Stories by Easy Agile

Keeping stakeholders in the loop is one of the key responsibilities of a product owner. A ton of work goes on behind the scenes before stakeholders can be presented with information about a product's deliverables and timeline. If sprints are your framework for getting work done and projecting delivery dates, the agile development team needs a way to make sure it's working through the product backlog at the right pace. The sprint burndown chart can show you the way.

In this post, we’ll talk about how to use a sprint burndown chart to monitor if your team is on track to complete its work and how putting user stories into sprints and epics generates even greater insights via user story maps.

What is a sprint burndown chart?

Image credit: Atlassian

First, a review: A sprint is a fixed period of time — typically between two and four weeks — that an agile software development team uses to complete a defined set of work.

A sprint burndown chart is a visual comparison of how much work has been completed during a sprint and the total amount of work remaining. It helps measure a Scrum team's progress, and it provides an easy view of whether the team needs to make any adjustments to complete its work for the current sprint iteration.

A burndown chart is a graph with a y-axis and x-axis 📉. The vertical axis measures the total amount of work that the team estimates it will complete during its current sprint. The horizontal axis shows the number of days remaining until the end of the sprint. On the chart are two lines: the actual work line (a line that represents the team's progress) and the ideal work line (a straight line from the top of the y-axis to the end of the x-axis).

You want your actual work line to follow your ideal work line as closely as possible. This would mean that work is being completed incrementally and at such a rate that it can be completed by the end of the sprint. Sprint goal achieved. 👍

A good practice for a team's product owner is to review the burndown chart on a daily basis. Doing so will allow you to detect if there are any progress issues happening in the sprint. For example, if your actual work line is trending above the ideal work line, then too much work remains to be completed by the end of the sprint at the current pace. We'll break down a few reasons why this may be happening later in the post. 😉

The sprint burndown chart is also a great tool to use during a sprint retrospective. Looking at this as a team can help generate talking points to discuss around the sprint retrospective's three key questions: What went well in the sprint? What didn't go as well as we hoped? How can we get better in the next sprint?

A primer on estimation methods

To measure effort on the vertical axis, we need to choose a metric.

Historically, traditional software teams used time to estimate the effort needed to complete a task or a project. For example, "I think it will take me three days to finish that user story." However, this approach can be risky because people tend to underestimate the amount of time it will take to finish a project.

The unit of measure on your sprint burndown chart's y-axis will depend on your estimation metric of choice. Let's review two common ones employed by agile sprint teams.

Ideal days

An ideal day is an estimate by a software developer of how many uninterrupted days it will take to complete a task. Assuming an ideal workday is eight hours of interruption-free work, the estimate could be stated as, "That user story will take me two ideal days." A benefit of this approach is that it accounts for work disruptions; however, it can be problematic because it often positions estimates as best-case scenarios.

Story points

Agile teams use story points as a relative estimate of effort as opposed to a time-based approach. Instead of saying, "I think this task will take me two days to finish," you would state, "I think this task is worth two story points." In this estimation technique, two story points are twice the effort than one story point.

Teams can use ideal days as a baseline to calibrate their story point estimates. For example, one ideal day can be equivalent to one story point, two ideal days to two story points, and so on.

A main benefit of using story points to estimate is that it allows teams to focus on relative measures of effort instead of thinking about how long it will take to finish a task.

Why your sprint burndown might be off track

A perfect actual burndown line is like Bigfoot — if it's been witnessed, it's probably a hoax. 😂

No team can perfectly estimate its work and develop at the exact pace represented by the ideal line. That said, if you notice large differences between your actual line and the ideal line (i.e., your actual line is much higher or lower than the ideal line), a number of things might be occurring:

• The team over- or under-committed to the amount of work at sprint planning
• Story points were added to or removed from the sprint after it started (scope creep)
• The estimated effort for some user stories is off

As a product owner, when you notice something that's off about your line after your daily review of your chart, you should mention that to your team members. The daily stand up is a perfect time to do so.

User stories and epics provide the big picture

User stories describe how a functional part of a product will work from a user's perspective. The common format of a user story reads, “As a [user role], I want to [user activity] so that I can [user goal].” For example, one might read, “As a new customer, I want to sign up for this product so that I can create my profile.”

User stories are placed in sprints to show what work (from the user's perspective) will be finished and by when. They can also be placed in epics to group them into themes within a product. Epics are widely used by agile teams to represent the high-level activity users will accomplish while using a product.

In our example above, an epic can capture all of the user stories that center around user signup, such as signing up, adding payment information, creating a user profile, and configuring notification settings.

If the sprint burndown indicates that the team is off track for a given sprint, then a combined view of sprints and epics can help you determine what impact that might have in the big picture. And, as we’ll see next, an interactive user story map can fix the problem.

User story maps: A view of epics and sprints

A sprint burndown chart is one of the handiest tools an agile software development team can use to make sure they're working and delivering at a solid pace. The burndown chart shows if any adjustments need to be made to your sprint.

User story maps provide another level of insights into team progress by:

• Showing sprints as vertical swimlanes
• Displaying epics as columns that represent the user journey through the product

This combination of swimlanes and columns unflattens your sprint backlog. It visualizes what the team will deliver and by when.

With Easy Agile User Story Maps for Jira, you can supercharge your ability to make adjustments to your sprint. It can help you:

• Create new user stories
• Edit story points on a user story
• Assign items in the backlog to an epic and a sprint

With this tool, teams can view their sprint statistics at a glance and take action. They can ensure they don't overcommit and that they're on track to achieving their sprint goals. It’s the most comprehensive user story map solution in the Jira marketplace for taking action to adjust your sprints from a big-picture viewpoint.

The retrospective is a critical part of the agile process, providing an outlet for teams to discuss how they can improve. A sprint retrospective comes at the end of each sprint and offers the team an opportunity to assess their processes.

What went well? What didn’t go so well? What does the team need to do to improve next time? Agile is all about learning and iterating. Every time you complete a sprint, there are lessons to be learned. Agile continually takes what a team learns — the good, the bad, and the bland — and turns those experiences into actionable improvements.

This post will dig into sprint retrospectives, including the benefits, how they fit within the Scrum process, how to run an effective sprint retrospective meeting, and common mistakes to avoid.

The purpose of the sprint retrospective

The sprint retrospective is a dedicated time for team discussion. The time is allotted at the end of each sprint so that all team members can examine what went well and what needs to change. It’s all part of the greater agile methodology of continually improving your processes as you learn more. There’s no one set way of doing things, and there’s always room to become more efficient and effective.

A sprint retrospective:

• Encourages a continuous improvement mindset
• Creates a safe space for sharing positive and constructive feedback
• Gives everyone on the team an opportunity to express thoughts, ideas, and experiences
• Provides feedback in real-time after each sprint
• Brings the team together around common goals
• Exposes any issues from the previous sprint that are holding the team back
• Informs leadership of success and potential roadblocks
• Helps product owners make decisions for the next sprint planning
• Sets the team on a positive path for moving into the next sprint

How the sprint retrospective fits within the Scrum process

The type of retrospective you hold depends on the type of sprint or agile methodology your team practices. One of the most common methodologies in software development is the Scrum framework.

