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Sprint Planning

Just like backlog management, sprint management is the responsibility of the Product Manager. Only the Product Manager can make changes to a sprint. If developers need to modify the sprint plan, they must obtain approval from the Product Manager.

Sprint Structure and Schedule

The team operates with 1-week or 2-week sprints depending on the project and its maturity. They have specific opinions regarding the sprint schedule:

  • Sprint Duration: Sprints start on Monday and end on Friday. Not aligning with calendar weeks tends to lead to more unfinished work, as there is no sense of urgency before the weekend.
  • Sprint Planning: Sprint planning happens on the morning of the first Monday of the sprint.
  • No Meetings on Last Friday: There are no meetings with the development team on the last Friday of the sprint (e.g., no retrospective).
  • Release Schedule: The release for a completed sprint is done on the first Monday of the following sprint. The team does not release on Fridays to avoid the risk of a bug making its way to production without anyone available to fix it over the weekend.

Sprint Planning Meeting

The sprint planning meeting is held once per sprint and always takes place on the same day each week to establish a consistent routine.

At Crispr Coders, sprint planning is streamlined and focused. While there are various Agile methodologies and tools available for sprint planning (such as Planning Poker), the sessions at Crispr Coders are intentionally kept simple and brief.

For effective sprint planning meetings, the following activities must be concluded before the session commences:

  • The Product Manager must prepare a sprint backlog with all the user stories the development team will work on during the sprint.
  • All the user stories selected for the sprint must be estimated.
  • Issues and blockers should be addressed before the meeting. (Assess whether or not the feature can still be part of the sprint).

Goals of the Sprint Planning Session

The sprint planning session has four main goals:

  1. Set the sprint goal.
  2. Review the upcoming sprint’s content.
  3. Ensure the whole team is committed to the sprint’s content.
  4. Verify that all user stories are clear and explicit.
  5. Address any remaining questions.

Participants

The sprint planning session involves the entire development team and the Product Manager. External stakeholders do not attend this session. Instead, the Product Manager updates external stakeholders and collaborates with them on planning during the sprint review session.