In Scrum, Sprint Goals play a crucial role in guiding the team's efforts and providing a clear direction for the Sprint. A Sprint Goal is a concise statement that defines the objective of the Sprint and aligns the team towards a common purpose. In this article, we will explore the importance of Sprint Goals in Scrum, provide tips on crafting good Sprint Goals, and present sample Sprint Goals for three case study Scrum teams.
1. What are Sprint Goals in Scrum and why are they useful?
Sprint Goals serve as a focal point for the Scrum team, providing a clear target to work towards during the Sprint. They help create focus, alignment, and transparency, ensuring that the team understands the purpose of their work and the value they are aiming to create. Sprint Goals also provide a mechanism for tracking progress and evaluating the success of a Sprint.
By having a well-defined Sprint Goal, the team can prioritize their work effectively and make informed decisions about what to include in the Sprint Backlog. It enables the team to maintain a sense of purpose, and a higher level of engagement throughout the Sprint. Additionally, Sprint Goals foster collaboration and communication within the team, as everyone shares a common understanding of what needs to be achieved.
2. How can Scrum Teams craft good Sprint Goals?
Crafting effective Sprint Goals requires collaboration within the Scrum team, and may not be trivial at first. Here are some tips to help you create good Sprint Goals:
- 🎯 Be specific: A Sprint Goal should be clear and specific, allowing the team to determine if it has been accomplished. Avoid vague or abstract goals that are difficult to evaluate. At the same time, don’t make it so specific that it gets in the way of the team adapting its plan throughout the Sprint.
- 🌟 Focus on value: The Sprint Goal should be a small step toward the Product Goal. While some Sprints are of course expected to directly impact value delivered (as measured by customer satisfaction or sales for instance), it is also common for Scrum Teams to have Sprints that create value more indirectly. For instance by mitigating a particular project risk, testing an assumption, or acquiring knowledge about the market, or about a new technology.
- 🤝 Collaborate with the team: Involve the entire Scrum team in the process of defining the Sprint Goal. This ensures shared understanding and commitment, increasing the chances of success.
- 📏 Consider capacity and feasibility: Sprint Goals in Scrum are co-created within the Scrum Team also to ensure that they are achievable.
3. Sample Sprint Goals using fictitious Scrum Teams
How you craft your Sprint Goal is up to you and your team. There is no need to follow specific templates or formats. However in order to help teams get started, here are a few sample Sprint Goals for three different fictional Scrum Teams.
Sample #1:
- Product genre: A B2C Software Product 📱
- Product Goal: “Become market leader by gaining 10% additional market share and increasing NPS by 5 points”
- Sprint Goals:
- Feature delivery: "Implement and deliver bulk file sharing feature for all 40k premium users"
- Problem-solving: "Identify and resolve most urgent application performance issues as measured by latest analytics data"
- Risk mitigation: "Address all 5 known security vulnerabilities to ensure data privacy and protect user information.”
Sample #2:
- Product genre: Sales & Marketing 💼
- Product Goal: “Increase conversion rate by 10% by EOY”
- Sprint Goals:
- Feature delivery: "Develop and publish new Landing Page for Customer Segment X"
- Hypothesis testing: "Test the hypothesis that SMS reminders will increase lead response rates and have positive ROI. Decide if we roll it out nationwide."
- Knowledge acquisition: "Fine tune customer segmentation incorporating new analytics data, so that we can more accurately customize Marketing activities from next Sprint"
Sample #3:
- Product genre: Data Science / Predictive modeling 📊
- Product Goal: “Increase trust from stakeholders so that we can expand the use of the model to at least one new major use case”
- Sprint Goals:
- Data Quality Improvement: "Refine the existing dataset, aiming to identify and correct 20% of the anomalies in the data today."
- Model Enhancement: "Enhance the existing model by incorporating two new variables, aiming to improve prediction accuracy by 3%."
- New Product Opportunity Exploration: "Collaborate with the Supply Chain department to develop a MVP that integrates our model with their system, and decide whether we want to invest more time into this use case."
In conclusion, Sprint Goals are an essential component of Scrum. By crafting Sprint Goals that strike the right balance between specificity and flexibility, Scrum Teams gain the focus, and the alignment they need to guide their work during the Sprint. These Sprint Goals can take multiple forms including: problems to be solved, features to be developed, risks to be addressed, insights to be gained or hypotheses to be tested.
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About the author
Gregory Fontaine is among about 350 Professional Scrum Trainer™ (PST) at Scrum.org and the CEO at Agorax GK. He has many years of experience applying Scrum both in software development and in a variety of other fields. He is the only Japanese Speaking PST and has been supporting clients and students in Japan for many years. If you want to learn more, please consult Gregory’s class schedule or Agorax’s website.