Think of the Sprint Goal through this lens:
If you drive your car without a destination, you are NOWHERE at the end of the day.
The Sprint Goal is the ultimate state of the Sprint that the team is committed to achieving. It creates coherence and focus, encouraging the Scrum Team to collaborate.
More than that, it provides your Daily Scrum with a foundation for true inspection and adaptation. So, you need to learn how to create reliable Sprint Goals.
In this blog post, I want to show you how to leverage AI to create Sprint Goals.
When you want to use AI, you need to effectively communicate your request with the AI system. A good communication guideline has the following steps:
1- Define your higher-level goals (Product Vision, Product Goal):
Your Sprint Goal is not in a vacuum. It is part of a higher level of goals. I mean Product Vision and Product Goal. They should be aligned. It means your Sprint goal should support achieving the current Product Goal, which should support achieving your Product Vision. They are like a chain.
2- Define your context:
What is your product? What is the duration of your current Product Goal? and what is the duration of your Sprint?
3- Teach the AI system:
Give a guideline to your AI system on how to create the Sprint Goal.
Use the FOCUS model as follows:
Fun: come up with a memorable title and try to inject an element of fun.
Outcome-oriented: The goal should achieve a common understanding of what you are trying to accomplish.
Collaborative: The whole Scrum Team creates the Sprint Goal together.
Ultimate: The Sprint Goal should include a why, the ultimate reason behind what we are trying to achieve.
Singular: The Sprint Goal should consist of a single common objective instead of multiple competing objectives.
The result of this process is the following prompt:
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We use [Sprint duration like two-week] Sprints to build [Your Product]. The Product Vision is to [Your Product Vision]. We use [Product Goal duration like quarterly] Product Goals as the mid-term goals. The current [Product Goal duration] goal is to [Your current Product Goal]. This is the [Sprint number like first] Sprint of the current [Product Goal duration] goal. So, break down the current [Product Goal duration] goal into smaller short-term goals and use them as the base to create a Sprint Goal for the [Sprint number] Sprint aligned with the Product Vision and the current Product Goal through the FOCUS model as follows:
Fun: come up with a memorable title and try to inject an element of fun.
Outcome-oriented: The goal should achieve a common understanding of what you are trying to accomplish.
Collaborative: The whole Scrum Team creates the Sprint Goal together.
Ultimate: The Sprint Goal should include a why, the ultimate reason behind what we are trying to achieve.
Singular: The Sprint Goal should consist of a single common objective instead of multiple competing objectives.
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Copy this prompt, paste it into an AI system like ChatGPT, fill in the brackets with the specific data of your product, and use the result as the draft version of your Sprint Goal. I say draft, because you can tweak it into a better version with your intuition.
This is a sample prompt for a food delivery platform product:
We use two-week Sprints to build a food delivery platform. The Product Vision is to become the market leader in the food delivery sector. We use quarterly Product Goals as the mid-term goals. The current quarterly goal is to increase the sign-ups by 5%. This is the first Sprint of the current quarterly goal. So, break down the current quarterly goal into smaller short-term goals and use them as the base to create a Sprint Goal for the first Sprint aligned with the Product Vision and the current Product Goal through the FOCUS model as follows:
Fun: come up with a memorable title and try to inject an element of fun.
Outcome-oriented: The goal should achieve a common understanding of what you are trying to accomplish.
Collaborative: The whole Scrum Team creates the Sprint Goal together.
Ultimate: The Sprint Goal should include a why, the ultimate reason behind what we are trying to achieve.
Singular: The Sprint Goal should consist of a single common objective instead of multiple competing objectives.
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Copy this prompt, paste it into an AI system like ChatGPT, and enjoy the result.
If you are a Product Owner and want to learn how to effectively leverage AI for the new generation of product management, you can attend my upcoming Professional Scrum Product Owner – AI Essentials class. Click here to see the class information.