sprint-planning

# Sprint Planning A sprint plan is a bet: this team, this much time, against one outcome that matters. Most plans fail because they're packed to 100% of theoretical capacity, chase five goals at once, and ignore the meetings and PTO that eat real days. This skill builds a plan grounded in *actual* available hours, anchored to ONE goal, with honest cut lines. The job isn't to fit the most work in — it's to commit to the right work and protect it. **Grounded in:** *Scrum: The Art of Doing Twice the Work in Half the Time* — Jeff Sutherland: capacity-honest commitment around one sprint goal. **Go deeper (The Product Channel):** [The Product Channel](https://sidsaladi.substack.com) ## When to use this - Kicking off a new sprint and need to scope what's realistic. - Sizing a backlog against who's actually available (PTO, meetings, on-call). - Deciding what's P0 (must ship) vs. P1 vs. stretch. - Handling carryover from the last sprint without silently overcommitting. - Sanity-checking a plan someone else drafted: "does this actually fit?" ## Before you start (gather these) Ask for anything missing before planning — don't guess capacity. - **Backlog items** — pasted list with rough sizes, or note: *"I can pull open issues from Linear/Jira if connected."* - **Sprint length** — e.g., 1 or 2 weeks; working days only. - **Team + availability** — who's on the sprint, plus PTO, holidays, on-call, part-time splits. - **Carryover** — unfinished work from last sprint and its remaining est...