilitates the meeting, ensuring the team follows the Scrum framework and is productive.

The product owner provides input on the product backlog and the priorities for the upcoming sprint. They present the most valuable and high-priority items, explaining their purpose and acceptance criteria. The development team then plans and prioritizes their work, using their historical velocity to determine how much they can realistically commit to.

The team should establish a clear sprint goal. This goal should be the team’s guiding star for the sprint, helping the team stay focused and aligned on the objectives. By the end of the sprint planning meeting, the team should have a well-defined sprint backlog and a shared understanding of the sprint goal.

Where and When to Hold a Sprint Planning Meeting

The sprint planning meeting should be held at the beginning of each sprint and scheduled at a consistent time and location. This ensures that the team can plan and prioritize their work effectively. Consistency in scheduling helps team members plan their time and ensures everyone is available to participate. The meeting should be held in a location conducive to collaboration and communication, such as a conference room or team room.

Step-by-Step Instructions to Do Sprint Planning

Effective sprint planning lays the groundwork for the current and future sprints by ensuring the entire team is aligned, prepared, and focused on delivering value.

The sprint planning steps involve defining the sprint goal, selecting backlog items, and estimating the effort required for each task.

1. Set the Stage with Clarity

• Begin by assembling the agile team, comprising the product owner, scrum master, and development team members.
• Evaluate the project’s goals and present status, highlighting how the sprint relates to the broader objectives.
• Sprint planning clarity is essential for effective planning, ensuring team members understand the goals and objectives.
• Discuss the previous sprint’s outcomes, focusing on successes and potential improvements that could impact the forthcoming sprint.
• Establish a clear sprint goal as a directive for the team’s work and maintain focus throughout the sprint.

2. Prioritize the Sprint Backlog

• Work closely with the product owner to showcase the product backlog, emphasizing the most valuable and high-priority items.
• Sprint planning prioritization involves selecting the highest-priority items from the backlog to ensure the team focuses on delivering the most value during the sprint.
• Clarify the purpose and acceptance criteria for each candidate sprint backlog item during discussions with scrum team members.
• If necessary, refine user stories or tasks, decomposing items into smaller, manageable parts.
• Choose backlog items that will contribute to delivering value and towards the completion of the sprint goal.

3. Calculate Team Capacity and Commit

• Evaluate the team’s capacity by checking member availability, other commitments, and past performance metrics.
• Sprint planning methods such as Planning Poker estimate the effort required for each task.
• Engage in discussions to settle on a feasible workload that aligns aspiration with practicality.
• Employ effort estimation methods like Planning Poker or story points to assess the required effort for each task.
• Ensure that the chosen tasks are within the team’s capacity to avoid overcommitting.

4. Build and Communicate the Sprint Plan

• Develop the sprint backlog by gathering and arranging the items in a work management tool, such as Jira, Trello, or a physical Scrum board.
• Scrum teams should allocate tasks or confirm that team members have a mutual understanding of task ownership, ensuring transparency and collaboration.
• Sprint planning communication is needed for alignment, ensuring that all team members and stakeholders are on the same page regarding the sprint goals and tasks.
• Share the sprint plan with all stakeholders to ensure alignment and manage expectations.
• Conclude the sprint planning session by verifying that everyone is confident and committed to the plan.

Considerations For Successfully Doing Sprint Planning

While the steps for sprint planning provide a solid framework, there are insights to remember. First, preparation is required. A well-refined product backlog is the foundation of effective sprint planning. Without it, discussions can become chaotic and unproductive.

Understanding the factors that contribute to sprint planning success is essential. These factors include having a clear agenda, well-defined goals, and active participation from all team members. The product owner should ensure backlog items are detailed, prioritized, and ready for selection before the session begins.

Team collaboration is another factor. Sprint planning assigns tasks and creates a shared understanding of goals and commitments. Agile teams play a role in this process and confirm what work to accomplish during sprints.

Encourage open communication, especially when estimating effort or identifying dependencies, to prevent misalignment and ensure everyone’s voice is heard.

Remember that sprint planning is not an isolated event. It’s part of a continuous improvement cycle within the Scrum framework. Agile teams strive for continuous improvement by refining future planning sessions using insights from sprint reviews and retrospectives. This iterative approach ensures that each sprint planning session becomes more efficient, focused, and valuable.

Taking it to the Next Level: Rolling Wave Planning and Adaptive Project Management

To elevate your sprint planning practices, consider integrating advanced techniques like Rolling Wave Planning, Adaptive Project Management, and Hybrid Project Management to balance structure and flexibility in dynamic project environments.

Incorporating various sprint planning strategies can enhance your planning process and help your team remain agile and responsive to changes.

