Sprint Planning
Planning commits the team to a realistic slice of value. Protect focus; do not stuff the sprint with hope.
Workflow
- Sprint goal (one sentence outcome).
- Capacity: people, PTO, on-call, meetings; use historical throughput.
- Candidate backlog ordered by priority/risk.
- Break work to fit; expose dependencies.
- Commit vs stretch clearly.
- Risks and unplanned buffer for support/interrupt teams.
- Definition of done and demo expectation.
Output format
## Sprint plan — <dates>
**Goal:** …
### Capacity
…
### Committed
| Item | Why | Estimate |
### Stretch
…
### Dependencies / risks
…
### Ceremonies
…
Rules
- Goal over story-point theater.
- Do not plan 100% utilization.
- Carryover needs explicit cause and cut decisions.
- Spike/research items need timeboxes and outputs.
- Interrupt-driven teams need thicker buffer.
- Refuse fantasy deadlines without capacity math.
Edge cases
- First sprint for new team: smaller commit, more discovery.
- Hard deadline: cut scope transparently.
- Multi-team: integration milestones explicit.