The Sprint Planning is about to get over and Scrum Team is nowhere toward forming a Sprint Backlog. How should Scrum Master respond?

The Sprint Planning is about to get over and Scrum Team is nowhere toward forming a Sprint Backlog. How should Scrum Master respond?

I recently attended a session by Anand Pandey where he started a PSM 3 mentorship program. Every day in his group The Agilerators, he would post one situational question, and we as aspiring PSM-3 Scrum masters would time-box it for 3-4 min and try to answer it.

Well, I have already provided my thoughts which I could gather in 3-4 min in the group, I wanted to explore this question more deeply and see what more I can think of. So just penning down my thoughts. There could be many possibilities but these are just my views and would love to hear from you all too.

The situation mentioned in the question could be due to various reasons:

1. The team is over-engineering to craft a perfect sprint backlog: Many times we see that teams want to craft a perfect plan for the entire PBI in the sprint. This is not really good since in a complex environment things will change. We need to continuously inspect and adapt based on reality. We can't expect our plan to be perfect. A Scrum Master should advise the team to craft a plan for a few days and start the sprint. As the teams learn more they can add/remove the items based on their progress(Inspect) and collaborate with the PO to negotiate the scope to achieve the sprint goal.
2. Sprint Goal is not defined / vague or PO is unable to explain team WHY the sprint is important: Another issue might be that PO has come to the Sprint Planning without a draft Sprint Goal. He is unable to explain WHY the current sprint is important and how developers should spend their valuable time. The Sprint goal defines the purpose of the sprint. They create focus, and cohesion and enable collaboration among the team. Every day developers inspect their progress towards the sprint goal and adapt the sprint backlog. Scrum Master should coach PO and team on the importance of Sprint Goals and advise PO to come up with a draft sprint goal at the start of Sprint Planning. Then together with the team he should collaborate and create a Sprint Goal which the team needs to focus on and work on the current sprint.
3. Backlog is not ordered prior to sprint planning: If Backlog is not ordered prior to the sprint planning, this would again lead to delays in sprint planning. PO is responsible to maximize the value of the work delivered by developers. How he prioritizes the PBI is context-specific. Scrum Master should coach the PO on various prioritization techniques and collaborate with him to prioritize the backlog.
4. Backlog refinements sessions are not happening or are ineffective leading to the team's lack of clarity on the backlog items: Backlog refinement is an ongoing activity that happens within the sprint where the team breaks PBI into smaller PBIs that can be completed within the sprint. If any item is unclear the team asks questions to PO to get it clarified and size it appropriately. Scrum Master should facilitate Backlog refinement sessions and ensure teams are collaborating with PO to gain understanding and that sessions are effective.
5. The team is unaware of its capacity: Well we cannot bite off more than we can chew. The team should take into account any planned leaves, holidays, etc., and based on their past performance forecast their work for the sprint. If a team is new a Scrum Master should assist the team on how to plan their capacity for a few sprints and then anyone can start owning that.
6. Definition of Done (DOD) is not created or ambiguous: DOD serves as a common understanding between team and stakeholders on what is considered as DONE. It also serves as one of the inputs to Sprint Planning. If a team doesn't have DOD or DOD is vague then forecasting for the upcoming sprint will be challenging. A Scrum Master should guide the team to create a DOD if not defined yet along with PO and stakeholders to increase transparency.

My response to the question would be to guide the team to start the Sprint after the time-box with whatever information they have currently. During the sprint as they learn new insights based on their progress, they can collaborate with PO to negotiate the scope and add or remove items from the sprint backlog to achieve the sprint goal.

Another thing would be to coach the team on the importance of time-boxing. Time-boxing increases focus, and predictability without leaving any buffer time between the events. Also if the purpose of the meeting is not achieved within the time-box, it would reveal meeting inefficiency problems. Thus providing a chance to inspect and adapt the way we facilitate our meetings. According to Parkinson's Law, "the work expands so as to fill the time available", which means even if a particular work can be done in let's say 2 days, if the deadline is after 7 days it will take 7 days to complete that work. Time-boxing increases focus on what matters most and saves our time.

Lastly, all these things should be discussed in the next retrospective to find out better ways in running the Sprint Planning event.

These are just my thoughts. I would love to hear from you all too.