What is Sprint Planning?
If you're new to agile development, the concept of sprint planning might seem a little strange — even intimidating. How does it work? What does everyone do in a meeting like that?
Trying to describe what happens in a sprint planning meeting isn't easy. Agile development is designed to be collaborative and flexible; it's not supposed to be rigid or structured. However, this doesn't mean that there aren't some common patterns and practices emerging from the field.
Sprint planning is a short meeting at the beginning of each sprint to identify what can be delivered within the upcoming sprint and how that work will be delivered. This meeting is facilitated by the Scrum Master. During the meeting, everyone on the team contributes to identifying and understanding the user stories that will be in the upcoming sprint.
What Happens During Sprint Planning?
Essentially, Sprint Planning is the process of reviewing the work described in the large "product backlog", and pulling work into the smaller "sprint backlog." However, as stories are pulled in, the team reviews to ensure an understanding of the work, and commits to getting it done within the sprint.
One of the most effective ways to ensure that the development team has a shared understanding of each user story as it is pulled into the sprint, is to play Planning Poker.
During Planning Poker, the Scrum Master will pull up the user story being reviewed and read through it. Then, once the team understands the acceptance criteria, the team will "vote" on the stories level of effort. Once a consensus is reached, the Scrum Master will pull the story into the sprint. This process will be repeated until the sprint backlog is "full" - which typically is measured by the teams previous sprint velocity.
