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Sprint Planning before Sprint starts (in Jira) or after the sprint has started (in Jira)?

Last post 11:08 pm October 29, 2019 by Thomas Owens
2 replies
Janelle Lirette
03:26 pm October 29, 2019

Hello,

Our team uses Jira for managing our Development work.  I have conflicting information on 'when' to complete the upcoming Sprint Planning.  My training was that Sprint Planning should be done just BEFORE the actual Sprint is started so the tooling gets a baseline of the Sprint committments and therefore can develop a good 'burn down' estimate.  While reading online it looks like a recommendation is to perform the Sprint Planning on the first day of the Sprint (thus after the Sprint has started).  This results in my Jira Sprint report showing lots of activity of moving items into the Sprint (added scope), out of the sprint (reduced scope), estimate changes, etc.  The Sprint Report burn down looks all crazy with no clear way to see a projected burn down.

How are others practicing Sprint Planning?

Thanks,

Janelle

Tony Divel
09:04 pm October 29, 2019

The Sprint can 'start' formally with Sprint Planning and you can always 'start' the Sprint in your tool afterwards if the sole reason behind the decision is based on metrics from the tool. 

Sprints are time boxed so the new Sprint starts immediately after the previous one ends regardless of what is done within the tool.

Thomas Owens
11:08 pm October 29, 2019

In the context of Jira, my preference is to hold Sprint Planning, come up with the appropriate Product Backlog Items in the Sprint, and then start the Sprint in Jira. This enables the Sprint Report and some other reporting pages to be more accurate, which then can help focus the discussion at the Sprint Retrospective and future Sprint Planning sessions since you have historical data.

Although Tony is right that, according to the Scrum Guide, a Sprint starts immediately after the previous one ends, the Sprint in Jira starts at the end of the Sprint Planning session and ends before the Sprint Review and Sprint Retrospective. This maximizes the value of the data that comes from using Jira with respect to getting issues into a Done column or state and resolving issues and providing useful information to the team.

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