Agile practices include several different approaches and they are supposed to help development teams become more flexible and able to respond to changes in the project requirements. Jira software focuses heavily on the Agile methodology and has several features that make it easier to plan sprints. It provides project managers and team members ways to focus on the execution, minimize risks, and guarantee a higher quality of work for all tasks. Listed in this article are some of the best practices for planning successful sprints using the platform.
Practices for Planning Successful Sprints
Review Roadmaps
One of the first lines of action for any team should be to review the roadmaps for all projects before beginning. It provides context on the most important Agile concepts i.e. versions and epics. These are the backbone of planning and can help users track the delivery of their long-term. It is important to keep updating the roadmap and providing access to the whole team. All epics and versions should be listed correctly on the Jira software before any sprint planning can occur.
Pre-Sprint Meeting
Sprint planning has two key pre-requisites, i.e. tailoring of the backlog and sorting the work to be completed in the next sprint according to the priority label. The backlog grooming is one thing that should be addressed before the meeting. The product owner and scrum master can schedule their own pre-planning meeting and work out the details while the rest of the team can join if they want.
Backlog Grooming
Backlog grooming makes sure the development backlog looks good and does not have any outstanding issues. A healthy backlog should be able to prioritize the work items according to the tasks that need to be completed first. It should include complete user stories to help the development team begin execution and have up-to-date information on the work estimation.
Jira software can help organize short meetings for backlog grooming to make sprint planning even more efficient. The objective is to spend time trying to triangulate the issues that the team will most likely encounter during their first few sprints. There might be problems related to incomplete information from the product owner or gaps in the knowledge which need to be filled to prevent any time-wasters during the sprint.
Tailoring the backlog is important because it gives the team an opportunity to weigh their options before the sprint and also mark items that need to be discussed on the Jira demo when the project begins.
Compile Data
Sprint planning is focused on defining the goals and the amount of work that needs to go into it. The product owner, scrum master, and the rest of the development team will be working together using the Jira software. They can cover everything that they will be hoping to accomplish during the sprint. The project planning software meeting should be scheduled earlier in the week so the team has enough context to begin their workflow with minimal disruption or a two-day weekend.
The meeting usually beings with the scrum master presenting all relevant tasks and putting them into perspective. The product owner is also supposed to present a retrospective of the product market and relevant updates. The objective is to make sure everyone is on the same page with the broader context in mind. It is the responsibility of the product owner to begin actual planning for the conversation.
Using the Jira project management tool the product owner can calculate the average velocity for the team and then estimate the time it will take them to complete the project. They can also make other sprint forecasts to maximize the value delivered to the client.
User Stories
User stories are an important aspect of sprint planning and it is essential that the team walks through the different scenarios and describes them in detail. This way it is easier to know how much work needs to be put in to complete each one of the stories. When the team is working on their plan it is important that all the important points are saved on Jira software. That way they can refer back to the decision and its justification at a later point.
Some of the questions that need to be addressed are relevant to the definition of the story, contextual information, and any other details that have changed since it was first discussed. The teams should also discuss the estimates and whether or not a consensus has been reached on them. The scrum master is supposed to guide the entire team through the re-estimation process.
There are specific tasks that need to be completed in order to fulfill the user story and the workflow should be optimized according to them. Once all the work is broken down in the Jira demo, the users might discover some unique perspectives and create new stories for them. They should also take the testing implications into account and find ways to automate the process.
The managers also need to be sure that the team they have hired has the specialist skills needed to complete the project. They should also evaluate the story and its effect on the product architecture, code design, and review process. When the team is evaluating the dependency between each user story they should include them in the estimated time for each sprint.
Let the Sprint Begin
At this point of the project, the team should be comfortable in forecasting all data related to the sprint. When they have completed the planning they should be able to get verbal approval from whoever is present in the room. The team should know what they are committing to and each member can be assigned a task using the Jira project management tool so there is no duplicate work.
The team morale and productivity will fluctuate throughout the sprint and these variations should be discussed during planning. However, not everything needs to be evaluated during the early stages and the objective should be to understand any issues plaguing the team. They should be able to respond quickly to any development concerns and the culture must promote productivity, happiness, and better work practices.
