A few reasons why planning meetings often turn into an exhausting gathering where hardly anything gets sorted out.
In a few of our past projects, I encountered a situation that might sound familiar to you: Developers are getting towards the end of a sprint. The product owner seems to have sorted the product backlog a bit for the sprint planning meeting — he changed the backlog order somewhat and pulled some items towards the top because he currently believes they should be added to the product rather soon. He added some new things as well because the stakeholders demand them. In the meantime, the team works on the development of the sprint backlog. The sprint ends, the team does the end-of-sprint ceremonies and planning we go.
At the planning meeting, the team sits down to what seems to be a groomed backlog. They go through the top backlog items with the product owner, who explains what he has prioritized. The team members try to grasp the idea and technical implication of the backlog items and try their best to plan them for development. But they find out that one particular story is very complex and can’t be fitted within a sprint, so they negotiate with the product owner about how to meaningfully break it down into several smaller pieces. Another item has a technical dependency on something that has not been done yet. The third item… (more in link)
Written by: Otakar Krus @otakarkrus
