How To Avoid These 5 Agile Planning Mistakes

The sprint planning meeting helps agile teams plan and get on the same page about each sprint. It’s an opportunity to decide on prioritization based on the product vision, issue urgency, stakeholder feedback, and knowledge from the previous sprint.

The goal of the meeting is to determine which backlog items should be tackled during the upcoming sprint. The team, guided by the product owner and Scrum Master, decide which items from the product backlog should be moved to the sprint backlog for hopeful completion over the coming weeks (sprint duration).

Sprint planning plays a critical role in the Scrum process. The meeting ensures teams enter a sprint prepared, with work items chosen carefully. The end result should be a shared understanding of sprint goals that will guide the next sprint.

While sprint planning should occur before any type of sprint, for the purposes of this article, we will focus on sprint planning sessions for Scrum teams. Continue reading to learn our top tips for a successful sprint planning meeting. 🎉

How does the sprint planning meeting fit into the Scrum framework?

Scrum is a hugely popular agile methodology used in product development. The process involves a series of sprints that are improved upon and adjusted based on continual feedback from customers, stakeholders, and team members.

The sprint planning meeting sees the entire team comes together to decide what work they hope to complete over the upcoming sprint. The product owner helps decide which priority product backlog items move to the sprint backlog. This is an incredibly important phase that guides the team’s goals over the next two weeks.

The Scrum Master acts as a Scrum guide. They help the development team stay on track in each sprint, ensuring everyone gets the most out of the process. The Scrum team works together to complete the amount of work decided on during sprint planning. To ensure everyone remains on track and on the same page, daily stand-ups are held each day. This provides an opportunity for team members to address any issues or potential bottlenecks that could keep work from running smoothly.

Following the sprint, a sprint review takes place, which gives stakeholders an opportunity to provide feedback. Finally, a sprint retrospective meeting gives the team an opportunity to assess and improve upon their process. The Scrum concludes and begins again with another sprint planning meeting.

Here are some tips to make sure each sprint planning meeting sets you up for success:

1. Reserve the same time for sprint planning ⏰

Book your sprint planning meeting on the same day and at the same time every two weeks to ensure your entire team keeps that time slot available. Sprint planning is vital to the success of each sprint — it’s a meeting that shouldn’t be shuffled around.

Pick a time that works for everyone involved, asking for feedback from your team about when is best. Schedule the meetings well in advance in everyone's calendar so that no one forgets about it or books other engagements.

2. Set a sprint planning meeting duration and stick to it ⏳

Sprint planning is important, but that doesn’t mean it should take forever. Set a time limit for your meeting, and do your best to stick to it. If you are well prepared with an agenda and refined backlog, you should be able to get straight to planning.

We recommend scheduling no more than 2-4 hours for sprint planning. Let the Scrum Master be in charge of ensuring the team stays on track and completes planning in the allotted time.

3. Complete backlog refinement before sprint planning begins 📝

Complete your backlog refinement ahead of your sprint planning meeting. Otherwise, you will spend far too much time adding details, estimating, or splitting work.

The sprint planning meeting should be reserved for planning and goal setting. While the backlog shouldn’t be set in stone, it should provide team members with enough details to move forward with planning instead of refinement.

4. Incorporate stakeholder feedback from the sprint review 😍

What insights did stakeholders share throughout the sprint or during the sprint review? You are designing this product for them, so incorporating their feedback is crucial to the end result.

Make sure every decision is based on customer needs. After each sprint, share your product goals and sprint goals with your stakeholders and adjust per their feedback.

5. Incorporate sprint retrospective insights 💡

Sprint retrospectives are a critical part of the agile process, providing a time for the team to discuss how they can improve. There are lessons to be learned every time you complete a sprint or iteration. Agile continually takes what a team learns and turns those experiences into actionable improvements. So, ignoring these lessons would be very un-agile of you. 🤔

How did the last sprint go? Was each team member satisfied with the process, and what was accomplished? What changes did your team decide would make the next sprint more effective? Use these insights to make each sprint better than the last one.

6. Clearly define what success looks like ✅

Set clearly defined goals, objectives, and metrics. What is the definition of done? How will the team know if they are successful? You should leave the sprint planning meeting with a clear idea of what needs to get done and what success looks like.

