Iteration a.k.a Sprint Planning: Part 1

If you fail to plan, you plan to fail.

-Benjamin Franklin

Iteration/Sprint planning is much of an overlooked ceremony than I initially thought. When I say overlooked I don’t mean that teams do not conduct this ceremony, they do conduct “Sprint Planning” but most of the times it just for the heck of it (without any purpose) or just for compliance.

Curious to know the reason behind the passiveness (or should I say lack of enthusiasm) in Sprint Planning, I started asking questions to number of teams, colleagues and friends and got following insights/retro points -

• Few of the members view it as “time-waste”.
• Team is not aligned to PI Objectives
• From Scrum Master's perspective - Lack of knowledge on how to facilitate it effectively.
• From Team's perspective - Lack of understanding of the desired inputs expected for Sprint planning
• Few thinks – everything has been already planned at PI level so it is just matter of loading the sprint with the pre-identified PBIs (Product Backlog Items).
• Other feels, anyways my customer is so aggressive that I am sure my priorities are going to change in mid-sprint, then why bother?
• In onsite-offshore model where onsite is driver (e.g. Scrum Master/ Product Owner / key roles are at onsite), offshore keeps mum just thinking that “anyways onsite experts and seniors are there, so they will take care”. Similar situation might happen if all the key roles are at offshore and there is just few developer/testers at onsite, in this situations onsite members would keep their lips tight!
• Lack of participation from key stakeholders (PO, key team member, vendors etc.).
• No clear deliverable … just exploration.
• Scrum Master or PO dictates what must be done in the sprint without considering any opinion from the team.
• Long pending issues are still pending and there are no actions – members losing interest.
• No follow-up / actions on the retro items – member losing interest further.
• Lack of preparation

… and there could be many more reasons but my question is are these reasons worth enough to miss our cadence.. lose our zeal or destroy team’s reputation?!! Certainly not!

Few of you might be thinking, what’s the big deal, after all it is just a ceremony and we can catch it up in few days/weeks… think again!! In my view, basically people fail to recognize that Iterations (Sprints) are basic building block of entire Agile software development process. So, unless you are aligned at this level, it is almost impossible to align to the PI objectives or at Program or Portfolio level.

Having said that, let’s revise our basics –

What is Iteration (Sprint) Planning?

• Iteration Planning is a team event where based on the priority suggested by Product Owner,  team come together to identify, organize and agree on certain realistic goal(s) that team feels they can achieve and deliver during the sprint/iteration.

When does it occur and for how long?

• When: It typically falls on the very first day in the beginning of the sprint. However, there are people who would prefer to do it on the last day of the previous sprint so that they can make a fresh and clean start from the beginning of next sprint.
• For how long: I would recommend 1 to 1½ hour per week per sprint. That is, if your sprint is 2 weeks long, you keep sprint planning activity for 2-3 hours depending upon your comfort level.

SAFe suggests upto 4 hours of Iteration Planning for 2 weeks sprint.

Who participates the Iteration Planning?

• Simple answer, entire scrum team (Scrum Master, PO & Team)!There could be occasions that few SMEs or architects or business owners might join the meeting to clarify certain things and help team with the planning. If your delivery has dependencies on external supplier or third party vendor, they must be part of the sprint planning meeting to help in deriving the sprint goals, identify/agree on the integration points and other milestones.

Sometime even RTE joins the meeting to see if teams are aligned to PI objectives and also to coach/guide them as necessary.

So what is the recipe of successful Iteration planning anyways?

To be continued…
Check out: Iteration a.k.a Sprint Planning: Part 2