Sprint Planner

Plan, scope, and run agile sprints that actually ship. No ceremony bloat.

What It Does

Takes your backlog (or a rough list of tasks) and produces a sprint plan with:

• Capacity math (team size × available days × focus factor)
• Story point allocation with buffer
• Sprint goal + success criteria
• Daily standup template
• Retro prompts tied to metrics

Usage

Tell your agent: "Plan a 2-week sprint for [team/project]" with:

• Team size and availability
• Backlog items (paste or describe them)
• Any hard deadlines or dependencies

Sprint Planning Framework

1. Capacity Calculation

Available hours = team_size × sprint_days × hours_per_day × focus_factor
focus_factor = 0.7 (accounts for meetings, interrupts, context switching)

2. Backlog Prioritization (RICE)

Score each item:

• Reach: How many users/processes does this affect? (1-10)
• Impact: How much does it move the needle? (0.25, 0.5, 1, 2, 3)
• Confidence: How sure are you about estimates? (0.5, 0.8, 1.0)
• Effort: Person-days to complete

RICE Score = (Reach × Impact × Confidence) / Effort

Sort descending. Fill sprint capacity from top.

3. Sprint Goal

One sentence. Measurable. Example: "Ship user onboarding flow — 80% of new signups complete setup within 48 hours."

4. Buffer Rule

Reserve 20% capacity for unplanned work. If you're filling 100% of capacity, you're already behind.

5. Definition of Done

Every item needs:

• Code reviewed and merged
• Tests passing
• Deployed to staging
• Product owner sign-off

6. Daily Standup (async-friendly)

Each person posts:

1. What I shipped yesterday
2. What I'm shipping today
3. What's blocking me (if anything)

Skip "what I worked on" — focus on shipped output.

7. Sprint Retro (15 min max)

• Velocity: Planned points vs completed points
• Carry-over: What didn't get done and why?
• One thing to change: Pick ONE process improvement. Not five.

8. Anti-Patterns to Flag

• Sprint scope changed mid-sprint more than once
• No items completed until final 2 days
• Carry-over exceeds 30% of planned work
• Standup takes more than 10 minutes

Output Format

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

## Sprint Goal
[One sentence]

## Team Capacity
- Team: [N] engineers × [D] days × 0.7 focus = [H] available hours
- Buffer: 20% ([B] hours reserved)
- Committable: [C] hours

## Committed Items
| # | Item | Points | Owner | RICE | Status |
|---|------|--------|-------|------|--------|
| 1 | ...  | ...    | ...   | ...  | To Do  |

## Stretch Goals (if capacity allows)
| # | Item | Points |
|---|------|--------|

## Risks & Dependencies
- ...

## Success Criteria
- [ ] Sprint goal met
- [ ] Velocity within 15% of target
- [ ] Zero critical bugs introduced

Why This Works

Most sprint planning fails because teams skip capacity math and overcommit. This framework forces honest numbers first, then fills from a prioritized backlog. The 20% buffer isn't laziness — it's how you actually hit your commitments.

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