A Scrum team has three types of roles:

• Product Owner
• Scrum Master
• Development team

At the beginning of each Scrum, the product owner decides which items from the overall product backlog are moved to the sprint backlog to be completed over the upcoming 2-4 week sprint. The exact sprint timeframe is set in advance.

The Scrum is made up of four distinct ceremonies or events:

• Sprint planning
• Daily Scrum or stand-ups
• Sprint review
• Sprint retrospective

After planning is complete and the team knows which backlog items they are going to tackle for the current sprint, the work begins. The team checks in throughout the sprint via a daily scrum or stand-up meeting. This quick but essential check-in allows the Scrum team to discuss their progress and address any potential roadblocks on a daily basis.

The sprint review meeting takes place at the end of the sprint; it’s an opportunity for Scrum team members to showcase the work accomplished during the sprint. This could be an internal presentation or a more formal demo to stakeholders.

Last comes the incredibly important Scrum retrospective. During this time, the team can discuss what went well and what could be improved so the upcoming sprint can run more efficiently. Anything that’s learned along the way or discovered in the retrospective is brought into the next sprint planning session. This Scrum process repeats until there are no more product backlog items or the product is complete.

How to run an effective sprint retrospective meeting

The retrospective is a critical part of the agile process that should be treated with care and respect. Go in with a plan. Winging it might get you by, but everyone will get more out of the process if the person or people leading the retrospective is prepared.

Use our strategies below to run effective retrospectives that everyone looks forward to.

1. Ensure everyone’s voice is heard

The loudest voices in a sprint retrospective often get the most attention and speaking time, but they don’t necessarily have better insights than anyone else. Each person involved in the sprint process should be given an opportunity to speak.

If you find a few people are dominating the conversation or that some people never contribute, switch up your strategy to include everyone. Go around the room one by one with a question that each person needs to answer, such as “What do you think went well in this sprint?” or “What was your biggest challenge?”

2. Start, stop, continue

The 'Start, Stop, Continue' retrospective format can be expressed in many forms, but the general practice is the same. At the end of a sprint, you decide what you want to start doing, what you want to stop doing, and what you want to continue doing as you move into your next sprint. It’s a simple format that covers both what went well and what didn’t go so well.

Other versions of this exercise include the Rose Bud Thorn exercise, where participants share something positive, a budding opportunity, and a negative to improve upon. There’s also the Anchors and Sails exercise, where participants share what put wind in their sails (went well) and what anchored them down.

3. Establish specific action items

The retrospective is a waste of time if you don’t leave with specific action items. What is your team going to do about the issues brought up in the meeting? Ensure you keep track of the issues and the positive feedback people provide so that you can turn them into actionable tasks or goals before the meeting is complete.

You can’t implement absolutely every change that is brought up, but the discussion should give you a place to start. Work with the team to figure out what changes will provide the most impact. You can use an impact effort matrix or similar agile tools to make informed choices.

4. Retrospective the retrospective

Every now and again, take the time to review your retrospective. Ask for feedback from all team members on how the process could improve. What would make the experience easier on the team? What would they like to see implemented? What hasn’t been working during your recurring retros?

Wow, that’s getting a little meta, but it’s an important step. You need to continually assess your retrospective as well to make sure you’re getting the most out of the experience.

One thing to watch for: When people are bored, they engage less, which means it’s important to switch things up. You don’t want your retrospective process to run stagnant or lose its effectiveness.

5. Review action items at the next sprint retrospective

Make sure the hard work of your retrospective pays off. At the beginning of the next retrospective, take a small bit of time to review your previous action items. What goals and action items did you leave the last retrospective with? Did you accomplish what you set out to do, or do you still need to work at it?

Common retrospective mistakes to avoid

Avoid these common mistakes when running sprint retrospective meetings:

❌ Allowing a few people to dominate the conversation

❌ Not empowering softer voices

❌ Jumping to conclusions without a thorough discussion

❌ Asking the same questions over and over without mixing things up

❌ Forgetting about or not implementing the action items of the previous retrospective

❌ Skipping a retrospective due to lack of time or resources

❌ Forgetting about stakeholder and customer needs

❌ Failing to improve upon your retrospective process

Put your retrospective ideas into action with Easy Agile TeamRhythm

Sprint retrospectives help the entire team learn from each experience and improve. Doing them effectively means evaluating the retrospective itself, empowering voices, and listening to them.

We’re passionate about putting the needs of the customer first and foremost. Easy Agile builds products specifically designed for Jira users to help agile teams work more efficiently and effectively.

Easy Agile TeamRhythm supports the work of your agile team from planning right through to retrospective, encouraging continuous improvement so you're always getting better at what you do, and delivering better for your customers.

TRY EASY AGILE TEAMRHYTHM FOR FREE

One of the core functions of an agile software development team is effort estimation. You can't properly prioritize a product backlog without first having an idea of the amount of work it will take to finish each of its user stories. One agile estimation technique is planning poker. Agile development is a collaborative pursuit, and planning poker is a consensus-building exercise that gets your entire team involved in the estimation process.

Software development teams use planning poker to assign effort (for example, story points or ideal days) to items in their product backlog. Sometimes also called Scrum poker, it's a gamified way to build consensus by allowing all of the Scrum team members to participate in the estimation process. Physical or digital poker cards are used to facilitate a collaborative planning session. ♠️

Here, we give you a how-to guide to planning poker. First, we'll show you how to play it in the context of a sprint planning meeting. Second, we'll look at some of its benefits as an estimation technique. Then, we'll see why planning poker can be used in product roadmap planning. It can help get your stakeholders involved in a consensus-building estimation session around your product's customer themes.

Playing planning poker — agile collaboration

One of the critical activities for agile teams during a sprint planning session is estimating the amount of effort it will take to complete each user story in the sprint. A common way to do this is to allow a single person, like the product owner or a software developer, to assign story points to each user story. Alternatively, you can use planning poker as an estimating technique to get the whole team involved.

A planning poker session is a fun and collaborative way to gamify sprint planning. After all, the Agile Manifesto highlights the value of collaboration and interactions in software development. Planning poker is a great way to adhere to those agile principles.

