Your Guide to Jira Sprint Planning: Everything you Need to Know

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Sprint planning can feel overwhelming when you're just starting out. You've built your product backlog, groomed the stories, and now you're staring at a blank sprint wondering how to turn all that preparation into actual deliverable work.

The good news? Sprint planning follows a clear process. Once you understand the mechanics and learn how to avoid common pitfalls, it becomes the key practice for delivering predictable results.

This guide walks you through the complete Jira sprint planning workflow. 

You'll learn how to: 

• set up sprints in Jira
• estimate work accurately
• prioritize effectively
• track progress throughout the iteration

We'll cover the fundamentals that you need to know, plus advanced techniques for maximizing team productivity and sprint success.

Understanding Sprints and the Purpose of Jira Sprint Planning

Before diving into the details, let's clarify what we're actually talking about:

• A sprint is a fixed time period (typically 2-4 weeks) where your team focuses on completing a specific batch of work. The goal is to end each sprint with something real and valuable that you can ship or demo. The next sprint starts immediately after the conclusion of the previous sprint.
• Jira sprint planning is the complete process of preparing for and launching a successful sprint. It includes getting ready for the sprint planning meeting, estimating and prioritizing work, and configuring the sprint in Jira.

The real purpose of this process goes beyond just filling a sprint with tickets. Jira sprint planning creates alignment between your development team and product owner. It helps you communicate priorities and voice concerns, discuss possible approaches, and build a shared commitment to the sprint goal.

Without proper sprint planning, teams can lose focus and invest time in the wrong things. As a result, they can struggle to deliver consistent value. On the other hand, with good planning, you create predictability, minimize surprises, and prime your team for success.

Jira Sprint Planning Step-by-Step 

Let’s break this process down into smaller chunks to help you nail it.

1. Prepare for the Jira Sprint Planning Meeting

The sprint planning session, or meeting, is where your entire Scrum team decides what work will make it into the upcoming sprint. The Product Owner presents the highest-priority backlog items, and the development team discusses what's realistic given their capacity and timeline.

Here are some tips to help you get ready for this meeting:

• Come prepared. The product owner should refine the backlog beforehand and already have a vision for the new sprint
• Start with the sprint goal. This gives everyone a north star for deciding which stories to include
• Embrace collaborative discussion. Estimation debates build shared understanding about requirements and surface hidden complexities
• Split work into granular sub-tasks. Without this breakdown, your sprint reports will show large drops and jumps instead of the smooth, incremental progress you want to see.

Additionally, you can use this Jira template for your Sprint planning meeting. This is a Confluence document containing several tables for you to fill out before and during the meeting. 

2. Configure a New Sprint in Jira

This process takes just a few clicks:

• Navigate to your Scrum project's Backlog view. You'll see a placeholder for your next sprint there
• Name your sprint. Use a clear naming convention like "Sprint 24" or "Q1 2025 Sprint 3"
• Choose the sprint duration and set your start and end dates
• Add a sprint goal that captures the primary objective

Your sprint goal should be concise but meaningful. Instead of "Complete tickets," try something like "Enable users to filter search results by date range." A focused goal helps your team make decisions when priorities shift mid-sprint.

3. Add Work Items to the Sprint

Once your sprint is created, it's time to populate it with work. Jira gives you several ways to add tasks to the sprint:

• Drag and drop work items from the Backlog view. This is the most common approach. Simply grab backlog items and drop them into your sprint container
• Update the Sprint field directly. Open any work item and change its Sprint field to assign it to your active or planned sprint
• Bulk-edit multiple work items. Select several backlog items at once in the Backlog view. Then, use bulk operations to move them all into the sprint simultaneously. Bulk-editing can also be useful for changing the value of other fields, such as Reporter or Due date.

Remember that a work item can only belong to one sprint at a time. Another thing to bear in mind is that your Scrum board will only display tickets from the active sprint, unlike Kanban boards that show all work. This intentional limitation helps your team maintain focus and stay committed to the sprint goal.

4. Leverage Story Points for Better Planning

Story points help you estimate effort by considering such parameters as task difficulty, size, and uncertainty.

For example, "Publish 50 landing pages" isn't difficult or complex, but the sheer volume makes it time-consuming (large size). Conversely, "Fix the checkout bug" may be small in scope, but debugging payment flows can be technically challenging (high difficulty and complexity). By examining different aspects of each task, your team can determine how much effort they actually require.

