- Every iteration begins with sprint planning meeting.
- It’s generally divided in two parts. First part is for detailed requirements workshop and second part is for design workshop.
- Sprint Planning (first part)
- It’s a requirement workshop.
- Product Owner must be present in this part of the meeting.
- Product Owner presents the feature – objective is to be able to explain the feature in a way the team is able to commit to delivering it.
- Team asks questions – objective is to be able to commit to the work items for producing the proposed feature.
- Team alone decides what it can deliver in the sprint, considering duration, size and current capabilities of its members and its definition of ‘Done’.
- ScrumMaster must ensure that any stakeholder needed to help the team understand the requirements is present or at least available over call.
- At the end of first part of sprint planning, team commits to the Product Owner what their beliefs are on deliverables.
- Sometimes experienced team does velocity based (historical) planning, better is commitment based planning.
- The backlog items that the team has committed to is called the selected product backlog.
- Sprint Planning (second part)
- It’s a design workshop although it is not required to carry out a perfect design in this session.
- Team collaborates to develop a design (at a higher level) of the product features it has committed to produce.
- Outcome is the list of tasks (Sprint Backlog) that the team uses to carry out product features as per the product backlog.
- Team members may ask additional questions to the Product Owner – ScrumMaster ensures that team’s questions are answered.
- One measurement to know that Sprint planning is working well is to see the team members discussing (and sometimes arguing) about the most effective way to implement a feature.
Utpal "UV" Vaishnav is a lifelong learner and entrepreneur. UV is also the co-founder of an agile mobile apps design studio which facilitates bringing fresh ideas to the world of mobile. Visit his personal blog or follow him on Twitter @UtpalVaishnav.