Sprint Planning
Description
This is a meeting led by the Scrum Master (or, in their absence, a developer) that the Product Owner and the developers must attend, and at which other people involved in the project may also be present.
It can last up to a full working day, depending on the volume or complexity of the Product Backlog items (user stories) to be included in the next increment.
The meeting must answer three questions:
1.- Why is this sprint valuable?
The Product Owner explains how the product can increase its value with the result of the upcoming sprint. This question determines the Sprint Goal.
2.- What can be done in the sprint?
Once the increase in value expected by the Product Owner has been shared, the developers determine which Product Backlog items they will carry out. During this process, backlog items may be refined if they need further detail or explanation.
3.- How will the selected work be carried out?
This step may be optional; it is recommended for less experienced teams. It can be beneficial for developers to break down each story in the sprint into tasks of one working day or less. This helps build a better sense of what different types of stories involve, and makes it possible to visualize the sprint's progress day by day.
Structure
It is recommended to structure the meeting in two parts of similar length, separated by a break:
- What will be delivered at the end of the sprint.
- How the increment will be achieved, estimating the necessary requirements with story points or however the team sees fit.
First half: Why is this sprint valuable and what can be done in it?
The Product Owner is responsible for the presentation in this first half of the meeting.
- They present the highest-priority user stories, explaining what is needed and what they expect can be developed in the next sprint.
- If the backlog has changed significantly since the previous meeting, they explain the reasons behind those changes. The goal is for everyone to understand, in sufficient detail, the increment the sprint is intended to deliver.
- The presentation should be open to questions, and clarifications may be requested. Any developer can put forward suggestions, changes, and alternative solutions, and modify the backlog accordingly.
- This meeting is a key moment in Scrum for encouraging the cross-pollination of ideas and adding value to the product vision.
- After reordering and reconsidering the stories in the backlog, the team defines the "Sprint Goal": a sentence that sums up the value that will be delivered to the customer. Crafting this statement together during the meeting ensures that the whole team understands and shares the purpose of the work.
Second half: how will the increment be achieved?
This second part should be considered a "team meeting", in which all developers must be present and they themselves break down, estimate, and assign the work.
The Product Owner's role is to answer questions and check that the developers understand and share their goal.
- The team builds the Sprint Backlog and breaks down the stories that need a greater level of detail into smaller units.
- The priority stories or tasks for the first few days are established.
- Once this is done, the developers self-assign responsibility for the tasks that best fit their profile, following the order of priority and striving to distribute the work evenly.
Sprint Planning in AI-Enabled Teams
In teams that work with generative AI tools, Scrum Manager's guide Scrum en equipos con IA [Scrum in Teams with AI, in Spanish] describes an evolution of planning called Sprint Planning as human/AI attribution: the central activity becomes explicitly deciding which work each type of intelligence (human or artificial) does.
- The product architect presents the prioritized backlog items for the sprint.
- The team classifies each task according to the three levels: automated (AI with minimal supervision), human (requires judgement or context that AI cannot provide), or review and integration (human work on AI output).
- For automated tasks, the Definition of Ready for AI is checked: does the agent have everything it needs?
- The specs needed for the automated tasks are written or refined.
- The sprint is planned explicitly including the review and integration tasks (R&I), not just the generation tasks.
- The Sprint Goal is set with a strategic focus.
Filling the sprint only with AI generation tasks without reserving enough capacity for human review causes the sprint to collapse: all the code is "generated," but no one has been able to review it. Explicitly planning the R&I tasks is what prevents this bottleneck.
Preconditions
The organization has identified and allocated the resources needed to carry out the sprint.
- The highest-priority user stories in the Product Backlog are already "ready", with a sufficient level of specificity and a prior estimate of the work they require.
- The developers have sufficient knowledge of the technologies used and of the product's business to make estimates and to understand the business concepts presented by the Product Owner.
Inputs
- Product Backlog.
- Product developed in previous increments (except in sprint 0).
- Team velocity or throughput in the last sprint, as a basis for estimating the amount of work.
- The customer's business circumstances and the technological environment used, and the value the Product Owner expects to obtain.
Outputs
Common mistake
Planning without prior refinement. If the stories are not sufficiently ready before the meeting (lacking acceptance criteria, with unresolved dependencies, or of unknown size), Sprint Planning turns into a refinement and estimation session that consumes all the available time without producing a realistic commitment. Prior refinement is a precondition for planning, not an alternative to it.
Resources
📄 Scrum Master v.4.0Free download (in Spanish) · Scrum Manager
📄 Product Owner v.2.0Free download (in Spanish) · Scrum Manager
📄 Scrum Master en equipos con IA [Scrum Master in Teams with AI]Free download (in Spanish) · Scrum Manager
See also
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