Sprint Goal

Question 1

What is the purpose of a sprint goal?

Answer 1

The Sprint goal is crafted in during the Sprint Planning and fosters collaboration between the Development Team and the Product Owner, creating a shared responsibility on achieving that goal. It creates means of conversation about what to do next. And above all, it helps bring focus to the Sprint.
Sprint goal is tranparent for all, especially during daily scrum, where sprint goal is main topic of conversation.

It provides guidance to the Development Team on why it is building the Increment.

Question 2

In what relation is the sprint backlog with the sprint goal?

Answer 2

The Sprint Backlog should consistently reflect the current progress of work towards the Sprint goal and remaining work to be done.

Question 3

Why is experimentation so important in working with teams?

Answer 3

Be patient. Change takes time. However, don’t be hesitant to experiment. People are more eager to try something out and verifying the outcome (experiment) than they are open to enforced changes from the outside.

Question 4

Ho to define the sprint goal, how to make sure that that’s topic #1 in the dailies?

Answer 4

Product Owners should share their vision and what goals need to be achieved next. They should talk about it, share it, get feedback on it. Then invite the Development Team to pull work from the Product Backlog (and maybe create some Sprint Backlog Items as well) that will achieve this goal. Share and discuss this when the plan for this Sprint is drafted.

Often, Product Owners take the lead in Sprint Planning. And they should at first, but then they have to let the Development Team self organize around the Sprint goal. You might be surprised at the results!

Question 5

What questions/guidelines help in creating the sprint goal?

Answer 5

1. During Sprint Planning, ask “how will we know if we have achieved the Sprint Goal?”
2. Make the sprint goal measurable
3. During Sprint Planning, use a consensus technique to confirm everyone’s understanding and commitment to the Sprint Goal. This is also a way to help encourage team ownership.

Question 6

How to highlight the sprint goal?

Answer 6

1. Make it visible > big and shiny
2. Teach the team to talk about progress towards the sprint goal dint he daily scrum
3. Make the sprint goal a team measure and keep it visible in the team space. Similar to how a team may track their velocity or automated test coverage over time, a team can also track Sprint Goal achievement over time.A word of caution: achieving a Sprint Goal is pass/ fail. There is no such thing as 85% achieved.

Question 7

How to find a meaningful sprint goal?

Answer 7

1. Make it user or business fcused: what will the user be able to do when we finish this?
2. Make it focused on testing business assumptions and getting feedback - for the cases we don’t know what users actually need.
3. Make it focused on reducing risk. E.g. prove that technology x is the way to go/or not the way to go.

Question 8

Which are the elements of a sprint goal (template)?

Answer 8

1. Goal: why is it worthwile to run the sprint (and not watch e.g. TV ;))?
2. Method: How to reach the goal, which artefact or validation technique and test group is used? e.g. paper prototype, spike, shippable product increment, product demo, usability test, …
3. Metrics: How to determine whether the goal has been met? E.g. at least three of the five users carry out the usability test successfully in less than a minute.

Question 9

How does project “incertainty” influence to sprint goal?

Answer 9

In the early sprints, addressing risks and testing assumptions allows me to learn about what the product should look like and do and how it is built. Once the key risks and critical assumptions have been dealt with, I like to focus on completing and optimizing features.