Sprint Planning Meeting Agenda For Agile Teams

This is part of our series on meeting agenda templates. You can edit this sprint planning meeting agenda in Google Docs or Word or print it out. 

Meeting Agenda Templates > Project Management Agendas > Sprint Planning Meeting Agenda

I ran monthly sprint planning meetings at a marketing agency for five years. If done correctly, they are some of the most impactful meetings you can have jam-packed into one hour (what I recommend). With some solid prep work, a great sprint planning meeting agenda, and an organized call, you’ll have all of the important things for an entire team to accomplish in the upcoming weeks. The workload will be assigned out, the workload will be realistic, and the tasks will be prioritized.

That’s a powerful meeting, but it starts with having a solid, consistent agenda for sprint planning sessions. Click one of the links below to jump to a section that interests you most:

• Sprint planning agenda template
• Who should attend?
• How do you run a sprint planning meeting?
  • Download this – and five other Scrum meeting agendas – here

Sprint Planning Meeting Agenda Template

Purpose: To outline the work to be performed during the sprint (a set period of time like one, two, or four weeks), the goal of the sprint, and the capacity of the team during the sprint.

• Frequency: At the start of each sprint (1, 2, or 4 weeks typically)
• Duration: 1 hour

Agenda:

• Previous Sprint Review (10 minutes)
  • What was completed?
  • What wasn’t?
  • What got in the way?
• Capacity (5 minutes)
  • Do people need to make adjustments to their typical sprint workload? (ie. vacations, priorities outside of the sprint like hiring or quarter-close projects)
• Sprint Goals (5 minutes)
  • Discuss: What needs to be accomplished in this sprint to consider it a success? Why is that the focus?
• Backlog Planning (30 minutes)
  • Which priorities should go into the backlog to be completed during this sprint?
• Next Steps (10 minutes)
  • Who is assigned which priority?
  • What needs to happen next to get started well during this sprint?

See Also: 

• Free Daily Standup/Scrum Meeting Agenda Template
• 5 Scrum Meeting Agenda Templates
• 41 Types Of Meetings Defined

Who attends sprint planning meetings?

This is who needs to be at your sprint planning meeting:

1. Scrum Master
   • Facilitator: The Scrum Master ensures that the meetings run smoothly and stays within the time limit.
   • Scrum Coach: Acts as a coach to the team, helping members use the Scrum methodology correctly and efficiently.
   • Roadblock Remover: Identifies obstacles that team members raise during the meeting and helps to turn them into tasks to fix said obstacles.
2. Product Owner
   • Visionary: Represents the stakeholders (clients, management team, etc.) and the voice of the customer.
   • Decision Maker: Makes strategic product decisions and prioritizes the backlog items, helping the team understand which tasks are most critical and why.
3. Project Team Members
   • All software developers or people who participate on the priorities of the sprint

How To Run Sprint Planning Meetings

After five years of running a marketing agency team with Agile/Scrum project management, here are the steps I recommend taking to run a successful sprint planning meeting. 

Here are some tips for the Scrum Master:

1. Make sure the last sprint’s board is accurate. Ask everyone on the team to make sure the board is up-to-date before the meeting. When you review the previous sprint, you need accurate information.
2. Prepare the backlog before the meeting. Prioritize the backlog (the tasks yet to be worked on) the way you see it. This will speed up the sprint planning discussion.
3. Ask for capacity changes. Ask people (or automate a message) to share adjustments to their capacity for this sprint. For example, if you have two-week sprints and one person is on vacation for a week, their capacity decreases by 50% versus an average sprint. This will allow you to speed up the capacity discussion during the meeting.
4. Estimate total capacity: Calculate the team’s capacity for the sprint based on what you gathered in #3. This helps you commit to a realistic workload.
5. Frame the sprint goal discussion with the overall project goal. When you get to the discussion about the upcoming sprint’s goal, start out by reminding people of the overall goal. Then you can discuss what this next two-week period, for example, will be used for. 
6. Present proposed backlog items: Have the Product Owner discuss the top priority backlog items. This is where a discussion can happen about why a priority is valuable and how valuable it is.
7. Break down the backlog into tasks: On the call, turn the backlog items into smaller, manageable tasks. 
8. Estimate effort: Have the team estimate the effort for each task using points or hours. Help people think of it in relation to other common tasks: “If X is 1 point, about how much more effort will Y be than X?”
9. Ask for task volunteers: Encourage team members to volunteer for tasks they are interested in or have expertise in. 
10. Finalize and document: Finalize the sprint plan with all tasks, assignees, and estimates documented. Make sure this agenda and the board is accessible to all.

Here’s a great article (and another here) if you’d like to get more in-depth on the sprint planning meeting.

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