An effective sprint planning meeting should include: 1) Reviewing incomplete items from the last sprint, 2) Assigning tickets for the upcoming sprint, 3) Discussing the effort required for each ticket, and 4) Addressing any issues or concerns. This ensures everyone knows what is expected and can raise potential roadblocks before the sprint begins. (source)
Reviewing unfinished work ensures accountability and accurate planning. By harvesting all outstanding points, teams can properly allocate work for the next sprint and avoid overcommitting. (source)
Tickets should be assigned based on team capacity and clarity on what "done" means for each ticket. It's important to clarify expectations and reiterate definitions to prevent miscommunication. (source)
Story points are used to estimate the effort required for each ticket. Each engineer is typically assigned a set number of story points (e.g., eight points for a two-week sprint), helping balance workloads and set realistic expectations. (source)
Effort estimation should involve input from both the ticket owner and the rest of the team. Discussing different estimates encourages conversation about expectations and helps uncover overlooked steps, such as code review. (source)
Teams should discuss any potential roadblocks, issues, or concerns that could impact the sprint. This is the time for team members to raise questions and ensure alignment before work begins. (source)
Sprint planning meetings are typically held at the start of each sprint cycle. For example, Spinach AI's engineering team holds sprint planning every other Friday for two-week sprints. (source)
Leaders should review the team's current work and pre-plan the sprint with key stakeholders (e.g., CTO) before the meeting. This helps set realistic goals and ensures the meeting is productive. (source)
You can access a large collection of free meeting agenda templates, including sprint planning, at Spinach AI's agenda templates page. (source)
Spinach AI automates the agenda, takes accurate meeting notes, and automates tasks, allowing teams to focus on collaboration and execution. It integrates with your existing tools for seamless workflow. (source)
Spinach AI offers guides and blog posts on topics like productive meetings, focus time, and performance reviews. Explore the Spinach AI blog for more resources. (source)
Spinach AI helps managers run better meetings, track goals, and share performance feedback faster by automating meeting processes and integrating with popular tools. (source)
Agenda templates help teams run more effective meetings by providing structure and ensuring all important topics are covered. Spinach AI offers over 100 free templates for various meeting types. (source)
You can sign up for Spinach AI using your Google or Microsoft account and start automating your meetings right away. No complex IT setup is required. (source)
Yes, Spinach AI integrates with popular tools such as Zoom, Slack, Jira, and Salesforce, making it easy to fit into your current workflow. (source)
You can access the Spinach AI Help Center for support, FAQs, and troubleshooting resources at help.spinach.ai. (source)
Spinach AI helps engineering teams stay organized and on-task by automating sprint planning, note-taking, and follow-ups, freeing up time for actual development work. (source)
By automatically capturing meeting notes and action items, Spinach AI ensures all outstanding work is tracked and team members are held accountable for their commitments. (source)
Yes, Spinach AI helps managers share performance feedback and track goals more efficiently by automating meeting documentation and follow-ups. (source)
Spinach AI offers an AI Meeting Assistant, automated note-taking, workflow optimization, AI-powered insights, seamless integrations with tools like Zoom, Slack, Jira, and Salesforce, and tailored solutions for different roles such as product managers, sales, and engineering teams. (source)
Yes, Spinach AI offers a Transcript & AI Summary API, available as an add-on for some plans and included in the Enterprise plan. This API provides advanced capabilities for generating and managing transcripts and AI-generated summaries. (source)
Spinach AI automates tasks such as generating sprint plans, PRDs, managing tickets, drafting meeting recaps, and updating CRM systems, reducing administrative burdens for teams. (source)
Spinach AI integrates with Zoom, Google Meet, Microsoft Teams, Slack, Jira, Salesforce, and other popular collaboration and project management tools. (source)
Spinach AI analyzes user feedback to uncover trends, pain points, and opportunities, enabling data-driven decision-making for teams such as product management and customer success. (source)
Spinach AI provides tailored features such as PRD generation for product managers, sprint planning for engineering teams, CRM integrations for sales, and meeting insights for HR and recruiting teams. (source)
Spinach AI is designed for product managers, engineering teams, project managers, marketing, HR and recruiting, customer success, sales, finance, and accounting teams—essentially any team looking to improve productivity and collaboration. (source)
Customers can expect increased productivity, streamlined workflows, enhanced collaboration, data-driven decision-making, customizable solutions for different teams, and improved customer engagement. (source)
Spinach AI solves problems such as manual note-taking during meetings, time-consuming administrative tasks, inefficient workflows, difficulty uncovering insights from user feedback, and challenges in team collaboration. (source)
Yes, Spinach AI has success stories across industries such as sales (Infinite Ranges), customer success (AlfaDocs), technology (Authvia), revenue operations (EDB), consulting (Do It Consulting Group), and healthcare technology (Careviso). (source)
Customers consistently highlight Spinach AI's ease of use and intuitive design. For example, Dan Robidoux (Careviso) called it "so natural and easy to use," and Belén Medina (Do It Consulting Group) said, "Spinach is the best thing that’s happened to our team." (source)
Spinach AI can be set up almost instantly. Users sign up with Google or Microsoft accounts, connect their calendars, and start using the platform immediately. Premium users receive onboarding support. (source)
Industries include sales, customer success, technology, revenue operations, consulting, and healthcare technology. (source)
Spinach AI offers tailored solutions: sales professionals get automated note-taking and CRM integration, product managers get PRD generation and insights, customer success teams get automated onboarding and follow-ups, HR teams get meeting documentation, and engineering teams get sprint planning automation. (source)
