Every two weeks at the beginning of a new sprint, I collaborate with my development team to create the sprint goal. This goal is aligned to strategic priorities and briefly discusses the why and what we will be delivering in clear business terms over the next sprint. It also explains briefly how we will measure and track success through KPIs as well as what to expect in our sprint review. I send this out via email to all key stakeholders across the organization. Having a clear goal every sprint helps in a number of ways including:
- Provides focused collaboration on value delivery every two weeks including measuring success
- Provides consistent transparency and accountability to our key stakeholders
- Provides alignment to the organization
Below is an example of a simple sprint goal template that I use. Info is based off an example of providing a way for a user to easily access an app with the goal of increasing app usage.
Based on research, we found that 80% of our potential customers have an active LinkedIn account. Therefore, we decide to create a way for a customer to sign-in to our app using their LinkedIn credentials to increase usage of our app.
| Team name goes here along with sprint dates (e.g. App team 5/15 – 5/26) |
| Sprint goal Goal goes here (e.g. mission to increase app usage) you may also try putting the words with a picture |
| Method How will you show completion? (e.g. demo customer signing into app via LinkedIn credentials) |
| Metrics How will you measure success? (e.g. number of unique customers that sign-in to the app via LinkedIn credentials) |
| Business value Insert user stories (e.g. as a customer, I want to be able to sign-in to the app via my LinkedIn credentials so that I may access app content quickly) |
| Links Insert links to different artifacts such as team product backlog, roadmap, reporting, documentation, etc. |
What have you used for creating sprint goals?
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