How to perform Sprint Planning with Jira - Part 1 | Jira Tips & Tricks from the Agile Experts

so how do you get a Scrum team to conduct Sprint Planning effectively there's typically two ways you can go about it you could use velocity and story points or take a time-based approach and estimate items in days or hours which one do you choose which one is better and

how do you actually do that in Jira well what i'm going to provide you with is a series of videos to answer those questions and this is the first video of that series so what i'm going to cover in this one is firstly i'll give you an overview of Sprint Planning what questions you're trying to

answer what's the intent behind this session secondly i'll run you through how to prepare for this session there is a bit of work that needs to be done beforehand to ensure they run smoothly and they don't take too long and thirdly i'll show you how to set up a Sprint in Jira so you can make sure that your Sprint Planning session is ready to get started okay

let's do it so to begin with let me give you an overview of Sprint Planning and don't forget this is just the first of many videos i'll be creating on this topic so if you want to be notified of the future videos as they come out don't forget to hit the subscribe button and the bell icon

okay Sprint Planning what are we trying to achieve by performing this session in Scrum it's really about answering three topics the first topic is to get the team to think about why is this Sprint valuable what sort of value are we going to create for our customers when this

Sprint comes to an end so that's the first thing we need to answer secondly what will actually get done this Sprint and thirdly how will that work get done how's it going to be distributed who's going to do what so it's really about answering those three things and just because i mentioned

them those questions in that order doesn't necessarily mean you actually have to answer them in that order when your Sprint Planning session is is running but simply by the end of the session there should be an answer for each so sometimes we only answer all three at the very end we only then figure out why it's valuable and what we're going to achieve and how we're going to achieve it

or sometimes it's a dif in a different sequence it'll be up to you and your team but i'll show you through this video series how i typically run one of these sessions now before you kick off Sprint Planning there is some preparation that needs to be had so let's run through that now

before we begin Sprint Planning there are a couple of things you need to make sure has been prepared the first is adequately refined Product Backlog items those Product Backlog items first need to be prioritized and secondly have a sufficient level of detail

that the team knows what they need to do now if you don't have these types of items you're gonna have very painful long-winded Sprint Planning sessions and and why well in the end the team does more than just planning at this session they start eliciting requirements they're figuring

out details and in the worst case they don't have the right people on hand to to clarify what needs to get done like subject matter experts or or stakeholders now if the team doesn't have clarity over those details over those requirements then what's going to happen is the team either can't deliver that work or they attempt to deliver it with very ambiguous requirements

and of course that's very risky the team might deliver the wrong thing they have to rework it and you end up with unhappy stakeholders so the trick here is to make sure that before Sprint Planning those Product Backlog items have been refined sufficiently and they're what we call

Sprint ready so Sprint ready Product Backlog items are firstly well defined secondly they're well understood and thirdly they are of the right size they can actually be done within your Sprint cycle now if you're not familiar with what i mean by Sprint ready and refining the Product Backlog

go check out this video i'll put it up on the screen now it's our video to help you structure your Product Backlog okay so well-defined Product Backlog items is one requirement for Sprint Planning secondly we need to make sure our team has figured out their capacity in other words

they need to determine what they can actually get done within a Sprint and to determine that they need to know either how much time they have at hand or they need to know and understand their workload what sort of workload can they actually take on in that upcoming Sprint cycle now to

determine the team's capacity will depend on the approach that they take either using story points and they'll probably use their average velocity or if they're using time they need they'll need to calculate how much time each person has now how do you do that uh how do you calculate velocity or

total capacity in terms of time before Sprint Planning i'll share the way i do it in a the subsequent video in this series okay so look out for that one and i'll give you some tips on how to do it okay so in summary before Sprint Planning we need to have two things prepared

our Product Backlog items sufficiently refined and secondly the team's capacity so we know what they can bring into the Sprint okay now let's look at how we can set up a Sprint in Jira this is something that you'll do at the beginning of your Sprint Planning session and ideally

make sure the entire Scrum team is there so Scrum master product owner and the delivery team i do like product owners to be here at this stage to answer questions to support the team they can leave later in the Sprint Planning session i'll talk more about when they can leave in the next