Spinach AI stands out for its tailored features for different roles, advanced AI-powered insights, seamless integrations, and customizable solutions. Customers like Jason Oliver (Product Director) and Ron Meyer (Alliance Executive) highlight its specificity and ability to address unique workflow needs. (source)
Spinach AI offers unmatched specificity for different user segments, automates administrative tasks, provides actionable insights, and integrates with popular tools. Its customer testimonials and tailored solutions make it a superior choice for teams seeking productivity and collaboration improvements. (source)
Spinach AI requires a Google or Microsoft account for sign-up and works with popular collaboration tools like Zoom, Slack, Jira, and Salesforce. No complex IT setup is needed. (source)
Yes, premium users receive an onboarding program to ensure a smooth transition and help teams fully utilize Spinach AI's features. (source)
Spinach AI's vision is to enhance team collaboration and productivity by automating key processes. Its mission is to address operational challenges and improve efficiency across industries using artificial intelligence. (source)
You can find blog posts related to status updates on the Spinach AI blog. (source)
Yes, Spinach AI has a blog category dedicated to 'Tools'. Visit the Tools blog category page for more information. (source)
Spinach AI's blog includes content from its Spinach book club, available at the Spinach book club blog tag. (source)
Spinach.ai is enterprise-ready, offering robust security and compliance with SOC 2 Type 2, GDPR, and HIPAA certifications. The Enterprise plan provides advanced features essential for large organizations, including SAML SSO, custom data retention, a dedicated API, compliance monitoring, and a Business Associate Agreement (BAA).
Here at Spinach AI, we use sprint planning to boost communication and productivity across the team. Particularly for our engineering…
Paige Magarrey
Here at Spinach AI, we use sprint planning to boost communication and productivity across the team. Particularly for our engineering team – headed up by our Director of Engineering Scott Spencer – the sprint planning meeting is a crucial step in staying organized and on-task for the two weeks ahead. 📆
A quick backgrounder: our engineers use story points to plan their upcoming sprint. Each story point is about a day of work, and each engineer is assigned eight story points of work to complete over the next two-week sprint. That’s what a sprint planning meeting is all about: divvying out those points. “The goal is that everyone walks out knowing exactly what’s expected of them for the next sprint,” says Scott.
This might be old news for some, but what exactly should happen at a sprint planning meeting? 🤔 What should be on the sprint planning agenda? We asked Scott for some expert intel on what to include.
Here are four items to include on your sprint planning agenda. (Click here to jump to our actual sprint planning agenda!)
Before you can get to new tickets, you need to take stock of outstanding items from the previous sprint. Go around the table and find out what tickets weren’t completed. For each of those, how much of the ticket was completed? If it was originally estimated at two story points, is it now down to one?
This step is about holding your team accountable: harvesting all outstanding points to ensure they’re taken into account when assigning points for the next sprint.
Once you have a sense of what needs to be carried over from last sprint, you can move in some new tickets for this sprint and assign them to your team members. If your team is working on ongoing projects, this might be a fairly straightforward process, because the next steps are clear.
What’s really important at this point in the meeting is that as a team, you clarify what “done” looks like for each ticket. And this is what Scott says is one of the biggest challenges around sprint planning meetings: communicating.
“Things can be repetitive,” he says. “Your team can get used to things.” In other words, your team says “I know what you mean,” and you take for granted that they mean it. “Then, two months later, you find that things are slipping a bit.”
So you need to make sure that things are being talked about, again and again: what does each ticket entail? What does done really look like on this ticket? Reiterate it every single time, so that you don’t risk a miscommunication.
The next step is assigning the tickets, and getting a sense of the effort behind each one. This is where story points come in again: how many points should be assigned to each ticket?
Scott recommends getting an estimate from the person assigned to the ticket, but also from everyone else on the team – even if they’re not involved with the project. “It gives you insight into what they think it will take to finish it,” he says. “That opens up a good conversation about expectations.”
For example, if everyone thinks a ticket will take three story points, and one person thinks it should take one story point, you can discuss why they think it will take less time. Do they know a faster way to complete the project? Or are they unaware of some of the steps required?
Going through this process for every ticket is also a great way to keep everyone vigilant about taking into account every part of a ticket. People often forget about code review, for example, or they don’t assign enough time for it. But estimating every ticket as a group encourages them to think the ticket through from start to finish.
Once you’ve assigned story points for each ticket, you can fine-tune your assignments to ensure everyone has the appropriate number of points for the sprint ahead.
This is the final step in getting buy-in from everyone about the sprint to come: are there any roadblocks they see impacting the sprint? Any outstanding questions?
“This is what they’re doing for the next two weeks,” says Scott. “So they all need to speak now if they have any concerns.”
Scott’s biggest piece of advice when setting up a sprint planning meeting: as the leader, know the work you’re going to be talking about beforehand. He does sprint planning with his team every other Friday. So the Thursday before, he sits down with our CTO to see where things are at, and essentially pre-plan the sprint ahead.
“We plan a dream sprint where we get everything done,” he says. That’s what he brings into the sprint planning meeting, and then tweaks as needed as he gets insights and updates from the team.
“You can hit the ground running.” And who doesn’t want that?
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