7. Use estimates to make decisions based on team capacity 📈

Overloading your team or any individual beyond their capacity does far more harm than good. The team will be more likely to make mistakes, and morale will diminish as goals remain consistently out of reach.

Use agile estimation techniques and story points to better understand workload and capacity. How much work and effort is needed to accomplish your goals? Ensure you set realistic and reasonable goals based on your best estimations.

8. Align sprint goals with overall product goals 🎉

Ensure you have a goal for the sprint and that all backlog items relate to the end goal. Your sprint goals should work alongside your overall product goals.

Failing to prioritize your objectives can result in a random selection of to-dos. Completing disconnected backlog items will still get work done, but it will result in unexpected outcomes and a low sense of accomplishment for the team. Each backlog item should be chosen with a clear purpose that relates to your product and sprint goals.

9. Leave room for flexibility 💫

Any agile methodology is flexible by nature, and Scrum is no exception. If there isn’t room for flexibility, something has gone seriously wrong.

It's important to acknowledge that not everything will always go to plan. You will continually find new information, stakeholder insights, and dependencies that the team will need to adjust to along the way. Ensure the team understands they need to be flexible and that they are supported throughout each sprint.

Sprint planning made easy

The effectiveness of sprint planning can make or break the coming week for a Scrum team. It’s important for the development team to take the necessary time to prepare for each upcoming sprint. This means going into the meeting with clear goals, objectives, stakeholder feedback, and a refined backlog.

Make the most of your sprint planning and do it with ease using Easy Agile TeamRhythm. Transform your flat product maps into dynamic, flexible, and visual representations of the customer journey. Story points will help your team make decisions and account for capacity while keeping the customer top-of-mind.

Learn more about the benefits of user story mapping and read our ultimate guide to user story maps.

Simply developing a product doesn’t mean it’ll be a success. Plenty of elements determine how well a product is received — and a lot of that begins with product launch planning.

How will you unveil your product to the world? Who will be able to access your product when it first launches? What features do you need for the product's initial development, and what features should be saved for further down the road? How do you make sure everything is ready in time for the launch date you’re hoping for?

Product launch planning melds your development strategy and your sales and marketing strategy to ensure every department works together and aligns on key goals. It’s a whirlwind of a race to the finish line, but it’s also an exciting time for product developers. How will your product be received? What will customers and stakeholders think?

In this post, we discuss seven key strategies for successful product launch planning. Time for takeoff! 🚀

1. Set clear goals and define what success looks like

Set clear objectives and be realistic about what you hope to accomplish. Setting lofty, unattainable goals will distract from what matters most, and it can lead to disappointment, lack of motivation, and reduced morale.

Be clear about who on the product team is responsible for what and ensure team members outside of product development, including sales teams and marketing teams, are involved in product launch planning.

How will you go to market? What do you hope to accomplish with your launch? What product launch planning needs to happen before you can move forward? What pre-launch deliverables are critical to moving development forward? What roadblocks could prevent your success?

When you understand what you are trying to accomplish, it’s easier to tell when you’re successful. Don’t leave anything open-ended so that everyone on the team knows what you’re working toward and how to get there.

2. Get to know your audience

Great products are developed when customer needs are at the forefront of decision making. No matter what stage of product launch planning you’re in, you should always keep the customer journey top of mind. Consider how each decision you make brings value to your customers.

Customer personas describe important details about a target audience, such as pain points, behavioral patterns, demographics, goals, and buying habits. Deeply understanding who you are building a product for and what they need is vital to a successful product and a successful product launch.

Easy Agile TeamRhythm supports user story mapping, helping teams empathize with customers so that development and launch decisions can be made based on what will provide the most value to your target market.

3. Gather feedback and test, test, test

Test, test, test! We can’t say this enough. You need to continually test, ask questions, and gather market research.

Get your product in front of stakeholders and customers frequently to gather feedback along the way. The more you learn as you develop your product, the more issues you will sort out as you go, and the better the project will be in the end.

The testing process will also give you a deeper insight into what your users are looking for, so you can better meet customer needs. How do they interact with the product? What issues arise? What questions do they have? Do they understand how to use it? What features are they looking for?