Rolling Wave Planning enables teams to focus on detailed planning for the current sprint while maintaining a high-level vision for future iterations. This layered approach ensures immediate tasks are actionable while leaving room to adapt as project priorities evolve. For instance, detailed plans for a two-week sprint are finalized, while subsequent sprints remain flexible, allowing for adjustments based on stakeholder feedback or market changes.

Adaptive Project Management takes agility further by promoting continuous reassessment of scope, resources, and deliverables throughout the project lifecycle. This ensures sprint goals align with the broader project objectives and respond effectively to uncertainty. Whether refining an MVP based on user feedback or reallocating resources to address emerging risks, this approach enables teams to embrace change and drive value incrementally.

Hybrid Project Management blends Agile methods like Scrum with traditional project management approaches such as those outlined in the PMBOK Guide. For example, while sprint planning focuses on iterative delivery, hybrid methods may incorporate milestone tracking, detailed risk analysis, or comprehensive documentation where necessary. This is valuable in industries or projects where regulatory requirements, extensive stakeholder involvement, or long-term planning coexist with the need for agility.

Examples of Rolling Wave Planning and Adaptive Project Management in Sprint Planning

Rolling Wave Planning in Sprint Planning

A software development team working on a mobile app uses Rolling Wave Planning to balance detailed planning for immediate sprints with high-level planning for future milestones.

Immediate Sprint

The team focuses on implementing a new user login feature, breaking it down into tasks like UI design, API integration, and testing. These tasks are detailed with clear acceptance criteria and effort estimates.

Future Sprints

The product owner outlines high-level goals for upcoming sprints, such as ‘add social login functionality’ or ‘enhance user profile management.’ These goals are not yet broken down into detailed tasks, allowing flexibility to adjust as customer feedback and priorities evolve.

Two-Week Sprint in Rolling Wave Planning

A marketing team planning a campaign rollout adopts two-week sprints to execute deliverables and reassess the strategy.

Sprint 1

The team creates content for email marketing, including drafting and scheduling emails. This work is detailed and planned.

Sprint 2 and Beyond

High-level goals include tracking campaign performance and optimizing ad spend. The specifics depend on the results of Sprint 1, which are reviewed at the end of the first two-week cycle.

This rolling wave approach enables the team to adapt their efforts based on real-time data while maintaining overall campaign objectives.

Adaptive Project Management in Sprint Planning

A project manager overseeing a product launch employs Adaptive Project Management to handle shifting priorities.

Initial Scope

During Sprint 1, the team develops a minimum viable product (MVP) for a new feature based on initial customer requirements.

Dynamic Adjustments

After receiving user feedback, the scope shifts to refining the MVP and adding features that users specifically requested. Resources are reallocated from less urgent tasks to address these high-priority enhancements.

This iterative approach ensures the product evolves in alignment with stakeholder needs while maintaining focus on short-term sprint goals.

Adaptive Project Management in Complex Projects

A healthcare IT project involves integrating a new system across multiple departments. Using Adaptive Project Management, the team revisits the backlog at the start of every sprint to reflect shifting organizational needs.

Early Sprints

Focus on building and testing foundational system components with detailed tasks and user stories.

Later Sprints

Based on feedback from department heads, the focus shifts to training users, addressing integration challenges, and dynamically updating the backlog.

Wrapping Up: Sprint Planning

Sprint planning is a cornerstone of successful project delivery in the Scrum framework. It provides teams with a structured approach to aligning goals, defining priorities, and planning their work for the current sprint.

A sprint planning overview includes setting clear objectives, prioritizing tasks, and ensuring team alignment for the upcoming sprint.

By following a process, understanding its advantages and challenges, and integrating continuous improvement practices, scrum masters and project managers can ensure each sprint is productive and focused on delivering value.

To take sprint planning to the next level, incorporating strategies like Rolling Wave Planning and Adaptive Project Management can significantly enhance flexibility and long-term success. For instance, in Rolling Wave Planning, the teams can plan immediate sprints in detail while keeping high-level roadmaps for future iterations. Adaptive Project Management allows teams to dynamically adjust scope and resources based on real-time feedback and shifting priorities.

Effective sprint planning is about collaboration, adaptability, and team alignment with immediate and overarching goals, ensuring consistent value delivery to stakeholders.

References

Beck, K., Beedle, M., van Bennekum, A., Cockburn, A., Cunningham, W., Fowler, M., … Thomas, D. (2001). Manifesto for Agile Software Development. Agile Alliance. https://agilemanifesto.org

Project Management Institute. (2021). A guide to the project management body of knowledge (PMBOK guide) (7th ed.). Project Management Institute.

Schwaber, K., & Sutherland, J. (2020). The Scrum Guide: The definitive guide to Scrum: The rules of the game. Scrum.org.

Takeuchi, H., & Nonaka, I. (1986). The new product development game. Harvard Business Review. https://hbr.org/1986/01/the-new-new-product-development-game