What is sprint planning? Guide and meeting agenda cheat sheet

Sprint planning is a crucial scrum ceremony where the scrum team, led by a product manager or scrum master, decides on the work commitments for the upcoming sprint, typically spanning 2-4 weeks. This process involves the entire scrum team, including engineers, designers, and QA, to ensure a comprehensive understanding of priorities and capacities. The meeting begins with a review of the previous sprint's accomplishments and any carryover tasks, followed by a discussion of new stories to focus on. Key practices for effective sprint planning include grooming and estimating stories beforehand, coordinating dependencies, understanding the team's true capacity, and being prepared for unplanned work. While sprint goals can be helpful, they are not always necessary, especially when focusing on outcomes rather than outputs. Effective sprint planning requires listening to the team, making informed tradeoffs, and ensuring that all tasks are well understood and prioritized before the meeting.