Scrum Board - Sprint Planning, Capacity and Retrospective

[Responder]

Hello everyone,

I'm excited to have recently transitioned into the role of project manager. Previously, I was an SRE and haven't had extensive experience in project management. I'm keen on learning the most effective ways to conduct Sprint Planning, Capacity Planning, and Retrospectives.

We currently follow a 3-week sprint cycle, and I'd like to get your insights on the optimal timing for scheduling Sprint Planning and Retrospective meetings within that timeframe.

Any tips or best practices you can share would be greatly appreciated!

[Justin Townsend]

Hello @Responder ,

I'm very much a fan of all the tools available via JIRA (predominantly), though other products support. In a PM capacity, make sure you've got some basics right first:

• If you follow a flexible work environment for your contributors in the scrum, make sure you establish core working hours and reach broad agreement
  • especially helpful with a geographically dispersed team where you might need to handover progress on issues 
  • usually as a new PM your team is "waiting" to see what kind of manager you will be. Do all the rules of the old PM apply etc.?
• Is your 3 week cadence a function of the size of features you are trying to break the back of, or is it driven by external factors to the squad(s), e.g. management preference, reporting cycles, client ship dates?
  • It is useful to know if you have some influence here, to determine if this is a lever you can use for better productivity of the squad(s) under your charge
• Spend some time digging into features that have LARGE estimates, this can be a source for stagnation and it's your job as a PM to help unblock and motivate the team to think about breaking down large tasks

As for days of the week for planning ceremonies, try to avoid Mondays or Fridays, it implies as a PM you do don't have a problem with encouraging people to ritually work early Monday (perhaps having prepared for the ceremony over a weekend) or late Friday (right before people have weekend plans).

If you build trust and safety in your team(s), they'll be there to support for the occasions when you REALLY need them to flex a bit to deliver that key customer feature.

Lastly, as a PM always be working on your backlog (maybe with the help of a BA / SA if your company has that kind of budget), but ALWAYS know what the customer wants and a pretty good understanding of priority. Remember technical challenges can also influence in what order issues get delivered .

HTH,

Justin

[Responder]

[Responder]

Thank you very much, Justin. 

This is extremely helpful and something which I really needed to know. Thank you for guiding me here. 

[Björn Döhler]

@Responder 

I wrote a new Blog Article about Retrospectives, maybe it is helpful for you. https://www.resolution.de/post/mastering-the-retrospective-in-sprint-best-practices-and-tips/