So, it's sprint planning day. When your team members are gathered, do the following:

1. Set the stage. If your team is new to planning poker, explain the process. They'll use playing cards to estimate the size of each user story in the next sprint iteration. The product owner or Scrum master will act as the moderator, all team members will play, and there will be plenty of room for discussion and questions throughout the session.
2. Hand out the poker cards. Give each player an identical set of numbered cards. We recommend using the Fibonacci sequence — 0, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, etc. (To read why this sequence is so effective for estimating, see Mike Cohn of Mountain Goat Software's explanation.) And by the way, if you can't meet in person and are planning as a distributed team, then you can try planningpoker.com as a way to conduct your session remotely. 😃
3. Read a user story. The moderator reads the team members a story from the sprint. They should provide as much detail and context as possible to help the team estimate the work involved.
4. Discuss the story as a group. First, let the team ask any clarifying questions about the user story that was just read. Then, open the floor for discussion — each team member can describe what it will take to get the story done, any dependencies blocking the work, and who on the team might need to be involved in its effort.
5. Play cards. Now, it's time to play the game. Each team member submits a card (face down!) to the moderator. When all the playing cards are submitted, the moderator reveals what each one estimates. In an ideal world, all of the numbers match! This means there is perfect team consensus about the effort required for that sprint item and you can move on to the next one.
6. Discuss and estimate again. Most likely, there will be some difference in the initial estimates. This gives each team member a great opportunity to provide support for why their estimates were either higher or lower than the others. Then, you can do another round of submitting and revealing cards to see if there is further consensus. Tip: Let the moderator decide when to end the round. Remember, you don’t need a perfect story point consensus for every user story.

You did it! Your sprint is planned, and the entire team gained a shared understanding of how each member perceived the effort and work needed to get each user story done.

The benefits of planning poker agile estimation

As an agile estimating and planning technique, planning poker has its pros:

• It encourages collaboration. As a cross-functional team, it's important that each team member has a voice during the estimation process. As each estimator provides their perspective on a user story, the group better understands how they arrived at their conclusion.
• It drives consensus amongst your entire team. With each round of planning poker, the team’s estimates are more likely to converge.
• It has documented merit as a more accurate way to estimate (versus a single person providing the estimates).

In a study published by ScienceDirect, planning poker was used to estimate half of the work of a software project. There were two discoveries. First, planning poker estimates were statistically higher than individual estimates. Second, the poker estimates turned out to be more accurate than the individual estimates for the same tasks.

Planning poker for roadmap planning

Planning poker is a fun and effective way to gain an accurate estimate for your product backlog items. But, why not also use it for strategic planning sessions like roadmap planning?

In our definitive guide to product roadmaps, we discuss how roadmaps focus on big-picture, customer-centric themes, as opposed to individual features. We also highlight that developing your product roadmap should be a collaborative process (just like sprint planning) and should involve multiple stakeholders.

So, go back to the steps above. Think about how you can use planning poker cards to get your relevant stakeholders to estimate the relative size of each customer theme in your product roadmap. It will be a fun way to get a big-picture consensus of your organization's product vision.

Grouping your themes

Planning poker is a collaborative way to get the whole team to help estimate the work involved in a user story. It drives consensus and tends to be more accurate.

If you use Jira to conduct your sprint planning meetings, you already have a tool that organizes your user stories and product backlog. As you try planning poker in your next product roadmap planning meeting, give Easy Agile User Roadmaps for Jira a look. It provides the ability to group Jira items into themes that your stakeholders can easily see. Happy playing!

The perfect product launch is an elusive beast. As the launch date nears, the pressure mounts while the product manager deals with last-minute changes, bugs infesting the Jira board, and some network or server issue that threatens to ruin everything. You might have the perfect product management framework, yet the journey to the finish line is usually anything but elegant.

Whether you're launching a new product or releasing a new feature, product managers thrive on the excitement, exhilaration — and exhaustion! -— that come with the job, particularly surrounding significant releases. Even with careful planning, an exquisite product roadmap, and a neatly refined backlog, the final moments before launch always seem to end in a fight to the finish.

Before you place all the blame on your product management framework, or worse, your product team (Nah, you would never do that!), take a step back and breathe. We’ll walk through some ideas on how you can relieve some of the chaos on launch day. (Let's be honest, no drama on launch day would be just a little disappointing.)

Pre-launch planning

If you're using an agile product development methodology like Scrum or Kanban, you're already ahead of the game in terms of planning. Experienced PMs will have a roadmap with t-shirt sized epics and stories carefully laid out using established prioritization methods.

Based on your product strategy, you may choose to release new product features to production after each iteration. But sometimes, the product marketing plan requires a bigger splash. In this case, you can take advantage of press releases, major advertising events, or other high-visibility marketing opportunities.

Planning how you intend to release the product is as important as deciding what will be part of the release. Product development teams need to coordinate with product marketing to consider the following:

• Will you do a soft launch to a limited audience?
• Do you need to pre-release specific components to test pricing, marketing copy, or usability?
• Will you leave pre-releases in the wild until launch, or will you test for a specific time period and then pull them back?
• Do you have a hard date on which you must release (ex., Super Bowl Sunday), or is there some flexibility in the timing?

Answers to these questions drive the release strategy, which is then factored into your release plan and execution.

When it comes to determining what features to include in your product launch, you can choose from a variety of product management frameworks or use a hybrid approach and mix and match the methodologies to fit your situation.

The Kano model, AARRR (acquisition, activation, retention, referral, and revenue) theory, and OKRs (objectives and key results) all provide product management frameworks. These help product owners plan feature releases that align with the product vision and realize profitability objectives.

Remember: It's always a good idea to have a Plan B or even a Plan C to allow for unexpected events or issues that tend to rear their heads just before a launch. Atlassian has a great product launch template to get you started if you're working on your first release.

Launch day planning

A launch day checklist is your best friend on launch day. You might even want or need more than one list. A product launch has too many moving parts across too many teams for you to rely on memory alone. Your marketing, IT, and product teams will all play a role in the launch, performing necessary activities for their roles.

Particularly if this might be the first product launch in your startup, checklists help product teams think through details with clear heads well before launch day. The best plan is to ask each team to create their checklist and then meet as a group to align and coordinate each task's timing. Some launch day tasks are independent, ready to be tackled at any time. In contrast, others will be more time-sensitive or dependent on something else happening.

For teams with a few launches under your belt, these checklists hold the lessons learned from prior releases and, when updated after each launch, turn your team into a smooth-as-silk, product-launching machine.

Post-launch planning

As you know, a product launch is not the end game. Once the dust settles and everyone has gotten some sleep, you need to measure how the product performs. Planning how to measure the product’s initial key metrics allows product managers to communicate results to stakeholders early and as often as necessary.

Measuring key product metrics after a launch validates your decision-making of the product features, confirms you built the right product for the market, and helps you ask and answer the right questions when planning more feature builds and marketing strategies.

Important key product indicators following the launch can include total sales, top attribution channels, activation stats, and affinity sales. If you're launching a new feature within an existing product, you'll also want to keep an eye on retention numbers. A spike in churn rates could indicate a problem with the user experience or the underlying technology solution.

