---
aliases: ["Sprint Planning"]
tags: [pm-skills, skill]
skill: sprint-planning
description: "Structure and facilitate sprint planning sessions. Use when asked to plan a sprint, organise backlog items, assign story points, create sprint goals, or prepare sprint planning agendas. Produces a sprint goal, velocity-calibrated backlog, capacity plan, risk flags, and a structured sprint planning meeting agenda."
---

# Sprint Planning Skill

Transform raw backlog items into a structured, achievable sprint with clear goals, velocity-calibrated scope, and team-ready output.

## Reads from / Writes to the Brain

If a [`professional-brain`](../professional-brain/SKILL.md) (`brain/`) exists, ground in it instead of re-asking for what you already know:

- **Read first:** priority `decisions/` (what the team agreed matters), feature `entities/`, and open `hypotheses/` the sprint might test. Run `python3 ../professional-brain/scripts/brain_query.py ./brain "<sprint goal>"` and carry each fact's provenance tag through.
- **📥 Propose to the Brain:** after producing, propose logging the sprint commitment (goal + committed scope) as a `decisions/` record, provenance-tagged. Show it, get a yes, then write with `../professional-brain/scripts/brain_write.py … --commit` (append-only, dry-run by default).

## Proposes Actions

Once the sprint is agreed, hand it to [`action-runner`](../action-runner/SKILL.md): it previews (dry-run, risk-rated), runs only what you approve via the connected action MCP, and records what was done back to the brain. Typical: **create a ticket per committed backlog item** and **set the sprint milestone** (🟡). This skill proposes; action-runner gates and runs — never silently.

## What This Skill Produces

- **Sprint Goal** — single, outcome-focused sentence the whole team can rally around
- **Sprint Backlog** — prioritised list of user stories with story point estimates and acceptance criteria
- **Capacity Plan** — team availability breakdown accounting for holidays, meetings, and focus time
- **Sprint Planning Agenda** — structured 2-hour meeting agenda with timings
- **Risk Flags** — blockers or dependencies that could derail the sprint

## Required Inputs

Ask for (if not already provided):
- Sprint duration (1 or 2 weeks)
- Team size and velocity (average story points per sprint)
- Top 3–5 backlog items or epics to pull from
- Any known absences, holidays, or team events
- Previous sprint's incomplete items (carry-overs)

## Sprint Goal Formula

Use this structure:
> "This sprint we will [deliver X outcome] so that [user/business benefit], measured by [success indicator]."

Never write sprint goals as task lists. Always outcome-first.

## Story Point Calibration

| Complexity | Points | Description |
|---|---|---|
| Trivial | 1 | Clearly understood, no unknowns |
| Small | 2 | Straightforward, minor effort |
| Medium | 3 | Some complexity, clear path |
| Large | 5 | Complex, needs design or research |
| Very Large | 8 | High uncertainty, may need splitting |
| Epic | 13+ | Too large — must be split before sprint |

Flag any item estimated at 8+ and recommend splitting.

## Capacity Formula

```
Available capacity = (Team size × Sprint days × Focus hours/day) × Availability factor
Focus hours/day: 6 (accounting for meetings, Slack, admin)
Availability factor: 0.7–0.85 depending on holidays/events
Story points to commit = Historical velocity × Availability factor
```

## Programmatic Helper

This skill ships with a stdlib-only Python script that computes capacity instead of estimating it by hand. Use it whenever the team's numbers are known — it applies the availability and 80% commit-ratio rules consistently.

```bash
# Quick estimate from flags
python3 scripts/capacity_calculator.py --team 5 --days 10 --velocity 30 --availability 0.8 --carryover 5

# Detailed estimate from per-member availability (JSON via stdin or --input file.json)
echo '{"sprint_days":10,"historical_velocity":40,"carryover_points":8,
       "members":[{"name":"Ada","available_days":10},{"name":"Linus","available_days":7}]}' \
  | python3 scripts/capacity_calculator.py --input -
```

The script returns available focus hours, a velocity figure adjusted for real availability, the **recommended commitment** (capped at 80% of velocity), and the remaining **capacity for new work** after carry-overs. Run it first, then build the sprint backlog to fit the recommended number. Add `--json` to pipe the result into other tooling.

