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Sprint objective vs Sprint functionality forecast

Last post 09:09 am September 9, 2013 by Martin Taylor
2 replies
Martin Taylor
07:21 am September 9, 2013

Hi,

I'm a novice Scrum Master, and I'm having some difficulty interpreting a paragraph of The Scrum Guide.

The first paragraph of "Topic One: What can be done this Sprint?" (p9 - July 2013) reads as follows:

"The Development Team works to forecast the functionality that will be developed during the
Sprint. The Product Owner discusses the objective that the Sprint should achieve and the
Product Backlog items that, if completed in the Sprint, would achieve the Sprint Goal. The entire
Scrum Team collaborates on understanding the work of the Sprint."

What my team are trying to understand is, is it the Development Team or the Product Owner who defines the PBIs to include in the sprint? We're having some problems clearly separating what difference there is between the forecasted functionality and the objective. Surely the objective is to implement the functionality???

Thanks for taking the time to read this newbie's question!

Ian Mitchell
09:00 am September 9, 2013

> is it the Development Team or the Product Owner who defines the PBIs to include in the sprint?

The Product Owner is responsible for clearly expressing PBI's and making sure that the Development Team understands them. In that sense, the PO "defines the PBIs".

However the Development Team wholly own their Sprint Backlog. This means that no-one, apart from them, can define how many PBI's will be actually be included.

> We're having some problems clearly separating what difference there is between the forecasted
> functionality and the objective. Surely the objective is to implement the functionality?

The way I read it, the "objective" referred to is the PO's idea for the Sprint Goal.

Martin Taylor
09:09 am September 9, 2013

Thanks Ian. I'll report this back to the team.

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