Beyond measuring the results of your release, you'll also need to prepare what's next. After your development team gets some shut-eye, they'll come back to work looking for their next assignment. You'll need to have your backlog ready for the next sprint planning ceremony, and then, it's back to business as usual. There may also be some immediate customer feedback that needs to be actioned.

Once you get your team off and running toward the next release, it’s time to take a look at your roadmap. You’ll likely discover new information when customers start using your new product or feature. It’s a good idea to leave some room in the roadmap to take on work discovered during the first few weeks of your launch.

Then there’s one last thing — CELEBRATE!! You and your team worked hard and accomplished something really cool! It’s easy to get caught up in the daily grind toward the next release. Take some time to pat yourselves on the back for a job well done.

Use your product management framework to tackle launch day like a rock star

With some planning and flexibility, you can set up your product team to make launch day look like a walk in the park. And the sooner you get good at this, the better. You'll always be launching something throughout the product lifecycle, from the initial MVP to new features to the end-of-life process.

Thorough roadmapping gets you off to a solid start, and as you get closer to launch day, you'll build out more of the critical details to ensure you don't miss anything. Cross-team coordination is essential, and checklists help open communication channels and get the entire team on the same page.

Early reporting on results builds confidence with stakeholders and is also a great way to show your team the results of their efforts.

Enjoy the adrenaline rush of launch day, but try to eliminate a little of the chaos and stress. As soon as you've launched, it's time to move on to the next thing. That's the nature of product development, and that's why we love it.

Sprints are at the core of agile principles. And they’re how a Scrum team uses a predefined time period to work together towards an agreed-upon goal. A sprint focuses on interaction and collaboration to produce working software. A team has to do a lot of work to maintain their sprint workflows in Jira. Changing task statuses, notifying teammates to sprint changes, and keeping developers’ code changes in sync with Jira tasks can all add up to a lot of manual mouse clicks. 🖱

Many of these manual steps can be automated to save your team effort.

Help your Scrum team with Jira automations

Scrum is a framework for getting agile work done. The Scrum events are:

• Sprint: The time period in which the team works toward their sprint goal (e.g., completing a set amount of user stories from the product backlog). The next sprint starts when the previous one ends.
• Sprint Planning Meeting: A meeting that scopes the amount of effort required for backlog items prioritized by the product owner. The software development team commits to completing that amount of work.
• Daily Scrum: A brief meeting each workday when Scrum team members update each other on the progress of their work within the sprint. It's a time to lend support or unblock another team member who may be stuck on an issue.
• ​Sprint Review: A time for the Scrum team and stakeholders to review the outcomes of the completed sprint and discuss what impacts they have on future sprints.
• Sprint Retrospective: A meeting to find opportunities to improve on the team's agile processes and its interactions with each other.

Which Scrum roles are involved:

• Software Developers: They get the work done but don't want any sprint surprises.
• Product Owner: This person prioritizes the work and sometimes has to make unplanned mid-sprint changes.

Every player on the software development team, from startups to established companies, has repetitive tasks they need to perform throughout its sprint events. Because we're all human, when we're sprinting, we sometimes forget to transition the status of issues or do the little things in Jira that keep everyone on the team aware of what's happening in our sprint in real-time.

Automate your sprint workflows with Jira

Have no fear. Jira can help automate typical sprint workflows like task transitions and team notifications. 🤯 Agile project management within software development is a methodology that is conducive to automation. You can link behaviors in your Jira issues to trigger actions from tools like Slack and MS Teams, email, GitHub, Bitbucket, and GitLab.

You can use Jira automations to do things such as:

• Notify team members and stakeholders of any changes to a sprint
• Trigger actions based on task transitions within a sprint iteration
• Keep Jira task and sub-task statuses and story points in sync
• Connect code commits and build statues to Jira issues

Oh my!

If you didn't know these tools existed, here's your chance to learn them.

Automate your way to connectivity

Keep agile teammates in the know

When a sprint begins, it's important the product owner notifies team members if something changes. That way, you can make sure it won't negatively impact your ability to complete your sprint goal.

Communication within agile teams is paramount, and Jira provides ways to automatically notify your scrum team based on rules you set about your sprint. For example, you can send emails or Slack notifications when the status of a task changes.

Task and sub-task coordination

Sub-tasks are a handy feature in Jira. They help you break tasks into smaller steps and track their progress as they're being worked on. Scrum masters encourage this universally in agile, but it can be easy for sub-tasks to get out of sync with their parent tasks. We’ll soon learn a Jira automation to prevent this.

Connect developer code work to Jira issues

Your development team has a lot on its plate during a sprint. Not only does it have to complete all of its user stories — but there's also the mechanics of keeping code commits by developers synced with their associated Jira tickets. And, always remembering to keep these in tune with Jira tickets is burdensome. As you’ll see, there are ways to connect actions taken in GitHub, Bitbucket, and GitLab and update Jira tickets.

Jira automations FTW

Here are our nine favorite Jira automations that streamline our sprint workflow.

1. Notify teammates when a story is added to a sprint

Scope creep (adding new points to a sprint after it starts) is nobody's friend. However, there are times when a product owner needs to pull an item from the product backlog and add it to the current sprint. When this happens, it's best practice to inform the whole team that a change has been made. Use this handy automation template to send an email to your team when backlog items are added to a sprint.

2. Automatically assign a task when its status changes

Some team members need to be made aware when an issue transitions to being on their plate. When an issue’s status switches to In Review, for example, you can auto-assign it to a QA teammate.

3. Celebrate when your sprint is over by sending a Slack message

A lot of work happens during a sprint. Because your next sprint always begins immediately when the current one ends, it's often difficult to find time to celebrate wins. Use this celebration to send a fun Slack message to your team when the final issue in the sprint is completed. You can make sprints fun with automation!

4. Automatically put In Progress issues into the current sprint

There are lots of moving parts when trying to ensure that In Progress Jira issues are visible in the current sprint. Nobody wants hidden work. When a developer moves a task into In Progress, you can automatically assign it to the current sprint.

5. Sum the story points of sub-tasks and update the value of the parent task

Be sure that your story point totals are accurate by automatically summing the points of your sub-tasks and updating the parent task with the value. They'll never be out of sync with each other with this nifty automation rule.

6. Close an issue when all of its sub-tasks are complete

Some people like to work with sub-tasks, which is great. But it's easy to overlook closing a parent task after you've finished your work and closed all of its sub-tasks. Well … you can automatically close a parent task when all of its sub-tasks are complete so this doesn't happen. 🤖

7. Move a task to In Progress when a commit is made

Save your developers time by cutting down on redundant tasks. When a code commit is made, it means a task is being worked on. Connect Jira to your commit repository (GitHub, Bitbucket, or GitLab) so that when a code commit is made, the associated Jira issue moves to In Progress.

8. Add a comment to a ticket when a pull request is made

Adding details to a Jira ticket from a pull request can be a copy-and-paste job — but it doesn't have to be. Use a trigger to add the details from the request into a Jira comment.