## Output Format

### Sprint [N] — [Start Date] to [End Date]

**Sprint Goal:**
> [Goal statement]

**Team Capacity:** [X] story points available (based on [Y] team members, [Z]% availability)

**Sprint Backlog:**

| Priority | Story | Points | Owner | Acceptance Criteria |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | [Story title] | [N] | [Team member] | [When X then Y] |

**Carry-Overs from Previous Sprint:**
- [Item] — Reason for carry-over: [brief explanation]

**Risks & Dependencies:**
- [Risk description] → Mitigation: [action]

**Sprint Planning Agenda:**
- 00:00–00:10 — Review sprint goal and team capacity
- 00:10–00:40 — Walk through backlog items, confirm estimates
- 00:40–01:20 — Assign stories, identify dependencies
- 01:20–01:50 — Review acceptance criteria per story
- 01:50–02:00 — Confirm sprint commitment and close

## Guidelines

- Always challenge stories missing acceptance criteria — flag them explicitly
- Recommend the team commits to 80% of available capacity, not 100%
- If no velocity data is provided, assume 20–30 points for a 5-person team as a starting point
- Highlight any story with unclear ownership as a blocker

## Deeper Materials

This skill ships with support files — use them when they are available:

- **`references/capacity-honesty.md`** — Capacity Honesty — the numbers teams lie to themselves about. Apply it while producing the output; it carries the calibration and judgment calls the method summary above compresses.
- **`templates/planning-worksheet.md`** — a fill-in version of the deliverable with the quality gates inline. Offer it when the user wants to work the document themselves rather than have it generated.

## Quality Checks

- [ ] Sprint goal is outcome-focused (not "implement X" — something like "users can do Y")
- [ ] Team capacity is calculated using actual availability, not theoretical 100%
- [ ] Every story has an acceptance criterion (flag any that don't)
- [ ] Stories estimated at 8+ points are flagged for splitting
- [ ] Carry-overs from last sprint are accounted for in capacity

## Anti-Patterns

- [ ] Do not write sprint goals as task lists — goals must be outcome-focused and scoreable pass/fail at sprint end
- [ ] Do not commit to 100% of available capacity — always recommend 80% to preserve slack for unplanned work
- [ ] Do not carry stories with no acceptance criteria into the sprint — flag them as blockers before committing
- [ ] Do not allow stories estimated at 8+ points into the sprint without splitting them first
- [ ] Do not ignore carry-over items when calculating capacity — they consume capacity and must be accounted for before new work is pulled in

## Execution

For tool-using or computer-use agents that can reach the team's tracker (Jira, Linear, GitHub Projects). Runtimes without tool access ignore this section and deliver the document. See [SKILLSPEC.md §5](../../SKILLSPEC.md) for the rules this block follows.

### Preconditions
- The sprint plan above has been produced and **explicitly approved by a human** — never build a sprint from an unreviewed draft.
- Tracker access is already authenticated in the agent's environment; the target board/project is named by the user.
- A dry-run listing of intended changes has been shown and confirmed.

### Allowed actions
- Create the sprint/iteration container with the approved name and dates.
- Move the approved, already-existing backlog items into the sprint — only the items listed in the approved plan.
- Set story-point estimates on those items to the approved values.
- Post the sprint goal as the sprint description or a pinned comment.
- Nothing else: no creating new issues, no deleting or closing anything, no editing item descriptions, no touching other sprints.

### Verification
- Re-read the sprint from the tracker: item count and total points equal the approved plan; every moved item is in the sprint; sprint dates match.
- Post the verification summary (items, points, dates) back to the user.

### Rollback
- Undo = move the items back to the backlog and delete the empty sprint container.
- Stop and ask a human if: any item in the plan no longer exists or changed since approval, the tracker rejects an action, or the board contains an active sprint with overlapping dates.

---
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