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Does Scrum differentiate between Goal and Sprint Goal?

Last post 01:42 pm April 25, 2019 by Henri van der Horst
3 replies
09:24 am April 22, 2019

Hi everyone!

"The Product Owner compares this amount with work remaining at previous Sprint Reviews to assess progress toward completing projected work by the desired time for the goal." This is not about a sprint goal, right?


02:06 pm April 22, 2019

The Scrum Guide says that a Product Owner's responsibilities include "Ordering the items in the Product Backlog to best achieve goals and missions". Some of these might become Sprint Goals in Sprint Planning. 


04:23 pm April 22, 2019

I share @Ian's interpretation but I tend to explain it slightly different to people that do not have the same in-depth knowledge of Scrum/Agile that all of us do.  I explain it in this manner:

A company has goals and missions at many levels.  The higher corporate goals and missions should be driving all of the ones below them. (Look into Objectives and Key Results as an example).  The Product Owner is responsible for ensuring that everything in the backlog supports those higher level goals as well as being the right thing to be doing for the success of the product for which they are responsible.  A Sprint Goal is just one more level of goal that should roll up to the level above. The closer you get to the actual work, the more refined and granular your goals will become. 


01:42 pm April 25, 2019

Correct. The phrase you quoted is about monitoring the remainder of the Product Backlog at the end of each sprint and by when certain goals or objectives can be met. What you could maybe use as a monitoring tool is the Product Backlog burn-up chart.

It cannot be a sprint goal, which is related to the Sprint Backlog and provides the goal for one sprint. What you could maybe use as a monitoring tool is the Sprint Backlog burn-down chart.

 


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