9. Notify the development team when a Jenkins build fails

Certain issues can't wait to be realized by the whole team on the next daily stand-up. If your Jenkins build fails, this is an awesome way to let the whole team know by Slack, MS Teams, or email ... right away.

Make agile sprints easy

Automations in Jira make a sprint team’s life easier by cutting down on the manual work needed to keep the mechanics of a sprint running.

You can use modified versions of these automations with Easy Agile to make agile even easier! For example, celebrate roadmap wins by notifying your team when issues are completed in your Easy Agile Roadmaps for Jira, or sync your Jira data fields with your roadmap. There are many ways to mix-and-match rules and triggers to make Jira automations work for you.

Roadmaps help agile teams produce great products. They’re iterative, visual, collaborative, and they can be created directly in Jira. We designed the simplest roadmapping tool for Jira to bring the benefits of roadmaps straight to agile development teams. Use the Easy Agile Roadmaps app to create product roadmap templates that are simple to use, flexible, and integrated directly within Jira.

In a previous post, we shared a quick guide on how to create a Jira roadmap using Easy Agile Roadmaps. If you haven’t used Easy Agile Roadmaps yet, start there to install a free 30-day evaluation and create a product roadmap in Jira.

This post will cover some of the key features of our app, including how to synchronize your roadmap, schedule work from your backlog onto the timeline, create theme swimlanes, and visualize key date milestones.

The benefits of roadmapping

Roadmaps are extremely useful. Here are just a few of the things they can do:

• Provide a big picture vision for agile teams
• Provide a visual summary of the product development process
• Communicate strategic initiatives and business objectives
• Allow for real-time iterations
• Provide a clear time frame to keep product strategy on track
• Ensure short-term goals are met as soon as possible while still keeping an eye on long-term goals
• Help product managers oversee and organize product releases
• Track important release dates and product launches
• Keep everyone up-to-date on broader business goals
• Illustrate both a detailed and high-level overview of deliverables
• Help product managers and team members see dependencies between issues
• Help development teams bring constant value to external stakeholders

Plus, when you create a Jira roadmap, you have quick access to your product plans, and you always know exactly where your roadmap lives — right in our app. No more chasing down Gantt Charts or looking for one-off PowerPoint presentations!

Easy Agile Roadmaps: configuration, themes, markers, and PDF export

We designed the simplest and most flexible roadmapping tool for Jira to help agile teams work better together. Easy Agile Roadmaps create a flexible, iterative, and easy-to-use visual timeline of product development, allowing product owners to sequence the most critical features for customer delivery.

Watch our demo or follow the instructions below to:

• Synchronize Jira start and due date fields
• Schedule issues on the timeline
• Add swimlane themes
• Configure version and date markers
• Export the roadmap as a PDF

Synchronize Jira start and due date fields

We require users to specify which date fields should be mapped directly to the roadmap for a synchronized roadmapping experience. You’ll need to choose your date fields since multiple custom date fields may exist, such as project start and end dates or contract start and end dates.

A Jira administrator is required to map date fields.

Navigate to the Jira administrative cog and click “Manage apps” from the dropdown menu. Down the left-hand side of the manage apps page, find “Easy Agile Roadmaps,” and click configuration. Here, you can select the desired date field.

In each dropdown menu, you will see all of the available date fields to choose from on your Jira instance. Next, ensure that both of those date fields are associated with the screens used by your product teams.

Once installed, Easy Agile Roadmaps can be found in the project sidebar for every Scrum and Kanban agile board. Clicking on the roadmap icon in the project sidebar will load your roadmap for your selected board. From the dropdown menu in the top right corner, you have the option to view your roadmap from a weekly, monthly, or quarterly timeline scale.

Schedule issues on the timeline

After loading your roadmap, two theme swimlanes are present on the roadmap. The first is an example roadmap titled “My theme” that can be renamed. The second is a swimlane called “issues without themes.” Any issues populated within your selected date fields will appear on the timeline in a swimlane titled “issues without themes,” located at the bottom of your roadmap.

You can use the drag-and-drop functionality to move any issue to a different theme or place it on the timeline.

Issues from your board that have not been populated with start and due date fields can be added to your roadmap from the issues panel. Click on the blue “Issues” button in the top right corner of the roadmap, and simply drag an issue from the panel onto the timeline to schedule it on your roadmap.

Issues can be resized to show their expected start date, duration, and end date. To resize an issue, drag the left or right end to the desired date.

Create swimlane themes

You can slice your roadmap using theme swimlanes. These are a flexible way of grouping work and dividing the roadmap into a more visually digestible format. Theme swimlanes can represent anything suitable for your business context, from distinct themes of work to project components. Examples of themes include health and safety, customer onboarding experience, or customer satisfaction and engagement.

To create a new themed swimlane, click the “Create Theme” button located at the top of your roadmap. Name your theme, and press “Submit.” Your new theme will appear above the issues without themes swimlane and can be reordered using the arrows to the right-hand side of its name.

Configure version and date markers

Use Markers to visualize key date milestones and Jira fix versions on your roadmap.

To add Jira fix versions to your timeline, select the “Markers” button from the top of the roadmap. Click “Add Marker” to the fix versions you want to add to your roadmap.

Date markers are a flexible way of representing milestones or events, such as conferences, beta periods, or marketing campaign launches. To create a date marker, select the “Markers” button from the top of the roadmap. Select the option “Add a Date Marker.” Name your date marker or milestone, set the start and end date, and choose the marker color. Use color to signify different types of events and to add another layer of visual organization to your roadmap.

Export the roadmap as a PDF

The roadmap can be exported as a PDF to share with users and stakeholders who don't have access to Jira. To export your roadmap, click on the ellipses menu and select “Export to PDF.”

Select the timeframe you would like to share using the start and end date options, then press “Export.”

Product roadmap template example

Below is an example product roadmap template made with Easy Agile Roadmaps. The roadmap shows product launch dates, events, and overdue tasks with vertical colored Markers. Issues are arranged and scheduled by date in themed swimlanes that further organize the roadmap.

Easy Agile Roadmaps are completely customizable, so you can establish a process that works best for your team and your stakeholders.

How to get the most out of a product roadmap

✅ Utilize swimlane themes to tell a story about the customer journey. Ensure swimlane themes are customer-focused, so you always have their needs top-of-mind.

✅ Think of the roadmap as a living document. It will continue to evolve based on the needs of your team and stakeholders.

✅ Ensure the roadmap is accessible to all stakeholders so that they understand what’s going on and why you are making each decision. If necessary, regularly export the roadmap as a PDF for stakeholders who can’t access Jira to ensure organizational alignment.

✅ Actively collaborate with stakeholders, and involve them in the entire process. This will give you a clear understanding of what work will bring the most value to customers.

We dig deeper and expand on these guiding principles in our Product Roadmap Guide.