Gather as much feedback as possible so you can continually improve the product leading up to the launch. Bring your stakeholders and customers into your process to better understand their needs and how you can provide consistent value.

4. Use comprehensive tools to track product launch planning

Product launch planning is a complex process with many moving parts, team members, and deadlines. Having the right tools is essential to the success of the launch. The whole team needs to be able to see what is planned, what is expected, and how each piece leading up to the launch is connected.

Establish a clear product launch plan template that guides the team forward. Backtrack from the desired launch date to create a launch timeline that recognizes everything that needs to get done before the product is put out into the world.

A product launch roadmap is an effective tool for tracking your progress. Roadmaps help teams align their vision, keep track of specific product launch dates, and provide a clear visual of the most critical prioritizations.

Learn how to create a product roadmap template with Easy Agile Roadmaps for Jira. They help teams align around a product vision and launch strategy to continually bring value to customers.

5. Focus on an initial great product, not features

Focus on your minimum viable product first. This is your top development priority before launching — no matter how tempting other fancy features may be.

Fancy features may be appealing, but they could slow down development, add unnecessary stress on the team, and cause unwelcome issues right before you’re supposed to launch your product. Put in the work to develop a product that meets stakeholder needs and delights customers. If this goes well, there will be plenty of opportunities to zero in on other features down the road.

6. Expect the unexpected

No matter how much feedback you gather and how many tests you run, there are always surprises when it comes to launching a new product. Launch day may not go as smoothly as you hoped. It’s okay if things don’t go exactly as you expected, so long as you’ve prepared for these possibilities and can adjust.

Extensive product launch planning will help you navigate surprises. It also helps to practice the motions beforehand. Give yourself time before the new product launch to review and practice the steps that need to play out. Rehearse your process to smooth out as many possible hiccups as you can. The extra time you spend running through the motions will also help ease the nerves of the team members involved in the launch process.

7. Hold a retrospective after the launch

After all is said and done, there’s still one more important step to your product launch planning. A retrospective helps teams examine the launch strategy and how everything played out. What went well? What didn’t go so well? And what can be learned from the process?

Even if you won’t launch another product any time soon, a post-launch retrospective is a great opportunity to learn from your experience. You can take these insights and success metrics into account when launching future features or other products down the road. Plus, it gives the team a chance to debrief after launch activities conclude.

Let’s recap those strategies one more time:

1. Set clear goals and define what success looks like.

2. Get to know your audience.

3. Gather feedback and test, test, test.

4. Use comprehensive tools to track product launch planning.

5. Focus on an initial great product, not features.

6. Expect the unexpected.

7. Hold a retrospective after the launch.

Learn more on the Easy Agile blog

There’s more where this came from. We’re dedicated to helping teams work better using agile tools and practices. We make simple, collaborative, customer-focused plugins for Jira, and we regularly publish articles on strategies, agile information, and how-to guides for product managers and agile teams.

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Is agile now distributed?

It’s no secret that our work has completely changed in the last two years. Today’s work environment has seen companies embracing a hybrid or fully remote business model, with studies showing that only 4% of workplaces are going back into the office full-time.

In the Agile Manifesto, one of the original principles states, “individuals and interactions over processes and tools.” While this may still ring true, we know now more than ever that our tools empower our interactions and facilitate our processes.

Multiple industries that have adopted the agile framework have shown an increase in distributed agile teams. In fact, according to the 15th State of Agile Report, 89% of agile teams are distributed. Only 3% of these teams will return to the office full-time post-Covid. This is because remote workers have better focus and productivity, are less likely to leave their job, and cost the business less.

Distributed agile is no longer a new concept but our lived reality.

How do we prepare for agile ceremonies such as PI Planning, initially designed to happen face-to-face? How do we retain the most valuable element of face-to-face communication without collocating?

The challenges of PI Planning with a distributed team

Traditionally, activities like PI Planning in agile are designed for team members in the same room to interact in person.

PI Planning is a 2-day event that brings all members of an Agile Release Train (ART) together to plan their next Program Increment (PI).

As the 15th State of Agile Report showed, 89% of agile teams are now distributed. For a distributed team, your options are to fly in employees for each PI Planning session or to support a distributed PI Planning session.

While this is nice, it can be a pricey (and disruptive) exercise for any organization, especially if you need to do it 4 or 5 times a year.

