Sprint Planning Canvas
Structures sprint goals and capacities.
PURPOSE
Without clear goals and realistic capacity planning, sprints often start overloaded or without focus, leading to frustration and incomplete results. The Sprint Planning Canvas helps teams plan sprint goals, capacities, and tasks in a structured way. It creates a shared understanding of what should be achieved in the sprint and why.
HOW TO USE
The team fills out the canvas together during Sprint Planning, starting with the sprint goal and available capacity. Then, selected backlog items are assigned to team members and dependencies are identified. The completed canvas serves as a visual reference during the sprint and is used in the Daily Scrum.
WHAT IT IS
The Sprint Planning Canvas is a visual worksheet that summarizes the essential elements of a sprint plan on a single page. It includes fields for sprint goal, capacity, selected backlog items, dependencies, and risks. The format was developed by the Agile Alliance as an aid for more structured Sprint Plannings.
EXAMPLE
Example: Your Scrum team regularly starts sprints without agreeing on a clear sprint goal, and by the end, much has been started but little finished. You use the Sprint Planning Canvas to structure the sprint goal, available capacity, known risks, and selected backlog items on a single sheet before each sprint.