Story point estimation is the most common approach for agile software development. Alternatively, some agile teams prefer T-shirt sizing (XS, S, M, L, XL) as it feels more intuitive.

Here's a reference table for both estimation scales:

Jira provides a Story Points field where you can enter these estimates. Over time, you'll be able to calculate your team's velocity, which will help you make your Jira sprint planning process more accurate.

5. Prioritize Tickets in the Sprint

Not all work in your sprint carries equal weight. Some items are critical blockers that must be shipped no matter what, while others are nice-to-haves that can be skipped, if needed. Clear prioritization helps your team know what to focus on when time gets tight or unexpected issues arise.

Jira has 5 default priority levels: 

• Highest
• High
• Medium
• Low
• Lowest

You can select priority in the work item view tab or on most other tabs that list work items, such as Backlog or Active Sprints.

Each priority level has a visual icon that makes it easy to spot critical work at a glance. Additionally, the board can be configured to display the highest-priority tickets first and the lowest-priority tickets last.

However, you don’t have to be locked into Jira's defaults. Many teams customize priorities to match their workflow. For example, the MoSCoW framework is quite popular. It includes such priority levels as:

• Must Have - critical for sprint success
• Should Have - important but not blocking
• Could Have - nice additions if time permits
• Won't Have - excluded from the scope

Whatever system you choose, consistency matters more than the specific labels. It’s essential that everyone on your team interpret priorities in the same way.

Prioritization prevents your team from spending days perfecting a low-impact feature while critical deliverables languish. Setting clear priorities helps you keep momentum high and ensure that your sprint goal stays within reach.

6. Start the Sprint in Jira

Once the main chunk of Jira sprint planning is complete and you've committed to a set of work, it's time to begin.

Go to your Backlog, find your planned sprint, and click "Start Sprint." Jira will move the work items included into this sprint to your Scrum board, and your team can begin working on them.

Starting the sprint is a formal commitment. The end date is fixed (one of the core principles of Scrum), and your team is now accountable for delivering on the sprint goal.

7. Monitor Progress Throughout the Sprint

Sprint planning doesn't end when you click "Start Sprint." You will need to closely monitor your team’s progress to ensure you're on pace to deliver. Ongoing tracking helps you spot problems early, make mid-sprint adjustments when necessary, and gather data that improves future planning.

Daily Stand-ups Keep Your Plan on Track

The most effective way to stay aligned with your sprint plan is through daily stand-up meetings. These 15-minute check-ins give your team space to share what they completed yesterday, explain what they're working on today, and surface any blockers preventing progress.

Use Jira Reports to Track and Learn

Jira provides several reports under your project's Reports tab that show how your sprint is progressing:

• Burndown Chart – Shows remaining work over time, helping you see if you're on track to complete everything by the sprint end
• Burnup Chart – Displays completed work and any scope changes that occurred mid-sprint
• Sprint Report – Summarizes what was completed, what still needs to be done, and what got added after planning
• Velocity Chart – Tracks story points completed across multiple sprints

These reports serve two purposes. During the sprint, they help you decide whether to adjust scope or ask for help on blocked items. After the sprint, they become the foundation for better planning. Is your team consistently overcommitting? Are too many user stories getting added mid-sprint? This data helps you refine your estimation and capacity planning for future sprints.

Close the Sprint and Hold a Retrospective Meeting

When your sprint reaches its end date, it's time to formally close it out and analyze the results. This two-part process wraps up the current sprint and sets you up for better Jira sprint planning next time.

Closing the Sprint in Jira

Navigate to your Active Sprints view, find the sprint that has ended, and click "Complete Sprint." Jira will prompt you to decide what to do with any incomplete work. You can move unfinished items back to the backlog or carry them forward to the next sprint.

Incomplete work is normal, so don't treat it as failure. What matters is understanding why items didn't get done. The key is learning from the pattern, not punishing the team for uncompleted tasks.

The Sprint Retrospective: Your Improvement Engine

After closing the sprint, hold a retrospective meeting with your team. This is where you examine what went well, what could be improved, and what specific changes to implement in the next sprint.

Retrospectives drive continuous improvement in all your processes, including planning. Maybe you discover that your Jira sprint planning meetings run too long because sprint backlog items aren't well-refined. Or you notice that estimation is consistently off for a certain type of work. 

These insights help you adjust your planning approach over time, making each sprint more predictable than the last.

