Sprint Goal- Are you setting it right?

 

Do you think your team does a lot of context switching? 

Do you still find the dearth of collaboration among team members?

In your scrum ceremonies, do you still hear more “I” s than “We” s?

Is your team failing to meet their Team objectives frequently?

Are your Team members still worried about their respective tasks only, based on their personal preference or assigned to them?

Is your daily scrum just a status update meeting rather than an opportunity to discuss a common vision?

These are some of the common problems that a Scrum team encounters. 

Mostly we interpret the reasons behind the above problems to be lack of coordination among the team members. 

But have you ever tried thinking for the reasons beyond the coordination issues in the team?

Have you ever retrospected to understand if there would have been something in common for the team to work that would have solved the above problems. 

Yes, you were right. The team might not have an obvious reason to work in coordination. Any Guesses what could bind the team to work together?

Team could be missing an important Scrum Flavor called 'Sprint Goal'. 

A lot of SCRUM teams do not set proper sprint goals. To save time in a sprint planning meeting, stories are often pulled into Sprint backlog based on urgency.

Many a times the Sprint goal is to complete all the stories in the Sprint backlog. 

In this article, let’s see how an effective and a well-defined Sprint goal can help us address the above discussed issues.

Firstly what according to you is a Sprint Goal?

A sprint goal is an important artifact in the Scrum that defines the purpose of a sprint and provides a common vision to the team and that's something which results in an incremental working product-update that solves a customer problem.

In the ideal situation, every sprint should have only one sprint goal be defined. This ensures that the entire team works in one direction. Multiple goals drift the team’s focus and direction.

 Let’s try to connect Sprint Goal to other Scrum Artifacts with the help of an example.

Let’s assume that there are a group of travel enthusiast (Developers) who have planned for a road trip to Ladakh (Final Product). This trip is organized by a company called XYZ Travel Organizers(Product Owner) and there is a guide (Scrum master) who is there to help the enthusiast reach the destination. 

Since you can't reach Ladakh in a single day or a Single stretch, you have planned few intermediate stoppages to stay and relax before proceeding towards Ladakh. The Journey between one stoppage destination to the other is your Sprint and every stoppage destination (Product Increment) is a milestone which contributes to reaching Ladakh, the final Product.

Before starting the journey, you'd need to decide your next stoppage destination which is your sprint goal. The route you would be taking to reach the destination, the turn-by-turn instructions, weather forecast information which can help you to reach your destination on Time (Sprint backlog).

I hope the correlation helped you understand different Scrum artefacts.

Let’s also try to reuse this example wherever needed for a better understanding.

I presume that you have got a fair idea about the Sprint goal.

It's time to understand , How is the Sprint goal crafted?

Every role in the Scrum team plays a crucial role in crafting a well-defined Sprint Goal. 

The product owner defines and decides the priority of product backlog items based on the business objectives.

During the sprint planning meeting, the product owner proposes the objective of the coming sprint and outlines the backlog items that will help to achieve this objective. But this objective cannot be a final sprint goal.

The development team knows how much they can work on to achieve the proposed sprint objective. They refine this objective further based on their experience, strengths, and weakness and create the sprint increment.

As a servant leader, the scrum master guides the development team and the product owner to come up with a good sprint goal during the sprint planning meeting and makes sure that the entire team of developers and Product Owner should have the same understanding on the agreed Sprint Goal. 

Let's try to explain this process with the above example.

 The Organizer (Product Owner) says that he would wish to have the next stoppage destination at 300 miles. But the enthusiasts are not in full agreement as they foresee a risk. They feel that their next destination should be at 200 miles considering the weather conditions and the hilly terrain nature of the road.

The guide (Scrum master) facilitates the discussion between the enthusiast and the organizer and finally everyone agrees to take a break after 200 miles. Here the Sprint goal is 200 miles which was agreed between Product Owner and Developers in this case between enthusiast and the organizer considering the Risk factors and the capacity of the enthusiasts.