Try Easy Agile Roadmaps free for 30 days

Product roadmaps are widely used by agile teams since they simplify product goals and planning with a visual representation of the product journey.

Easy Agile Roadmaps help teams align around a product vision to continually bring value to customers. Complete a product roadmap so you can impress your team and stakeholders before ever making a commitment. Start your 30-day free trial to see what a difference this can make in your process.

If you have additional questions, ask us for an on-demand demo, which covers the features outlined in this post. Or, contact our team at any time with specific questions about any of our Easy Agile apps.

A product backlog represents all of the goals and desired outcomes within the development of a product. They are the specific tasks a team hopes to complete when they set out to design or improve upon a product.

What makes a product backlog so effective is its agile nature. Backlogs are in constant evolution, changing and adapting based on the current needs of stakeholders and customers. To keep a backlog up-to-date and in its most effective form, it needs to be continuously refined and adapted. This process takes time, but there are simple, powerful strategies for maintaining a quality backlog.

A good product backlog has four characteristics. It is:

• Detailed appropriately
• Estimated
• Emergent
• Prioritized

We’ll cover all of these attributes in detail, including how you can ensure your product backlog is in good health. But first, let’s get on the same page about product backlogs and the refinement process.

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What is a product backlog?

A product backlog is a prioritized and ordered list that represents the work to be completed by a development team. Backlog items are derived from the product roadmap and are organized based on the tasks that are most vital — the ones that will make the biggest impact at any given time.

Backlog items represent what it will take to develop a new product or improve an existing one with new features. It’s all of the work a team will tackle in the future, but it’s also a flexible, living organism that evolves as a development team learns more about the product and its stakeholders.

The product owner is in charge of ordering and prioritizing backlog items, placing high-priority items at the top. They are also responsible for backlog refinement, which ensures all backlog items are organized, have appropriate details, and are ready for any upcoming sprint planning.

Product backlogs vs. sprint backlogs

Sprint backlogs are quite similar to product backlogs, but they serve a different, more specific purpose. At the beginning of a Scrum, the product owner arranges the product backlog items that are to be completed by the Scrum team in that sprint.

The Scrum product backlog represents a small subset of the overall product backlog. The product backlog is the entire bottle of wine, while the sprint backlog is the glass of wine you’re going to tackle next. In this analogy, the Scrum master is the sommelier, providing guidance, context, and feedback throughout the sprint.

At the end of the sprint, a sprint review is conducted with the stakeholders to better understand what to tackle next. Backlog items that weren’t completed may be pushed back into the larger product backlog to get to at a later date or during the next sprint. Another sprint planning meeting will prepare the team to tackle the next batch of backlog items.

Why does a backlog need refinement?

Backlog refinement isn’t a luxury task reserved for when you get a chance to tidy up. Refinement is a key part of product backlog management that ensures a backlog always has the most recent, up-to-date information.

Refining the backlog prepares it for the development team, saving time in the long-run. The process helps to prioritize items and ensures there’s nothing in your backlog that you no longer need.

As you’re well aware, the agile methodology centers around flexibility and the ability to evolve a plan as new information or roadblocks appear. What you thought was important at the beginning of product development may not be necessary anymore, or your stakeholders may have turned you in a completely different direction.

Product backlog refinement includes:

• Adding detail to high-priority backlog items for greater comprehension.
• Improving and reviewing estimates.
• Removing items that are no longer relevant to the product.
• Adding items based on new stakeholder feedback.
• Making adjustments based on the most recent bug fixes.
• Prioritizing items that bring customer value.
• Ordering backlog items to deliver the most impact over the next sprint.

Backlog refinement takes time, but it’s well worth the effort to have a healthy, up-to-date backlog that’s always ready for the development team.

DEEP: The key attributes of a good product backlog

Roman Pichler, the author of Agile Product Management with Scrum: Creating Products That Customers Love, developed DEEP to describe the key attributes of a good product backlog. The acronym DEEP helps product owners and development teams understand how to make smart decisions while maintaining a successful backlog.

The concept is applied throughout the product backlog refinement process, which is a critical part of backlog management. Backlog refinement, previously called backlog grooming, is an ongoing process that ensures a backlog is in tip-top shape. We like to think of it like trimming the branches of a plant.

To help a plant grow, you need to prune and trim it. The refinement process adds details where needed and prioritizes items based on the current information a product owner has from team members and stakeholders.

DEEP stands for Detailed appropriately, Estimated, Emergent, and Prioritized.

Following these guidelines and best practices will lead to a quality backlog, which will lead to smooth product development and a successful end result. Let’s dig into each attribute. 🔎

Detailed appropriately

Details matter, especially as a user story rises in priority. As a backlog item gets closer to being completed or moved into a sprint backlog, it requires more detail. Upcoming backlog items should be detailed appropriately, so they can be better understood by the development team. The closer an item is to being completed, the more detail it should have.

On the other hand, items that are lower on the priority list don’t require nearly as much detail. It’s a poor use of time to add details to lower priority items since you never know how the backlog is going to evolve. You could waste a lot of time detailing low-priority items when they might be removed or revised later on in the process.

Estimated

Thorough estimation should be focused on high-priority items that will be tackled soon. As you refine your backlog and add more details to top-priority items, you can improve your estimation. A good option is using story points to zoom in on the details. They can help you accurately and practically reflect the reality of an item from the customer’s perspective.

📘 Read our guide to incorporating user story points to start using this technique.

Since not much is known about them, it’s difficult to properly estimate items that are lower in priority. When you are further down the priority list, your estimation will be more of a guess since you don’t have all of the information yet. In these cases, use a simple agile estimation technique, such as t-shirt sizing (labeling work items as XS, S, M, L, XL) to make a guesstimate. Based on the information you have at that moment in time, make an approximate estimate on the exertion required for that backlog item.

Emergent

The more you learn about the product and its customers, the more you can improve your product backlog. The backlog is a living document that represents your plan at any one given time. It’s not set in stone, and it should see revisions and improvements as you go.

With the information gleaned from retrospectives and stakeholder feedback, you can update the backlog to reflect what you’ve learned along the way. Allow your backlog to evolve, adding, removing, and refining items as needed.

Prioritized

A product backlog needs prioritization. Items at the top are a higher priority, and items toward the bottom are a lower priority. When deciding which items should be prioritized, consider the value each item will provide.

Your team can maximize its efforts by prioritizing the backlog items that will provide the most value to customers at any given time. Since this will change depending on the current needs of your customers, you need to continually adjust and refine your priority order.

Achieve a DEEP product backlog with Easy Agile

Easy Agile is dedicated to helping agile teams work more effectively. We have a suite of Jira apps designed for teams that want to develop products that put the customer at the forefront of decision making.

Easy Agile TeamRhythm transform your flat product backlog, prioritizing based on value to the customer and bringing the customer journey to life. They help teams organize and prioritize user stories while visualizing the customer journey. Keeping your customers embedded in your process will help you make refinement decisions that are in the best interest of the customer, no matter what phase of development you’re in.