Pro Tip: Use Checklist Templates to Make Your Sprints More Agile

Sprint planning gives your team a clear commitment, but your sprint outcomes depend on what happens after the sprint starts. This is why teams rely on daily stand-ups and Jira reports during the iteration. 

You can add another practical layer of sprint control. Instead of guessing where the project stands, include functional checklists into your Jira tickets. Then, you will be able to follow the progress step by step, on a more granular level than the issue status alone can provide. This makes it easier for everyone to stay on the same page and see exactly how much work is left.

This can be achieved with the help of Smart Checklist for Jira - a solution that allows you to add feature-rich checklists to your Jira tickets. This is especially useful when:

• You handle complex tasks involving multiple steps
• Your team needs to work with standard criteria (such as the Definition of Done)
• You have repetitive tasks or recurring processes that follow the same pattern

Smart Checklist allows you to document your processes, criteria, and standard approaches in lightweight checklists. You can set custom statuses for each step, tag responsible people, save checklist templates for future use, and more. Let’s see some hands-on examples.

Definition of Done Checklist

This checklist template helps your team align on what “finished” actually means. It removes ambiguity at the end of the sprint by clearly outlining the quality, testing, documentation, and deployment expectations. 

When every work item follows the same DoD, fewer tasks get bounced back, and the quality remains consistent.

Note: Smart Checklist has automation features that allow you to auto-add the DoD checklist to your work items based on your custom conditions. For more on this topic, take a look at my article How to Implement the Definition of Done in Jira.

Here’s this checklist in copyable format. To add it to your Jira tickets, install Smart Checklist for Jira.

## Definition of Done

- **Code complete.** All code has been written and reviewed, and all necessary functionality has been implemented.

- **Code coverage.** All code has been tested and meets the required code coverage threshold.

- **Code quality.** Code has been written using the required standards, conventions, and best practices.

- **Integration.** Code has been integrated into the main branch, and all integration issues have been resolved.

- **Security:** The software has been tested for security vulnerabilities, and all issues have been resolved.

- **Performance:** The software has been tested for performance and scalability, and all issues have been resolved.

- **Peer review.** The code is reviewed by the peers.

- **System testing.** The software has been tested end-to-end, and all system tests have passed.

- **Regression testing.** All previously implemented functionality has been tested, and regression tests have been passed.

- **Documentation.** All necessary documentation has been written, reviewed, and approved, including user manuals, API documentation, and system documentation.

- **Acceptance testing.** The functionality has been demonstrated to the product owner or customer and has been approved.

- **Deployment:** The software has been successfully deployed to the production environment, and all deployment issues have been resolved.

Definition of Ready Template

The DoR checklist supports sprint planning by filtering out half-baked work before it enters the sprint. It helps teams quickly confirm that requirements are clear, dependencies are known, and estimates are in place. This reduces last-minute surprises and mid-sprint rework. As a result, sprint planning discussions focus on trade-offs and priorities instead of clarifying basics. 

## Definition of Ready

- **Clear description.** The work item has a well-defined goal, purpose, and expected outcome.

- **Acceptance criteria.** Clear and testable acceptance criteria have been defined and agreed upon.

- **Dependencies identified.** All external dependencies (technical, business, or cross-team) have been documented and addressed.

- **Design and scope.** Required mockups, wireframes, or business rules are attached or linked.

- **Feasibility check.** The team has confirmed the work item is feasible within the planned timeframe.

- **Estimation.** The effort has been estimated using the agreed method (e.g., story points).

- **No blockers.** No unresolved issues are preventing the team from starting work.

- **Stakeholder alignment.** All relevant stakeholders have reviewed and approved the item.

- **Priority set.** The item is prioritized appropriately in the backlog.

- **Linked items.** Related epics, tasks, or subtasks are linked for context.

- **Team understanding.** The team agrees on the scope and is confident they can start work.

Code Review Template

This checklist adds structure to one of the most critical stages of delivery. It guides reviewers step-by-step through functional correctness, readability, maintainability, and risk considerations. 

This keeps reviews focused and consistent, even when different people are involved. Over multiple sprints, it also raises the overall quality bar by reinforcing shared engineering standards and reducing avoidable defects.

To use this checklist in your work items, install Smart Checklist for Jira.

## Code review

- **Requirements.** Ensure that the code performs correctly and covers all requirements as described in the feature ticket.

> * Does this code change fulfill its intended purpose?

> * Does the code cover all requirements as described in the feature ticket?

> * Are there any unhandled edge cases or error scenarios?

