In a previous article I gave you an overview about the planning meeting 1. Within this article I want to show you a short “how to” list which you may use during the meeting as a reminder of the important steps.

 
Goal of the sprint

At first the scrum master asks the product owner which sprint goal should be fulfilled: a fixed timeline or a fixed set of features?

 
Go through all user stories

Now the product owner will go through all features one after another and for each feature the following things will be discussed and defined:

• The product owner will read aloud the user story of the feature
• One of the team explains how he understood the feature
• The product owner will give a feedback whether the user story was properly understood
• Now the whole development team may ask questions about the user story
• If there are open question which cannot be answered by the product owner, then the feature cannot be added to the sprint. In this case continue with the next feature.
• The team will now estimates the effort of this feature or check whether the current estimation made in the product backlog is still ok
• The Product Owner defines the acceptance criteria for the feature
• I no acceptance criteria could be defined because important prerequisites are missing (e.g. a needed test device has not yet delivered) then the feature cannot be included in the sprint. In this case continue with the next feature.
• At least, the team adds the feature as a sprint goal and decides whether another user story can be added. If another story can be added, continue with the next one. Otherwise the scrum master can finish the meeting by giving an summary of the outcomes.

 
Summarize sprint goal

At the end of the meeting the scrum master will summarize the sprint goal. He will give a final overview about the sprint timelines, the features and the acceptance criteria.