Watched a veteran ScrumMaster do sprint planning for a team's 16th sprint. Below are some practical notes.
- This team of 10+ found that 2 week sprints worked best.
- A 'Done Is' list (unit tested, checked in, code debt noted, integrated into staging environment, smoke tested, etc) was handed out at the beginning of the meeting. Later, when estimates were given, the ScrumMaster would ask "Does that estimate include everything from the Done List?
- They have a theme for each sprint. For this sprint it was roughly "Major focus is on user experience and usability issues."
- Ramp-up time for new team members or members taking on new roles was noted, but not explicitly assigned hours. Instead, the weight of ramp was factored in to any given related task.
- The sprint tool was Excel, and the estimated line items were grouped (using Excel's grouping functionality) by Feature or Activity.
- Each feature had a team member assigned as Lead (noted in Lead column) who was responsible for 'cracking the whip' if need be.
- Each task still had a specific assignee.
- Meetings had line items for each person that was scheduled to be in the meeting with planned meeting length assigned.