Performing distributed PI Planning also brings up a challenge with using a physical program board. Those at home cannot access or contribute to the physical PI Planning board in the same way as their collocated colleagues. As a result, their ideas can go unheard, and their ability to contribute to the program board is limited.

Distributed PI Planning - Best Practice

Instead of flying your remote team to a central location to run PI Planning in person, distributed PI Planning involves using cloud-based tools to plan and run your next Program Increment virtually.

Even if the methods are a little different from distributed PI Planning, the process and desired outcomes are the same:

• A senior representative discusses the current state of the business
• Product Management presents the current program vision
• Product Owners and teams breakout separately to discuss how they’ll achieve desired outcomes
• Teams identify and visualize cross-team dependencies and work to remove blockers
• Everyone comes together to agree on a committed plan via your Program Board

6 tips for setting up distributed PI Planning

Distributed PI Planning is no longer a temporary exception. Whether PI Planning is distributed or not, we need to ensure we maintain the same quality and outcomes that PI Planning aims to achieve - to align all teams within the Agile Release Train.

To help you through this, we’ve prepared the following 6 tips to help you prepare for distributed PI Planning.

These tips aren’t things that we’ve just brainstormed. We’ve learned these things from speaking to our customers by trawling the forums and talking to experts in the field.

1. Get the basics right

The three basics are communication, preparation, and execution.

Let’s start by talking about communication and preparation. It is essential to provide appropriate tools for online interactions for each stage of the PI Planning process: for product managers to collaborate and facilitators to manage the process-both leading up to and during the event. We also need to ensure team members can access all relevant current information, collaborate effortlessly, and access support.

Scaled Agile recommends having pre-PI Planning meetings scheduled anywhere from 2-6 weeks in advance, depending on the complexity of your solution train.

Lastly, let’s talk about execution. The execution should flow if we are communicating well and are prepared. But we need to be prepared that some things can still go wrong. Technology will fail us. People can still have problems accessing the tools we’ve set up. Execution won’t always be seamless, but iteration is a principle of agile.

2. Set the agenda early, as early as possible

Why is that? Well, think about your employees working from home. They’re working with their pets or family around, and if they know that they have PI Planning, they need to know what is expected of them.

This allows time for employees to inform their families of their commitments for that day, set up a space with no distractions, and be mentally prepared for a few days of planning.

Also, let’s not cram the agenda full of all the events we need to hold. Let’s make sure we have enough time to schedule multiple breaks throughout the day, as studies show that humans are more likely to experience mental exhaustion after a day of video conferencing.

While it’s essential to use the tech, it can get a little bit much. Set up rules about who can talk and when to use the mute button. This will avoid interference and background noise disrupting your team’s focus.

3. Choose your tools wisely

Distributed agile teams can simulate the best of the in-person experience by selecting tools built for distributed and hybrid teams: video conferencing platforms, team chat, virtual program boards, and interactive collaboration spaces.

Whatever tools you choose, the key is finding solutions for colleagues to connect in real-time, whether in the same room or on the other side of the world.

Set up the tools, test them, and introduce them to all participants before the PI Planning session. To avoid overload and confusion, select tools that work together seamlessly.

4. Practice

We’re not going to get this right the first time. We’re going to have to rehearse. We’ll have to work out how we do things like confidence votes. Will we use the poll function on Zoom, or will we use Slack?

Everyone prefers to finish early rather than run out of time. Let’s build some slack into the agenda.

Acknowledge that there’s always room for improvement and build that into our planning. Let’s give our people a chance to communicate back to us, whether by a retrospective or by opening up a channel for feedback. We’re not just getting feedback on how the last planning session went but also on how we are finding working together more generally.

5. Make it accessible

When dealing with different time zones, you should extend the PI Planning agenda from 2 days to 3-4 days to ensure all critical parts of the PI Planning session are placed at a reasonable time for all time zones.

Set up each meeting via Google Calendar or any calendar device your team may already be using. Ensure each meeting is named, followed by a description, so attendees know what to prepare and which tools are relevant for this meeting. Make sure the correct attendees have all been sent invitations to the forum before the event.

