Sprint Goals, a holiday perspective
I want to have a nice holiday.
I prefer good weather, about 20–25 degrees in the sun. A natural environment where I can do some cycling and hiking will do well for me. There has to be some water nearby and at least a couple of towns or cities that we can visit.
For our destination we’ve chosen Salò in Italy. It’s a 12h drive from my home in Den Bosch. Because we have small kids we don’t want to drive too far on one day. Therefore we’ve divided the trip in three stages:
1. Den Bosch — Luxemburg
2. Luxemburg — Basel
3. Basel — Salò
During our trip we find out that there’s a road closure on the road between Den Bosch and Luxemburg, so we decide to take a detour through Germany and stay in Trier.
From there we continue our journey, only to run into a major traffic jam between Trier and Basel. It took us 2h longer than expected to reach Basel, but it was ok. We had some slack.
The third stage gave us the most trouble. Turns out our car can’t do steep slopes, so we had to take a major detour to our holiday destination.
By now you’ll be wondering what this has to do with Sprint Goals. The point will come, just bear with the analogy for now.
When we took the trip, our goal was of course to reach Saló. Within everything that we encountered, reaching that destination was still a possibility. We had to take detours, extra stops, it took longer than we estimated, but we reached it and we had a great holiday.
And (here it is) this is how you should treat your Sprint Goals.
The aim of a Sprint Goal is to give you a target to aim for. The road you take towards the target should be flexible, but the target is fixed (to a point, more on that later).
Every day during Standup the team inspects the progress towards the Sprint Goal. Is it still attainable? Do we need to change course? Do something different, add work, remove work, collaborate, give or get help?
Together you inspect the road you are on, and whether it is still leading you towards your destination. And if it’s not, you discuss how to course correct.
Bad Sprint Goals
I regularly see teams that say: our goal is to finish PBI x, y, and z. And when they can’t finish them they are sad. This would be similar to saying that the goal of our holiday is to drive to Luxemburg, then to Basel, and then to Saló.
We would then have to be sad about the fact that we slept in Trier, and that we took 2h extra to go from Trier to Basel.
This is an excessive focus on the road, and not enough on the destination. The road is inconsequential.
Changing directions
So what happens if the destination doesn’t offer what you were expecting from it in the first place?
Remember that the objective of this trip was to have a nice holiday in 20–25 degree weather and a natural environment.
If it’s 15 degrees and raining in Saló, how much sense does it make to continue to that destination? It’s only part of a bigger picture.
But if we lose sight of that bigger picture (because we’re focussed too much on the road) we might forget that we can go somewhere else entirely.
This bigger picture in Scrum is the Product Goal. To go into that is too much for now, but feel free to Google it.
Next time you are discussing Sprint Goals in your team
Try to see what the destination is that you are trying to reach. Where do you want to be at the end of the next Sprint? And how does that destination relate to your bigger goal?
Plan the road that you think you should take and start driving, but be flexible when it turns out that you need to take a detour. Because if one thing is clear, it is that you will have to take a detour somewhere.
Sprint Goals are not about the road, they’re about the destination.
