In my work I often see teams fail to set sprint goals ahead of the next sprint. It makes sense that it happens, teams are moving quickly, driving hard to complete their sprint commitments and deliver a great demo and release. But the failure to set these goals in advance can cost the team productive time heading into, and during, the next sprint increment.
What are sprint goals? Explained simply, they are a short summary of what the team plans to build in sprint. Some teams prefer a 1-2 sentence goal statement; I’ve always preferred bullets. You should find what works best for your particular team within a project effort.
When written collaboratively between the team and Product Owner, Sprint Goals have major benefits within and outside the project team. They help:
- Facilitate agreement/commitment between Product Owner (PO) and larger stakeholder group ahead of sprint start
- Provide context and direction to developers on the “why” of the current increment (I’ve found that POs coming to story grooming with draft sprint goals have vastly more productive team grooming sessions as it facilitates better conversations on how to best meet those the goals)
- Communicate the benefits of the committed sprint outside the project team
- Communicate progress in a more meaningful way for non-technical stakeholders within and at the end of a sprint
So who is responsible for making sure this happens? While it is indeed a collaborative process, the PO/BA should take the primary lead to ensure their project team truly understands the context of the work being requested. Within the agile process itself, I’ve found the following works well to create and maintain quality sprint goals:
- Pre-grooming – PO prepares desired sprint goals draft in advance, consulting with key stakeholders as needed.
- Grooming – PO shares goals and team works together to refine and prioritize in context of larger goals. The entire team should participate in helping to call out missing stories in support of these stated goals, and/or help to slim down big stories into workable/testable chunks
- Planning – PO kicks off by refreshing team on sprint goals and priorities (the what & why), then keeps track of where committed work may stop short of meeting all desired goals
- During Sprint – PO keeps a running draft version for the next sprint, refining as needed
- Demo – PO or Dev team kicks off by reminding of the Sprint Goals
Example Sprint Goals
Sprint 5 Goals:
- Agent will be able to enter a discount code and have the system validate and apply discount amount towards purchase sub-total
- Agent will be able to see new discount information within SalesForce transactional detail view