A Guide to Missing Sprint?Goals
Stefan Wolpers
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TL; DR: Missing Sprint Goals
Do you excel in the art of setting unattainable, imposed, or plain non-existing Sprint Goals? In other words, are you good at missing Sprint Goals with regularity? If not, don’t worry; help is on the way!
In this article, we’ll explore how to consistently miss the mark. For example, enjoy the thrill of cherry-picking unrelated backlog items and defining success by sheer output, not outcome. Countless Scrum Teams have thoroughly tested all suggestions. They are ideally suited for teams who love the challenge of aimlessly wandering through Sprints!
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The Essence and Inherent Importance of the Sprint Goal
Before we indulge ourselves in missing Sprint Goals and, thus, failing core responsibilities as a Scrum Team, let’s revisit the original ideas behind Sprint Goals:
The Sprint Goal is a Scrum team’s single objective for Sprint, delivering the most valuable result from the customers’ and the organization’s perspective.
It informs the composition of the Sprint Backlog and becomes a part of it, thus acting as a beacon that guides the Developers during the Sprint. Moreover, it is instrumental to creating the Sprint plan, having a successful Daily Scrum, and collaborating and supporting each other as a Scrum team.
Also, the Sprint Goal helps the Scrum team to identify whether their work was successful: did we accomplish the goal at the end of the Sprint? In that respect, it separates a few weeks of working on “stuff” from experiencing the satisfaction and joy of being a successful Scrum team, delivering value to customers and the organization.
The Sprint Goal thus supports a Scrum team — and its organization — to move from an industrial paradigm-driven output orientation, the proverbial feature factory, to an outcome-based approach to solving your customers’ most valuable problem every Sprint.
This change of perspective has a far-reaching consequence: every Sprint, the Scrum team strives to accomplish the Sprint Goal, which is different from maximizing the output in the form of work hours or the number of work items.
The process of forming a Sprint Goal begins with Sprint Planning, when the Developers, the Product Owner, and the Scrum Master come together to decide on the next steps for building, ensuring the delivery of maximum value to customers in the forthcoming Sprint.
How to Create Sprint Goals
Initially, the Product Owner highlights the overarching Product Goal and outlines the business aim for the new Sprint. Using this as a foundation, the Scrum team collaboratively establishes the Sprint Goal, considering various factors such as:
Following this, the Developers pledge their commitment to the Sprint Goal. It’s important to understand that this commitment isn’t to a fixed amount of work, such as the tasks listed in the Sprint Backlog after Sprint Planning. Scrum focuses on outcomes rather than outputs.
In response, the Developers then project the work needed to reach the Sprint Goal. They do this by selecting items from the Product Backlog to include in the Sprint Backlog. If additional, previously unidentified tasks are necessary to achieve the Sprint Goal, they add these to the Sprint Backlog.
Moreover, the Developers form an initial plan for accomplishing their projection. Doing so for the first two or three days is advisable, as the team will begin gathering insights once the work commences. Detailed planning for the entire Sprint at this stage would be counterproductive.
Ten Sure-Fire Ways to Miss Your Sprint Goals
Here are my top ten approaches to missing Sprint Goals to ensure you will fail your stakeholders every single Sprint.
Please note that you need to read the order in reverse; #1 in this list is #10 in the original list. Unfortunately, Medium sucks at interpreting HTML:
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Food for Thought — Missing Sprint Goals
Consider the following questions to help your teams and your organization to avoid missing Sprint Goal and embrace agility fully:
Conclusion
These ten Sprint Goal anti-patterns highlight various challenges that Scrum teams may face, from minor inefficiencies to major dysfunctions that can significantly undermine Scrum principles and, thus, the team’s effectiveness. Addressing these issues requires a nuanced understanding of team dynamics, organizational culture, and commitment to continuous improvement and adherence to Scrum values. By recognizing and proactively addressing these anti-patterns, Scrum teams can enhance their ability to deliver value effectively and sustainably.
What anti-patterns have you encountered, and how did you counter missing Sprint Goals? Please share your experience in the comments.
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Missing Sprint Goals — Related Articles
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Why Succeed When You Can Fail? A Guide to Missing Sprint Goals was first published on Age-of-Product.com.