Don't Freeze Sprint Backlog

I commonly get to hear one statement very commonly, “Sprint backlog should not be changed and be freezed” Yes, one mistake that management force the team to do is FREEZE their sprint backlog, while the sprint backlog is the development team’s plan to achieve the sprint goal, it is just sufficient and just in time elaborated to focus on one item at the time implementing the functionality and marching towards sprint goal.

Sprint backlog is like your route map, it creates transparency for everyone to understand what is your plan to reach the goal. Of Course, the goal is fixed while the plan to reach the goal is flexible and negotiated. Freezing the sprint backlog makes the plan fixed and no scope for adaptability, this results in the myth everything listed in the sprint backlog is SPRINT GOAL ! and not finishing it, is a failure of the team.

Changes to Sprint backlog

Changes to the sprint backlog could be as simple as

Updates to the plan, adding missed items,
Update estimates based on their inspect, adapt strategy
Ownership changes on the activities
Re-plan for effectiveness
Elaborate the plan just sufficient

Sprint Backlog is owned by the development team for them to self-organize toward sprint goal. Sprint backlog can be written in various formats. Tasks is one of the most widely used format, that’s because of the costly licence fee paid to “Agile tools”.. don’t allow teams to plan in other formats.

Most of the teams I work with, don’t write tasks during sprint planning meeting. !!! yet they produce winning products.

When to cancel a sprint, learn about parameters that influence the sprint goal changes read more…

Don’t think of Sprint backlog as list of tasks… there are other ways of writing

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Naveen Nanjundappa, Certified Scrum Trainer

Well known for his unique teaching style, Mr. Naveen Nanjundappa has over 19 years of service in IT industry, with experience in most of the standard roles of software development life cycle such as developer, tester, leader, manager of projects and products. He was introduced to XP & Scrum in 2005. Following his passion for coaching, he has spent last 8 years coaching agile transformation, Scrum teams, trained over 4000+ people from various organizations. Expertise in Scrum, Leadership Agility, Organizational Agility, Process Agility, Team Agility, Product Management & Project Management.

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