Sprint planning - Start of Sprint?

David - To get started with your first Sprint, once you have a Scrum Team, they will need a Definition of "Done" and enough "ready" Product Backlog for the first Sprint. A vision statement from the Product Owner would also be beneficial. The best advice I can give is to get started ASAP.

How do I start a Sprint with nothing planned in at the beginning? Using JIRA I cannot click the start button on an empty Sprint. I can see it being part of the previous sprint but as a last ceremony before starting the next one. Is this correct?

Regarding Sprint Planning and Jira, once the Scrum Team has crafted a Sprint Goal, the Dev Team has to move the Product Backlog items into the Sprint. Once they have decided on their capacity and what can get done, then in Jira the Sprint can be started, but you cannot start it without at least 1 PBI.

When building out a Sprint the tasks need estimating. Is this done during the planning phase? Sometimes this may take a while where I have been adding tasks as a Spike. Is this correct?

Tasking is optional in Scrum. And if your Dev Team decides to break PBIs down into tasks, estimating the tasks is also optional. Honestly most Dev Teams no longer estimate tasks, as it can be considered a huge waste. In Scrum only the PBI requires an estimate.

Spikes are also optional in Scrum. Typically a Spike is more for Backlog Refinement work (i.e. for research) , and rather than an estimate the Spike is given a time-box. Spikes can become waterfall-ish if you use them often. Again my advice is to just get started, and try to limit Spikes. Were enough is understood about a PBI, this research could be part of the PBI rather than a Spike.

How do I start a Sprint with nothing planned in at the beginning? Using JIRA I cannot click the start button on an empty Sprint. I can see it being part of the previous sprint but as a last ceremony before starting the next one. Is this correct?

My advice is to separate the details of the tool from the method used.

I use Jira at work as well. For us, the act of clicking "Start Sprint" in Jira is the last action of the Sprint Planning. I understand why Jira does this - it takes a snapshot of the state of the work in the Sprint so it can track things that were added and removed. Without this, the start of the nice charts and graphs and data tables that come out of Jira may look weird at the start of every Sprint if the team is adding and removing items, trying to figure out what works. Likewise, in Jira, we close the Sprint at the very start of Sprint Retrospective.

The way we use Jira doesn't mean that the Retrospective and the Planning are between Sprints. We've just signaled to the tool where we are in the Sprint process. We are ending one and planning the next and need to have some time to organize the work before we start tracking the data to help us understand and visualize our work.

When building out a Sprint the tasks need estimating. Is this done during the planning phase? Sometimes this may take a while where I have been adding tasks as a Spike. Is this correct?

It depends.

Tasking is not a requirement of Scrum. Some teams may not do that. Some teams may break down Product Backlog Items into tasks as part of refinement. Others may do so during Sprint Planning. You need to figure out what works well for you - the Retrospective is a great opportunity to talk about what is working and what isn't working.

A Spike, to me, is a well-defined objective for Refinement. They are really the same thing.

• How do I start a Sprint with nothing planned in at the beginning?

You don't. It's happened anyway, regardless of what happens in Jira. The ongoing challenge with electronic tools is how to fake the truth close enough to be useful. In your situation, it might be least clunky to first populate a Sprint with an agreed action item from the Sprint Retrospective.