Sprint Planning

Sprint planning is the process of closing out the following sprint, reviewing the tickets prioritised for the next sprint, aligning estimation to capacity and starting the sprint.

See Sprint Planning Prerequisites

Close out previous sprint

The sprint review for the previous sprint would already have been completed (often in the same meeting), however the sprint review meeting is where the sprint is actually closed out in Jira.

The process is:

1. Go through tickets that are in the To Do column (i.e. haven’t been started), and determine if there’s a reason other than capacity that they weren’t started. E.g. are they blocked by other tickets, unclear, or something else. Determine if that reason still applies. If it does they shouldn’t be brought into the next sprint until the blocker has been resolved (not a hard rule though).

2. For other non-started tickets, the PO should determine if they are still a priority. If they are not to be in the next sprint, they should be moved to a future sprint, or into the backlog (or closed completely if that’s appropriate).

3. Next, tickets in Development column should be reviewed to see if there is anything blocking them, or if the priority has changed. The PO should move to a future sprint if they aren’t to be in the next sprint.

4. All tickets in To Review, Merged, QA Ready and Testing should be carried to the next sprint.

5. The complete sprint button should then be used to end the sprint. All open tickets (everything not in the QA Passed / Done column) will be moved to the next sprint.

Estimate Next Sprint Tickets

1. The tickets in the next sprint should go through an estimation process. This should be done before the sprint planning, so that the sprint planning meeting can be relatively quick. However there might still be some tickets that need to be estimated during planning (e.g. last minute additions to the sprint, plus tickets moved from the previous sprint that now have less work remaining).

Review Tickets

1. At this point the team members should be familiar with the tickets planned for the next sprint, having reviewed them during the estimation process. However they are given another chance to bring up any tickets they wish to discuss, or tickets that they think shouldn’t be in the next sprint.

2. Team members can also add suggestions for tickets that should be in the next sprint but aren’t. The PO takes this input and makes the decision.

3. The PO at this point should also review the priority order for the tickets, so that the highest priority tickets are at the top.

Align Capacity

1. Take the team’s capacity for the next sprint - see Squad Capacity Planning

2. Use the Sprint Separator to cut tickets from the sprint until the sum of the ticket estimates is as close to the planned capacity as possible (the team can decide if it should be slightly over or under the planned capacity)

Start Sprint

1. Use the Start Sprint button to kick off the sprint, input the correct dates for the two week duration.

2. A short standup should then be done, to ensure everyone knows what they are working on.

Create Sprint Page

1. After the planning meeting, PO creates a sprint page

2. Using the template ‘Squad Sprint Template’ create a confluence page for the squads.

3. Add in information on the sprint.