In the Scrum method of agile software development, the sprint begins with the sprint planning meeting. At the sprint planning meeting, the Product Owner and the team come together to determine what stories a team will attempt to complete in that iteration of work. Time-boxed to four hours, this meeting is a negotiation between Product Owner. That is, the Product Owner is responsible for determining which stories are of the highest priority to the release and which will yield the highest business value, but the team has the ability to push back and voice concerns or impediments. After all, the team - which actually completes the work - may be aware of a legitimate factor obstructing development.
Once the team commits to the proposed work, the Product Owner moves the corresponding stories into the sprint backlog. For teams using manual agile, this could be physically represented by moving a Post-It note or index card with a story written on it from the backlog into the spring backlog. For teams using an agile tooling solution, this could be represented in a number of ways. In my company's tool, ScrumWorks Pro, there is a two-paned view of a project, in which the product backlog appears on the right and the sprint backlog on the left. Using an intuitive, drag-and-drop interface, the Product Owner can easily move stories into the sprint.
New HTC Phones Sprint
At this point in the sprint planning meeting, the Product Owner is typically excused while the team breaks the sprint backlog items into individual tasks. Although the Product Owner is asked to leave at this point so that the team can candidly discuss the work to be completed, he or she is nonetheless expected to be "on call" to answer questions, clarify acceptance criteria, or renegotiate. This meeting, previously called the sprint definition meeting, is also time-boxed to four hours, so that all sprint planning activities can be completed in a single day's time.
With sprint goals defined, the team is ready to hit the ground running. Of course, there are several other meetings which occur throughout the sprint. In my next two articles, I'll discuss them and their value to Scrum's inspect-and-adapt process.
Sprint Planning Meeting
