What is a sprint planning session, and what are the expected outcomes?

Avoid terms native to other agile or waterfall disciplines when describing sprint planning sessions. While many companies have adopted inclusive language that resonates with their specific teams, the interviewer may become confused or lack confidence in your knowledge if you blend methodologies here.

Teams use sprint planning meetings to plan for and make their commitment for the current sprint. The Product Owner reviews the top items from the product backlog, and we discuss any necessary changes to the estimation or high-level scope of the highest priority stories. We also discuss any relevant changes in business goals or directions that need to be considered.

We then discuss the availability of everyone during the sprint and determine a resulting velocity projection. This helps us to know how many stories we can take on during the sprint. We discuss the definition of 'done' for the top priority stories. This consists of a story scope negotiation between the development team and the Product Owner. I play the role of facilitator and ensure conflicts are resolved appropriately and that we lean on the Scrum principles to decide what is best. The results of these discussions are documented in the acceptance criteria of each story.

We then break down the tasks that are needed to complete each story we hope to include and create the sprint backlog. Many times, teams also add hours estimates to the tasks to ensure that the projected scope is feasible. The result of this work represents the commitment that the team makes for the sprint. We then conclude the meeting and begin our work.

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