Conduct a sprint planning meeting

Sprint planning is a live team meeting aimed to plan a backlog and set goals for the next cycle of work.

Context: Following the PI Planning event, (a.k.a. Big Room Planning) all Teams participating in the Agile Release Trains (ARTs) have had an opportunity to provide input into workload, complexity, risks, and dependencies scoped for the ART. They have also had an opportunity to provide a vote of confidence on the delivery of the ART. Therefore, the Feature backlog, as well as working agreements among teams, will have been defined. 

Conduct a sprint planning meeting on the team meetings page:

1. Select Teams in the top navigation bar and select the team you want to view information about.
2. On the sidebar, select Team meetings in the list of options.

To conduct a sprint planning meeting for Agile teams:

1. On the team meetings page, select Sprint Planning from the drop-down menu, and then select the start and end dates of the sprint for which you want to run the meeting. A sprint planning meeting is available 5 days before the sprint start through until the end of the sprint.
2. Click Start Meeting for the appropriate sprint, and then again click Start Meeting in the dialog box. 
3. On the Sprint Planning Meeting page, select who of the team members is present at the meeting.
4. In the The Goal For This Sprint box, add the goals you want to achieve this sprint. The added goals also appear when you run the retrospective so that you can evaluate if the team met their goals.
5. In the Planning Notes box, add any additional notes.
6. Complete the Sprint Planning Steps section. This section contains a checklist, which is a feature that allows you to create and follow a comprehensive list of important or relevant actions, or steps to be taken, in a specific order; it serves as a guide for accessing specific pages, in sequence, needed to complete a task. If a sprint planning meeting has no assigned checklist, it will use the default one.

Sprint planning steps

Jira Align provides a checklist of steps needed to successfully plan the sprint.

To review and complete each sprint planning step:

• Click the check mark icon next to each item to mark a sprint planning step as complete.

Review previous sprint

To review the previous sprint:

• Click Review Previous Sprint under Sprint Planning Steps to view the Sprint Coaching report that details the team plan at the beginning of the sprint in contrast with the final result.

Set allocations

To set user allocations:

1. Click Set User Allocations under Sprint Planning Steps.
2. Set allocations for tasks and defects for each user, and then click Save & Close.

Prioritize backlog

Up to this point, the backlog is likely to be in place, however, if any issues come up during this meeting, you can adjust your priorities on the Backlog page.

To prioritize your backlog:

1. Click Backlog Prioritize, Estimation, Assignment, Criteria to open the Backlog page.
2. From the Viewing drop-down menu on the toolbar, select Story Backlog.
3. Select your team and the sprint for which the meeting is held. Review stories and make changes if necessary.

Task out stories

You can move tasks between your team members to make sure all of them are allocated properly and are balanced across the teams.

To task out your stories:

1. Click Task Out Stories under Sprint Planning Steps.
2. Select a sprint and a team member from the corresponding drop-down menus.
3. Verify or adjust team members allocation if needed.
4. In the Stories pane, click the down arrow, and then select the new team member to assign tasks to.

All tasks associated with the story are assigned to the resource. To assign tasks to additional team members:

1. Select the necessary story in the Stories
2. In the Tasks pane, click the down arrow, and then select the team member.

Review capacity and velocity

The sprint capacity report details the team's capacity throughout the sprint. It is useful to review this report during sprint planning and throughout the sprint to ensure team commitments can be achieved with available capacity.

Use this page to determine if the team is set up for success going into a sprint. It tells the story of the sprint, such as: Can we deliver upon our commitments? Is the work distributed equally within the team? Are we progressing as planned or is work taking more/less time than estimated?   

Planned capacity top bar (blue) as compared to hours loaded (green and orange) provides a quick view to check your capacity allocations.

If team members are over-allocated, adjust their allocation:

1. Click the user icon under their profile picture.
2. Set allocations for tasks and defects for a user, and then click Save & Close.

Final review

Conduct a final review of the following items before committing to plan:

• Dependencies that are assigned to this team and a sprint when they are due
• Sprint Velocity: team velocity over the last 5 sprints and average team velocity
• Sprint Scope: stories loaded into the sprint and the team’s capacity

Note: You can edit stories within the Sprint Scope section. Click a story name in the list to open its slide-out details panel.

Commit to plan

Vote to ensure the team is ready to commit to the plan.

To commit to the plan:

1. On the Sprint Planning Meeting page, scroll down to Team Consensus.
2. Decide whether the team reached a consensus or not.
3. Click End Meeting.
4. In the dialog box, select whether you want all team members to receive an email with a summary report.