Scrum — The power of a great Sprint Goal

A Sprint should revolve around a Sprint Goal

One of my teams had a couple of issues that were closely related:

• the Development Team members did not work together to finish the items on their Sprint Backlog. Typically someone would finish her/his part and then would push the item to the next person.
• items didn’t have any connection with each other. The team worked on many topics at the same time.
• the team had a hard time to finish everything that they pulled to the Sprint Backlog. Often they didn’t even come remotely close to finishing what they planned.
• the Daily Scrum was a status meeting only, hence ineffective.

The Sprint Planning: introducing the great Sprint Goal

We all felt that this wasn’t how we wished to work. We agreed that we wanted to give Sprints a purpose. This is why we decided to always ask the following question at the Sprint Planning:

What is the most awesome thing we realistically can achieve this Sprint? What bring us the most value now?

We concluded that it would be awesome to prepare an end-to-end demonstration of the product. We were in the perfect position to fit all the pieces together. So we determined that our Sprint Goal would be:

“Give an end-to-end demonstration of our product at the Sprint Review”.

It would be the first opportunity to do so. And with that we would be able to:

• show that all the pieces work together;
• get more valuable feedback from the stakeholders than ever.

Backlog Items related to the Sprint Goal

The fact that we determined an inspiring and achievable Sprint Goal made the remainder of the Sprint Planning very interactive and focused. We simply had to ask ourselves what Backlog Items needed to be picked up to meet our Sprint Goal. But we also discussed what Backlog Items SHOULDN’T be picked up to make sure that we wouldn’t endanger the Sprint Goal.

At the end of the first part of the Sprint Planning we made sure to check if we would be able to do the end-to-end demonstration if we would finish all the selected Backlog Items. We came to the conclusion that we really had to resolve some additional technical issues too. So we put a new item on the Backlog that would tackle this. We also determined that we needed to prepare the demonstration. So we planned this work as well.

Now the entire Sprint Backlog revolved around the Sprint Goal.

The Sprint

We finished the Sprint Planning energised. We were motivated to nail this demonstration. We had grand ideas about it:

Instantly people started to work together because the whole team felt responsibility for all the Product Backlog Items in the Sprint. This was a major positive turn of events.

The Daily Scrums

Our Sprint Goal also changed the Daily Scrums. The team abandoned their rigid way of doing a status update.

It was great to see how everyone knew what to discuss. The Daily Scrums became super interactive and super focused on achieving this Sprint Goal. Any deviations on expectations were immediately discussed and plans were made to resolve the issues.

The Sprint Review

The day before the Sprint Review the team decided to spend a couple of hours together to discuss and tackle loose ends. They made sure that there wouldn’t be any surprises.

The Sprint Review was a great success. The end-to-end demo was the main reason. It was well received and sparked great discussions about what could be improved and what would be the next step.

But there was more. We also had a good story on how we planned and executed the Sprint. The stakeholders were easily brought on the same page. We all understood what was achieved and what was up next. The fact that we had the clear and inspiring Sprint Goal helped us to have laser focus from Sprint Planning to Sprint Review.

The Sprint Retrospective

At the Sprint Retrospective the team was very positive about the Sprint. They were all quite clear that we should continue having these great Sprint Goals because it brought all these benefits. This Sprint Retrospective was a major departure from the previous ones where the team often appeared joyless and powerless.

What’s next?

As said the crystal clear and inspiring Sprint Goal resulted in a very focused Sprint with amazing teamwork. It will be very interesting to see if we can continue on this level:

• Will we be able to have these inspiring Sprint Goals all the time?
• Can the team sustain this high energy level? Or did we always have this in us, but did it have to be sparked by our inspiring Sprint Goal? Was this our sustainable pace or was this our peak?
• Will the team continue to work as a team instead of a set of individuals?
• Will our Daily Scrums and Sprint Reviews continue to be this engaging and effective?

We will know soon enough. But I am optimistic that we broke an invisible barrier, reaching a next level.

My twitter profile is https://twitter.com/WJAgeling