Learn more about our agile apps and follow our blog for the latest content for Jira teams.

Software development teams are known for using a wide variety of agile methodologies, approaches, and tools to bring value to customers. Depending on the needs of the team and the product's stakeholders, it’s common for teams to deploy and utilize a combination of software development methodologies.

Most dev teams combine methodologies and frameworks to build their own unique approach to product development. You’ll find there are plenty of overlapping principles from one methodology to the next. The key is choosing a system and working as a team to fine-tune and improve that approach so you can continue to reduce waste, maximize efficiency, and master collaboration.

In this post, we’ll outline and compare the following eight software development processes:

1. Agile software development methodology

2. Waterfall methodology

3. Feature driven development (FDD)

4. Lean software development methodology

5. Scrum software development methodology

6. Extreme programming (XP)

7. Rapid application development (RAD)

8. DevOps deployment methodology

1. Agile software development methodology

Agile is the most common term used to describe development methods. It’s often used as an umbrella term to label any methodology that’s agile in nature, meaning an iterative process that reduces waste and maximizes efficiency.

Most software development methodologies are agile with a strong emphasis on iteration, collaboration, and efficiency, as opposed to traditional project management. It’s like comparing jazz to classical music. 🎷

Traditional, linear management methods, such as the waterfall method we’ll cover below, are like classical music, led by one conductor who has a set plan for how the music should be played. The agile process, on the other hand, is more like jazz, which comes together through collaboration, experimentation, and iteration between band members. It’s adaptive and evolves with new ideas, situations, and directions.

2. The waterfall methodology

The waterfall approach is a traditional methodology that’s not very common in software development anymore. For many years, the waterfall model was the leading methodology, but its rigid approach couldn’t meet the dynamic needs of software development.

It’s more common to see the waterfall method used for project management rather than product development. At the beginning of a project, project managers gather all of the necessary information and use it to make an informed plan of action up front. Usually, this plan is a linear, step-by-step process with one task feeding into the next, giving it the “waterfall” name.

The approach is plan-driven and rigid, leaving little room for adjustments. It’s more or less the opposite of agile, prioritizing sticking to the plan rather than adapting to new circumstances.

3. Feature driven development (FDD)

Feature driven development is also considered an older methodology. Although it uses some agile principles, it’s viewed as the predecessor of today’s agile and lean methodologies.

As the name says, this process focuses on frequently implementing client-valued features. It’s an iterative process with all eyes on delivering tangible results to end users. The process is adaptive, improving based on new data and results that are collected regularly to help software developers identify and react to errors.

This kind of focused agile methodology can work for some teams that want a highly structured approach and clear deliverables while still leaving some freedom for iteration.

4. Lean software development methodology

Lean software development comes from the principles of lean manufacturing. At its core, lean development strives to improve efficiency by eliminating waste. By reducing tasks and activities that don’t add real value, team members can work at optimal efficiency.

The five lean principles provide a workflow that teams use to identify waste and refine processes. Lean is also a guiding mindset that can help people work more efficiently, productively, and effectively.

The philosophies and principles of lean can be applied to agile and other software development methodologies. Lean development provides a clear application for scaling agile practices across large or growing organizations.

5. Scrum software development methodology

Scrum is a system regularly used by software development teams. Like many software development methodologies, Scrum is agile, focusing on a value-driven approach. The Scrum process is based on empiricism, which is the theory that knowledge comes from hands-on experience and observable facts.

One Scrum takes place over a preset amount of time called a sprint. Usually, the time frame is between two to four weeks and the Scrum is at the beginning of the sprint. The goal of each sprint is to yield an imperfect but progressing version of a product to bring to stakeholders so that feedback can be integrated right away into the next sprint.

The specific goals of each sprint are determined by a product owner who orders and prioritizes backlog items (the artifacts that need completion). The sprint process repeats over and over again with the development team adjusting and iterating based on successes, failures, and stakeholder feedback.

Learn more about Scrum — the complete program planning solution for Jira.

6. Extreme programming (XP)

Extreme programming, also called XP, is a methodology based on improving software quality and responsiveness. It’s an agile approach that evolves based on customer requirements; the ultimate goal is producing high-quality results. Quality isn’t just limited to the final product — it applies to every aspect of the work, ensuring a great work experience for developers, programmers, and managers.

Decision-making in extreme programming is based on five values: communication, simplicity, feedback, courage, and respect. The specifics of XP can’t apply to all situations, but the general framework can provide value no matter the context.

7. Rapid application development (RAD)

Rapid application development (RAD), sometimes called rapid application building (RAB), is an agile methodology that aims to produce quality results at a low-cost investment. The process prioritizes rapid prototyping and frequent iteration.

Rapid application development begins with defining the project requirements. From there, teams design and build imperfect prototypes to bring to stakeholders as soon as possible. Prototyping and building repeat over and over through iterations until a product is complete and meets customer requirements.

This is ideal for smaller projects with a well-defined objective. The process helps developers make quick adjustments based on frequent feedback from stakeholders. It’s all about creating quick prototypes that can get in front of users for constructive feedback as soon as possible. This feedback is pulled into the user design so that development decisions are based on the direct thoughts and concerns of those who will use the product.

8. DevOps deployment methodology

The DevOps deployment methodology is a combination of Dev (software development) and Ops (information technology operations). Together, they create a set of practices designed to improve communication and collaboration between the departments responsible for developing a product.

It's an ongoing loop of communication between product developers and Ops teams (IT operations.) Like so many agile processes, it relies on continuous feedback to help teams save time, increase customer satisfaction, improve launch speed, and reduce risks.

The steps of DevOps deployment repeat, aiming to increase customer satisfaction with new features, functionality, and improvements. However, this methodology has some drawbacks. Some customers don’t want continuous updates to their systems once they are satisfied with an end product.

Software development made easy

Most software development teams use a combination of methodologies and frameworks to fit their team size, team dynamics, and the type of work being completed. The key is to use an agile methodology and work together to continually improve your systems as you learn and grow.

Easy Agile is dedicated to helping teams work better together with agile. We design agile apps for Jira with simple, collaborative, and flexible functionality. From team agility with Easy Agile TeamRhythm, to scaled agility with Easy Agile Programs, our apps can help your agile teams deliver better for your customers.

Book a 1:1 demo to learn more about our suite of Jira tools, or contact our team if you have additional questions. We offer a free, 30-day trial, so you can try out our products before making a commitment.

It’s time to get things done and hand over the project to the programmers. But before they get their hands dirty, someone must plan the Scrum sprint or iteration. The Sprint Planning meeting is one of Scrum’s ceremonies, and it's the sprint's opening event. 🎬

Let's walk you through the event and explain how to prepare and hold one successfully. You'll also learn who participates in Sprint Planning and why the meeting is so important.

