agile insight

Sprint Planning is the activity that Agile teams perform to identify the features to be worked on during a sprint. A planning meeting takes place at the beginning of every sprint in which the team discusses the highest remaining prioritized stories or backlog items and breaks them down into specific tasks and tests and estimates the effort to complete them. Velocity and the teams past performance are used to determine the amount of work the team schedules into the sprint and commits to. Team members typically sign up for initial tasks during the meeting and then pick up additional tasks during the sprint.

V1 Sprint Planning Step-by-Step

Establish a Project Schedule

Sprint Scheduling is the first step in the Sprint Planning process. Sprint Scheduling allows the project team to select a list of backlog items to be delivered within the sprint. Sprint Scheduling can also optionally be used to schedule work on specific defects within the sprint.

• Select Sprint Planning in the main menu and the Sprint Scheduling page in the sub-menu.

• Set project context to the appropriate scheduling project.

• If not already done, assign or create a new iteration schedule for the project.

• Enter sprints by selecting Add.

(Optional) Plan Expected Team Member Capacity

• If not already done, enable Capacity Planning in the system by selecting Administration in the main menu and Configuration in the sub-menu and turning on the feature using the System page.

• Select Sprint Planning in the main menu and the Capacity Planning page in the sub-menu.

• Use the historical reporting to gauge each team member's historical capacity and factor in any known impacts (training, holidays, etc.) for the upcoming iterations.

• Enter capacity for each team member in terms of Detail Estimate expected to be completed.

Schedule Backlog Items and Defects in Sprints

• Select Sprint Planning in the planning menu and the Sprint Scheduling page in the sub-menu.

• Assign backlog items and, optionally, defects to sprints by clicking on a row in the grid and dragging it up into the appropriate Sprint container above. View the Detailed Listing to see the individual items in the sprint.

• To remove backlog items or defects from sprints, view the Detailed Listing for the sprint container and drag the appropriate row out of the container into the surrounding space.

• To move backlog items or defects from one sprint to another, view the Detailed Listing for the current sprint and drag the appropriate row to another sprint in the display.

Activate Current Sprint

• Activate sprints to be used in planning by selecting the Activate action in the container.

Detail, Estimate and Assign Backlog Items, Defects, Tasks to Members

• Select Sprint Planning in the main menu and the Detail Planning page in the sub-menu.

• Select Plan Story to add a set of tasks and tests.

• Define Detail Estimates for your tasks and tests and identify which team member(s) has signed up as owner of each.

• Once changes have been made, select Apply to save the changes.

Verify Members Work Load

• To validate team members' work loads, select Member Planning in the Sprint Planning sub-menu, and make changes to ownership if appropriate.

• View any unowned workitems in the No Owners list at the bottom of the page.

(Optional) Manage Issues

• (Optional) Review and manage issues identified by the team that can hamper team performance or delivery.

• Determine whether any issues require specific work to be done in this sprint. Generate a backlog item if needed.

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