Here we should understand that majority of the times the Product owner’s intention would be accomplish the final product as early as possible to have a fair ROI which sometimes leaves the team in a stressful situation struggling hard to achieve the over committed sprint goal. 

What would happen if Enthusiasts had agreed to have their next stoppage at 300 miles?

Simple, they wouldn't have been able to reach the planned destination as this was beyond their capacity or struggled too hard to reach the destination making the trip a stressful one rather than enjoying it. 

Sometimes teams commit to things that are not a part of the sprint goal. They might say that “yes, but we also need to do …”. However, promising too much and not delivering on that promise is a worse alternative.

Now that we have realized the importance of having a sprint goal, Let's see what benefits the team gets by agreeing on the right Sprint Goal

Though there could be much more benefits of Sprint goal, I have tried summarizing few not to make this article lengthy and boring.

* It makes it easier to determine which stories should be worked on in the next cycle.

* Teams don’t commit to individual stories in Scrum rather they commit to the sprint goal.

* Since the goal is well defined, it makes it easier for the stakeholders to give the right feedback during review. 

* It helps Stakeholders get an insight about the purpose of the Sprint and to decide if they should attend the next sprint review meeting.

Lets look into the format for crafting a simple but effective Sprint Goal

There are few templates by industry experts for creating a sprint goal and are used across the industry. 

SMART is one such method which makes the Sprint goal more meaningful covering all the aspects of having a sprint goal. 

This method is usually followed for writing good user stories and can be extended for Sprint goals too. 

SMART method:

Specific—The Sprint Goal should be specific to what we are trying to achieve by end of the sprint including a clear picture of what success looks like at the end.

Measurable— You should be able to measure the progress of the Sprint goal throughout the Sprint. 

Achievable—Your sprint goal should be realistic based on the time and resources available.

Relevant— The Sprint goals should be relevant to the Business goals and objectives and should add value to your customers. 

Time-bound—Set a deadline for delivery and plan and prioritize the sprint backlog accordingly. Goals that have a clear timeline are easier to achieve and ensure everyone is working on-pace and on-target.

 

Now it's time to think about few Sprint goal antipatterns which hamper the progress of the team and the product.

Again, in the interest of time, I have tried picking up few commonly persisting anti-patterns. 

1) Too many unrelated items in the sprint: It is not advisable to include every sprint item in the sprint goal if they are not coherent to the sprint goal.

2) The sprint goal turned out to be too big:  A larger sprint goal deviates the team’s focus, hence, should be refined again until it becomes the one or two sentence goal and ensures that all team members are on the same understanding with the statement.

3) The Sprint Goal is vague: The Sprint goal should be crystal clear so when we get to the end of a Sprint, the entire team should be in agreement on whether the Sprint Goal has been achieved. 

4) The Sprint Goal doesn't feel meaningful: A Sprint Goal is supposed to provide purpose.  It helps the team know why they are building the Increment.  People want to do meaningful work.  People want to do work that has an impact.  This is a driver for intrinsic motivation.

Last but not the least, Let’s find the best place to display our Sprint Goal.

There is a saying which goes like- 'What gets noticed gets done' which means the more you see something you are more likely to achieve it.

Choose a place which is frequently accessed by the team. 

The only place I can think about right now is the Scrum Board.

Write the Sprint Goal on or near the Scrum Board.  Make it large.  Use a color or border that stands out. This helps teams to think about it.

Teach the team to talk about progress towards the Sprint Goal in the Daily Scrum.

The facilitator can ask the team at the end of the Daily Scrum how they feel about the likelihood of achieving the Sprint Goal, if any adjustments are needed to the daily plan to refocus, or if scope needs to be negotiated.  This can help improve team collaboration.

Creating Sprint Goals and meeting them shows the achievement of the desired iteration outcome providing a shared goal to the team. Creating Sprint Goal help in creating focus and facilitates teamwork, gives support to priorities, helps in getting relevant feedback makes it easier to run feedback analysis, and supports Stakeholder communication.

Let’s adopt and adapt to the best practices of creating a more meaningful valuable achievable sprint goal which adds value to the Business goals.