What's a Sprint Planning meeting?

Sprint Planning is a Scrum meeting. It kicks off a sprint, so it occurs on the first day of a new sprint. If applicable, it should occur after the Sprint Review and the Sprint Retrospective from the previous iteration.

Sprint Planning aims to decide the deliverables for the upcoming sprint and define a plan to develop the work.

The entire Scrum Team (the Product Owner, the Scrum Master, and the Development Team) collaborates during Sprint Planning.

Can you imagine a successful project without planning? 🙅 We can't either, so we don’t start a Scrum sprint without planning it.

To plan a Scrum sprint, you need to decide:

• The sprint's duration — remember that a sprint is a timebox
• The sprint goal, which is its purpose and represents the product increment's value to the customer
• The work that the Development Team can complete during the sprint, what work items the team should do first to achieve the sprint goal, and how long they should take considering the team's capacity

Additionally, Sprint Planning should motivate the team and set realistic expectations.

By the end of the Sprint Planning meeting, the team must produce the following outcomes:

• A shared understanding of the sprint goal. This goal is the guideline for evaluating the Development Team's work once the sprint is over.
• The Sprint Backlog. This artifact represents the conversation between the Development Team and the Product Owner on the to-do work. It's the result of a balance between customer value and development effort.

Now, each Sprint Planning meeting requires some preparation. Read on about who should do it and what it entails.

How do you prepare for Sprint Planning?

The Product Owner should follow these steps to set the foundation for successful Sprint Planning:

• Combine the output of the previous Sprint Review, feedback from stakeholders such as management and customers, and the product vision
• Update and, if necessary, refine the product backlog
• Know the customer value that the development team needs to create in an increment

So, once all the preparation is over, it's time for the Sprint Planning meeting to take place.

How should the meeting go?

1. The Product Owner indicates the Product Backlog items — and corresponding priorities — that they consider the next sprint's best candidates. Items can be user stories, tasks, or bugs. The Product Owner proposes those items according to customer value and product vision.
2. Based on effort estimates and the Product Owner's proposal, the development team selects the product backlog items to work on during the current sprint. By promoting those items to sprint backlog items, developers agree on the sprint goal with the Product Owner.
3. Although optional, the team might discuss dependencies between items and who should work on each one of them.

Very few steps, right? However, some practical actions should add on to these steps. Discover what those actions are below.

How do you execute a successful Sprint Planning meeting?

1. Limit the meeting's duration. ⏳ Sprint Planning shouldn't take longer than 1-2 hours per sprint week. That means the meeting shouldn't take more than 2-4 hours for a two-week sprint.

2. Let the Scrum Master be the guardian of time. They're the ones responsible for ensuring that the meeting happens within the defined timebox.

3. Hold the meeting on the same day and at the same time every time. 📅 Team members can be quite busy and have full agendas. That's why reserving a slot in every participant's agenda is a good practice.

4. Define valuable, clear outcomes. 🎁 Those, together with a clear sprint backlog, increase the Development Team's motivation. Producing the right outcomes is pure satisfaction, and a clear work plan is the recipe to achieve that.

5. Make sure that the Scrum Master guarantees these things. First, that the conversation between the Development Team and the Product Owner is fruitful. They should all agree on the sprint goal. Second, that the developers make good choices when moving product backlog items to the sprint backlog. Selecting an item that is feasible for the sprint duration, team capacity, and workload is a good choice.

It might seem easy, but this is not all there is to do during Sprint Planning. There's a bunch of things to avoid.

If we were to give you some advice...

Make effort estimates against the development team's capacity. To decide on the amount of work that the team can accomplish in a sprint, consider the team's capacity. (And remember, estimates are just that — estimates.) Developers consider their previous experience, yet each sprint is unique and might change over its course. However, considering team capacity improves the accuracy of effort estimation. Additionally, story points might help the team with effort estimation.

Consider that the development team's ability to estimate should improve over time. Therefore, the team should not critique less accurate effort estimates after the sprint. Otherwise, the team will take much longer to estimate or provide much bigger estimates next time.

Don't try to plan every single thing during Sprint Planning. Leave the idea of coming up with the most complete, perfect Sprint Backlog ever at the front door. After all, Scrum is all about flexibility, and "Better done than perfect." So, a Sprint Backlog that’s complete enough to get developers started is just what it needs to be. Remember that solving complex problems requires a learn-by-doing approach, which turns planning into an equally complex job.

Figure out a realistic expectation for the sprint's outcome. Setting unrealistic expectations for the increment that the development team can produce over a sprint is not a good idea. It might make developers frustrated that they couldn't deliver, which can seriously affect their motivation and performance. On the other hand, realistic expectations set the team for success and a sense of accomplishment. Besides, they facilitate the conversation between the developers and the Product Owner so they can agree on the sprint goal.

Have a well-refined product backlog. It must be detailed enough to allow the Development Team to understand what the work items are about. You don't want to waste precious Sprint Planning time splitting work items into a maximum of one per day. Define and follow a backlog refinement process and ensure that Product Backlog items meet your definition of ready.

Propose a clear sprint goal. 🎯 The Product Owner must be very clear on the expected customer value for the increment. Otherwise, the development team might choose a set of product backlog items that don’t relate to one another. The result could be unexpected outcomes and a low sense of accomplishment.

Clarify the definition of done with the Development Team. Knowing what work done means in the current sprint helps the developers meet the expectations. That's because they can better understand what to do to create the increment. Also, a clear definition of done makes the Development Team more confident when estimating effort.

Strong Sprint Planning makes your project stronger

If you're following the Scrum framework, Sprint Planning is not a choice. Nevertheless, if you ever feel tempted to skip it, bookmark this article and read the following. 📑

It's easier to understand the sprint goal, to-do work, and sprint outcomes with a successful Sprint Planning meeting. If the team doesn't know where it's heading and how to get there, it gets really tough to satisfy customer needs. It's equally hard to deliver your customers valuable increments if you don't organize work by priorities.

Sprint Planning is about instilling clarity and organizing work before it's too late in the iteration. It's also about involving the whole team in preparing for all the effort that a sprint demands. A note: Keep in mind that a sprint plan must fit into a sprint's timebox and consider the team capacity.

Easy Agile TeamRhythm is perfect for Sprint Planning. It's a fast, straightforward, visual, and collaborative tool that allows you to:

• Drag items directly from the product backlog onto the user story map
• Register effort estimates in user stories
• Edit story point estimates
• Prioritize user stories in each sprint by ordering them inside the respective sprint swimlane
• Analyze sprint statistics to ensure that the planned work doesn't exceed the team's capacity and the sprint goal is realistic
• Visualize what the team will deliver and when by arranging user stories into sprint swimlanes

Let us know if you have any questions about Easy Agile TeamRhythm. We highly recommend it to your Scrum project, and our customers recommend the same.