How to Plan Your Sprint effectively?

People jump to sprints without addressing issues might hinder the delivery in time. Sprints create time boxing for tasks and commitment for team. Otherwise, it is a decorative framework with no increase in team efficiency.

I drafted the questions below to ask at sprint planning, these guarantee any issues will be anticipated or mitigated before causing delays in delivery.

1. Availability: How much time do we have this week, considering leaves, holidays, and wellness days?

2. Workload and Stories: What stories are in our backlog for this sprint?

3. Prioritization Criteria

• How much development time is needed for each story? (Shorter tasks first)
• How long have the tasks been waiting? (Older tasks first)
• What is the impact of each task? (Higher impact first)
• Who is the stakeholder? (Executive team tasks first)

4. Dependencies and Blockers

• Are there any dependencies that need to be addressed before starting certain stories?
• Are there any unresolved blockers from the previous sprint?

5. Team Capacity

• What is each team member’s capacity for this sprint?