We’ll have trouble setting up people on new tools and getting them access to their needed resources. It will be great if tech support is available throughout PI Planning. That will be easier for some people than it is for others. But it’s crucial if things go wrong.

We’re going to need a backup in place. Your tools will need to be reliable, and you will need tech support to help fix them quickly.

We will need more facilitators than we usually do to be able to answer all of these questions throughout the week.

Some people may not be used to using the tools that we’re suggesting that they use. So is there training available to help them get up to speed?

6. Level up the human experience

Seize opportunities to ensure agile teams feel as if they are working together when they are actually apart so that members see themselves as part of a community with:

• Shared understanding – Clarity of vision, mission, purpose, and visibility into what team members are doing, facilitating learning loops among colleagues.
• Shared empathy – Forging human connections with our tribe creates the psychological safety to learn, grow and iterate.
• Shared experience – Creating a sense of team place, identity, and building together.

How to excel at distributed PI Planning with Easy Agile Programs and Welo

The most challenging part of distributed PI Planning is providing the positive aspects of the in-person experience to a distributed team: fluid movement around and between rooms to collaborate, easy ways to contribute to brainstorming sessions and keep whiteboards up to date and accessible, and natural social interactions that build trust and camaraderie.

Easy Agile Programs offers a complete PI Planning solution that makes scaled cross-team planning and execution easy. With a seamless Jira integration, it’s a powerful yet simple-to-use tool to scale planning and maintain alignment across distributed, hybrid, or remote teams during planning and throughout execution.

Welo offers interactive collaboration spaces that amp up the human experience for distributed and hybrid teams. It replicates the in-person experience of fluid interactions, effortless collaboration, and human connections among colleagues–beyond the isolated video. Welo’s visual orientation enables each person to be present in the context of space and to navigate to be with people and groups as they choose.

With these two tools, you can set your Agile Release Train up for success for PI Planning. Here’s how:

Select professionally-designed virtual spaces

Bring online the best of the brick-and-mortar spaces you used for in-person PI Planning–from plenary to break-out rooms to spots for casual socializing.

Rather than feel confined to a static rectangle, people see themselves and others in context, move themselves in and between spaces to connect with colleagues before, during, and after PI Planning events.

Welo spaces also provide PI participants ready access to up-to-date, relevant resources, such as Jira and Easy Agile apps used across all events.

Establish the Business Context

All Agile Release Train members can access information about the program in Easy Agile Programs. For example, in the objectives section below, you could link to a pre-recorded video of the business owner addressing the company-level objectives. Hence, teams know that their team-level objectives must ladder to this. This ensures that all members of the Agile Release Train see your business owner face to face in that distributed way and that they always have access to this video throughout PI Planning.

After viewing the information about the program, the Product Manager can create features in Jira ahead of the PI Planning event to be discussed and broken down in planning. Easy Agile Programs seamlessly integrates with Jira, so there's no need to double-handle the work. They are ready to schedule onto a visual timeline for everyone to see what the team has committed to during PI Planning.

Set up your SAFe Program Board

The SAFe Program Board is a critical tool and output of PI Planning; It is a visual summary of features or goals, cross-team dependencies, and other factors that impact their delivery. Not only does this help with transparency, but it also increases flexibility, which helps minimize delays and unhealthy dependencies.

Ensure you have a digitized SAFe Program Board set up before the PI Planning session. Easy Agile Programs replicates the physical program board. A board that everyone has the same view of and can access. Learn how to set up a SAFe Program Board with Easy Agile Programs here.

Prepare your Team Planning Board

The Team Planning Board represents a scrum or kanban board which is included in the Program. This is where the teams will plan their work in the team breakout sessions during PI Planning.

If you have set up your Program Board with Easy Agile Programs, prepare the team Planning Boards by adding each team to the Program ahead of PI Planning. Once teams are added, Planning Boards are automatically created and ready for team breakout sessions. Teams can create team-level PI objectives, break down features into user stories, estimate issues to understand capacity, and create dependencies with other teams.

Moving forward

With distributed PI Planning a reality for nearly 90% of agile teams, the good news is that new solutions are being developed to work with your current tools–powering employee engagement, fluid collaboration, and efficient processes critical to successful outcomes and career satisfaction.

Equip your remote, distributed or co-located teams for success with a digital tool for PI Planning.

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