- **Readability.** Make sure that the code is readable and easy to understand, suggest breaking up the code or reorganizing it to improve the readability for other developers.

> * Is the code easy to understand?

> * Are variable names and function names clear and descriptive?

- **Maintainability.** Evaluate the code for maintainability, making sure it is modular, reusable, and easy to modify and extend.

> * [DRY principle.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Don%27t_repeat_yourself) Are there any duplicated sections of code that could be consolidated into reusable functions or classes?

> * Will this change add undesirable compile-time or run-time dependencies?

> * Are there any best practices, design patterns, or language-specific patterns that could enhance the code significantly?

> * Does this code follow the single responsibility principle?

- **Performance and Security.** Evaluate the code for performance and security.

> * Will this code change negatively impact system performance?

> * Is there a way to significantly improve the code’s performance?

> * Are sensitive data such as user data and credit card information being securely handled and stored?

- **Testability.** Evaluate the code for testability, ensuring that it can be easily tested and that any necessary unit tests or integration tests have been written.

> * Is the code testable?

> * Do the existing tests reasonably cover the code change?

> * Are there any other essential unit, integration, or system tests that should be added?

- **Documentation.** Verify that the code includes appropriate documentation, ensuring that it is clear, concise, and up to date.

> * Does the code include appropriate documentation?

> * Is the documentation clear, concise, and up-to-date?

- **DevOps**. Verify that all the steps needed to be done after the PR deploy are described.

> * Are there any risks related to the deployment of this PR in terms of production operation?

Implementing checklist templates allows you to streamline team collaboration and make your agile project management process more organized.

The Benefits of Using Smart Checklists for Agile Sprints

• Consistency: When every story follows the same Definition of Ready and Definition of Done, quality becomes more reliable. In addition, handling recurring tasks according to the same documented approach allows you to enforce best practices.
• Efficiency: Reusable templates eliminate repetitive work. Instead of typing out deployment steps for the hundredth time, you apply a template with one click.
• Accountability: Checklists with tagged owners make it clear who's responsible for each step. Nothing falls through the cracks because "everyone thought someone else was handling it."
• Visibility: Granular progress tracking shows exactly where work stands. Instead of "in progress" for three days, you see which specific steps are complete and which are blocking.
• Onboarding: New team members get up to speed faster when processes are documented as reusable templates rather than tribal knowledge.

For teams serious about improving their sprint planning and execution, Smart Checklist for Jira provides these benefits without adding overhead to your workflow.

Common Jira Sprint Planning Mistakes to Avoid

Overcommitting to Work

Teams frequently commit to more than they can deliver, which leads to incomplete sprints, technical debt, and burnout. This often stems from ignoring historical velocity or failing to account for meetings, holidays, and other non-development time.

Use your team's average velocity from previous sprints as a guide. Account for team capacity (vacation, training, meetings) before committing. 

Treating Plans as Unchangeable

Some teams believe everything in the sprint plan is fixed and changes are failures. This rigidity wastes time on detailed planning and prevents adaptation when better opportunities emerge.

Remember that sprint plans are living documents. As long as the sprint goal remains achievable, the team should have flexibility to adjust work.

Assigning Work Instead of Self-Organization

When managers assign specific tasks to specific people, they undermine team ownership and create bottlenecks. Let the team self-organize around work and take responsibility.

Ignoring Technical Debt and Quality

Focusing only on new features while ignoring bugs, refactoring, and infrastructure work creates long-term problems that eventually slow you down.

Reserve some capacity in each sprint for technical debt and quality improvements. A common guideline is taking about 20% of sprint time for this type of work.

Continuously Improve Your Jira Sprint Planning Process

Sprint planning is not a one-time setup. It’s a habit that evolves as your team learns what works and what doesn’t. Each sprint gives you new signals - missed commitments, late surprises, or smooth delivery. All that points to small adjustments worth making next time.

Use retrospectives, sprint reports, and day-to-day observations to refine how you plan work in Jira. Keep the parts that help your team stay focused. Simplify or drop what adds friction. Such improvements will help you make your Jira sprint planning process clearer and more predictable for everyone involved.

With time, you may need to coordinate more complex initiatives involving multiple teams. This can be done with Jira Plans functionality (formerly Advanced Roadmaps for Jira), which is available if you have a Premium or Enterprise Jira Software licence. This is another interesting topic that deserves a separate post. For more about using Jira Plans, take a look at my article Advanced Roadmaps Hierarchy Configuration Guide.

Good luck with your sprint planning!