Iteration a.k.a Sprint Planning: Part 2

Continued from Iteration a.k.a Sprint Planning: Part 1

Before jumping directly to the recipe, let’s checkout the ingredients first! 😊

What are the ingredients of successful Iteration planning?

Here is the list of ingredients for successful Iteration Planning; So as a "Chef", Scrum Master must keep all these items handy. Read through them and you will realize that getting this list ready requires a good amount of homework.

• Team’s alignment to the PI Objectives
• Team’s understanding and alignment to PI Objective is one of the most vital part of successful iteration planning. Execution is seamless when team understands the big picture and what they are trying to achieve in upcoming iteration.

• Team’s PI Plan backlog
• This is team’s backlog that was created/planned during the PI planning i.e. list of user stories or PBIs (Product Backlog Iteam’s) that team considered during the Big Room Planning (PI planning).

• Ability to adapt change in priority
• Here is our chance to show “Agility in action”. Due to market condition or business priorities or any other internal/external factors there might be change in the priorities. Check the pulse, how flexible is team to adapt change in priorities?

• Prioritized and refined backlog
• Readiness of prioritized and refined backlog. This is litmus test of PO role. This shows how connected PO is with the Business/Product Management group and team. Frequent and healthy discussions with Business/Product Management Group would indicate early signs of any changes in priority and good connect with the team would result in more clear and refined user stories. Good question to ask - Do the user stories that we are about to consider for upcoming iteration meets the DOR (Definition of Ready)?

• Understanding the value that team would deliver by the end of the Iteration
• Team should be able to correlate all the prioritized user stories in the backlog and should be able to understand the value that they would be delivering as a team towards the end of the iteration. Clarity on value is important. What’s the fun in delivering something that doesn’t have any value to the customer?

• Well defined Iteration goals
• This goes hand in hand with “understanding the value”, this is my personal favorite and I have seen that almost 90% team doesn’t follow this. Team must come-up with written iteration objective in simple terms that brings clarity and focus. These written objectives should be communicated to all the stakeholders involved.

• Team’s velocity and capacity
• Iteration commitment should not be based on pure emotions, it should be backed with the facts. Taking a look at historical velocity of the team will give fair idea about the trends in the past and would help in committing to the realistic goals.

• Capacity is another factor that team should consider. This would include team member’s / SMEs / architect’s allocation to the project, availability i.e. vacations/off days etc.

• Team Capabilities
• Reality check – Does team have required capabilities/skill set to undertake upcoming user stories. If yes, to what level, if no, then what can be done about it? You want to hire/loan from other project?

• Spillover work from previous sprint
•  Important one and many times overlooked as team is more focused towards upcoming new backlog items. There could be some spillover tasks from previous iteration that might take away some of the team’s capacity.

• Additional tasks, rework, User stories coming out as a result of defects, refactoring etc.
• Tasks resulting from defect, refactoring or addressing NFRs needs to be considered during Iteration planning.

• New backlog items based on feedback from previous demo
• Completing the feedback loop from previous demo, there could be new backlog items sprouted out from the previous system demo.

• Backlog items from Retro
• Considering the backlog item(s) those were resulting from “Improvement ideas” and “what did not go well” shows the signs of team’s maturity.

Once you (as a Scrum Master) are ready with the ingredients (the above list) and have done your homework... next comes the how part - The recipe!!

To be continued….