Collaboration & Process › Agile & Delivery Process

Sprint Planning

Choosing the work for the next sprint.

Also known as: sprint planning meeting

Sprint planning is the meeting where a team decides what it will work on in the coming sprint. The team takes items from the top of the backlog, talks through what each one involves, and agrees on how much it can realistically finish. Many teams also agree on a sprint goal, a short statement of what the sprint is meant to achieve.

A planning meeting usually answers two questions: what the team will deliver, and how it will do the work. The second part often means breaking selected stories into tasks.

Before the meeting, items should already be clear enough to discuss. That preparation happens during backlog refinement, so planning doesn’t turn into a design session.

The classic mistake is committing to everything the team hopes to do. Plans that assume perfect days get missed, and the team learns to distrust its own estimates. Pick work based on what the team has finished in recent sprints, and leave the rest in the backlog. A lower commitment that gets finished is more useful than a full plan that doesn’t.