video but ideally try to get them to be here at at this point okay so how do we create a Sprint what you'll need to do is make sure that you're on the Product Backlog view you can just click on it on the left here and don't forget that we are using a company managed project with the Scrum template

so once you're on the Product Backlog view you will notice that there is this create Sprint button just click that and you'll notice that this pops up so this is a bit of a section here for your Sprint Plan and what we want to do here is we want to set some details so you can either

click the add dates here or you can go up to the three buttons and click edit Sprint and then in there you can set the these details so firstly you can give it a Sprint name if you like just leave it as it is Jira will automatically increment that number Sprint one two three four five and so on

or if you like some Scrum teams like to label these differently i've met teams where they would add uh something to it indicating the focus of the Sprint okay so you might be thinking hey what what are we focusing on this Sprint a little bit like the goal are we focusing on a certain feature

or a certain um non-functional requirement like performance and scalability i don't know there could be various areas of focus and what you find is that if you add that to the Sprint name then when you go back looking at the reports it can remind you what you are focusing on when with the team and sometimes that can be handy lastly some teams do like to add

themes to their Sprint names now this is just a bit of fun you don't necessarily need to do it but i have seen teams where they name their Sprints after characters or philosophers perhaps based on what your team is interested in it can be a bit of fun and make the session a little bit more light-hearted so that that's cool you can do that i'm just going to leave it as the

default there next you'll need to decide on the length of your Sprint so hopefully you've decided on this beforehand with the team most typical Sprint length is two weeks a lot of people ask me what length of Sprint is best and look there's no right and wrong answer again two weeks seems to be

the best choice for most teams based on what i've seen out there some teams like to go a little bit longer three weeks gives them a little bit more momentum some other teams like to go for shorter Sprints they just go for the one week Sprint and that's because their requirements are very volatile they find that after one week their requirements have changed already so for them

two weeks doesn't really make sense i don't usually see many teams go for a four week Sprint anymore if you're thinking of doing that look just be careful because the longer your Sprint is the longer is before you engage with stakeholders you get feedback and you adapt accordingly so if your team ends up planning the wrong work or doesn't do the work correctly

then there's going to be a larger amount of rework in subsequent Sprints so i don't often recommend the four week Sprint anymore okay but up to you uh right so we set the two-week Sprint there then we set the date uh this is important for reporting purposes and lastly you can add a

Sprint goal now completely up to you and your team whether you set a goal or not remember one of the topics that we need to address at Sprint Planning is why is the Sprint valuable and this is where the Sprint goal comes into it you will define that it helps you articulate to your stakeholders

how you and your team is generating that value for customers so you can put the Sprint goal in there for example in this Sprint this example here the sample data is for a product called one-on-one car rentals you can go check out our previous video if you want some details on it but it's a new website

where we haven't launched yet but let's imagine that what we're thinking of doing here in this Sprint is providing customers with the ability to to sign up and show interest so of course we could achieve that in a number of ways but let's say the goal is i could say um allow customers

to sign up and show interest in one-on-one car rentals okay so i put that in there and again you can either do add the Sprint goal at this point in Sprint Planning nice and early or you can leave a blank you can say hey we don't know what the goal is until the very end after

we've figured out what we can actually get done and then go back to this page and update it so you don't necessarily need to do it straight away okay so we add the Sprint goal in we update and you can see that the dates in the Sprint goal actually appear at the top here they will also appear in the Sprint view after you start the Sprint and lastly you'll notice that the Sprint goal

will also appear on the Sprint report which you'll generate at the end of the Sprint more on that later so that is how we set up a Sprint in Jira ok so now you know what Sprint Planning is all about

how to prepare for the session and how to create a Sprint in Jira now before you go i'd love to hear if you've heard any funny or creative Sprint names i've heard all sorts of things from characters to sports to movies and look just a little thing like a funny Sprint name can actually elevate

the mood of the team make them more productive and more happier in the workplace so i'd love to hear what you have heard out there so if you've heard any funny Sprint names please put them in the comments below now the next video what i'm going to do is take you through the next

step of Sprint Planning and determining what we can actually get done within the Sprint so if you don't want to miss out on that please make sure you subscribe hit that bell icon and you'll be notified of when it comes out okay i hope you enjoyed the video and i'll see you next time