Sprint Goal

Plenty of teams planned a cycle as nothing but a list of items. Twelve get picked in the planning meeting and the meeting ends. The list makes the work clear, and why those twelve is written down nowhere.

The difference showed up midway. Half the cycle gone, progress behind, three items have to come out — and there's no basis for deciding which three. All twelve look equally weighted, so what gets dropped is whatever looks hardest, or whatever belongs to the quietest person in the room.

The verdict at the end was murky too. Ten of twelve finished tells you nothing about whether the cycle went well. If the two left over were the heart of it, ten is a failure; if they were trimmings, it's a success. With one sentence in place, that verdict is available immediately. The sprint goal is that sentence.

The sentence gets settled in planning before any item gets picked. Four things to hold.

1. Write it as an outcome. "Build the permissions API" is a task; "an admin can open a single document to an outside contractor" is an outcome. Written as an outcome, it also opens up the fact that more than one route reaches it.
2. Keep exactly one. Three sentences can't serve as a basis. Choosing what to drop would mean weighing three against each other, which is the twelve-item situation again.
3. Fit the items to the sentence. An item that doesn't reach it comes out; an item the sentence needs that isn't there goes in. The sentence coming before the list, rather than after it, is where the value sits.
4. Measure incoming requests against it. A request arriving mid-cycle that doesn't reach the sentence goes to the next cycle. A limit set as time you don't exceed is a timebox; this sentence decides what goes inside it.

The verdict at the end also comes from the sentence rather than the item count. Eight finished with the sentence achieved is a success; twelve finished without it carries into the next cycle.

"This item has nothing to do with this cycle's goal. Let's move it out."

Filtering items against the sentence.

"There are three goals. It has to be one to be a basis."

Several sentences can't be used for judgment.

"Eight of ten, and we hit the goal."

Item count and goal achievement are different values.

Pagedeck starts sprint planning with this sentence. Mia brings a draft, the team sharpens it on the spot, and only then do items get picked. Last cycle's read: "someone who was invited can open a document without creating a new company account."

Two other requests arrived mid-cycle and both went to the next one, because neither reached the sentence. Before the sentence existed, requests like those got stacked onto the list and pushed out two items that were already committed.