“The Sprint Goal is the single objective for the Sprint. Although the Sprint Goal is a commitment by the Developers, it provides flexibility in terms of the exact work needed to achieve it. The Sprint Goal also creates coherence and focus, encouraging the Scrum Team to work together rather than on separate initiatives.” - The Scrum Guide (2020)
Scrum Teams may struggle when defining meaningful, outcome-oriented Sprint Goals. This play guides the Scrum Team in establishing a Sprint Goal and outlining an initial plan for it. This is achieved by answering a set of coaching questions.
- 2 minutes per question: Given around two minutes per question, participants vizualize their answers. To do this together with your kayakers, you may replace ‘this sprint’ with ‘this adventure’.
It can be stimulating to play background music. As a guide, you may tape the questions to actual bricks and reveal them one by one every two minutes.
- 5 minutes: All together, review the visualized input. Group related answers and remove duplicates.
Allow for some clarifying questions but ask to keep it short. If a discussion occurs, explain that it's enough (for now) to simply mark the items that are either unclear or disputed.
Some rivers are calm and others are wild, so how this will play out naturally depends on the context.