Improve your Sprint Planning with this simple tool

Too many stakeholders attending your Sprint Planning can spoil your day… and your sprint! Use this quick check to recognize whether you have issues that need attention.

Pictured issues: Too long, too many attendees (Stakeholders).

The purpose of Sprint Planning is to identify a business objective for the next sprint and figure out how to achieve it. If this event is too long, then you probably need to spend more time on backlog refinement. If it is too short, you are probably over-specifying the backlog items and/or not having discussions around the sprint goals.

The presence of influential stakeholders, especially senior management who can overrule the Product Owner, is a sign that the Product Owner is not empowered to make decisions about the product.

Possible Improvements: Sprint Planning is only for the Scrum Team. Use caution when inviting others, especially influential stakeholders. Ensure you identify a clear and compelling Product Goal, then use Sprint Goals to identify the best step forward each sprint.

Useful and Wasteful Meetings

This uses the updated version of the Useful and Wasteful Meetings graphic that I posted on Monday. An event’s position depends on the quality and value of the meeting. Further to the right or further up indicates the meeting produces a valuable result / is a good use of your time.

The size of the circle depends on the number of attendees and the color depends on the time consumed. Bigger is more people, more towards magenta is more time consuming. Both are a sign that the meeting is expensive