Sprint Planning Templates

For a 2-week sprint, plan for 2-4 hours. Spend the first hour reviewing the sprint goal and selecting stories. Spend the remaining time breaking stories into tasks and estimating. If planning takes longer than 4 hours, your stories are too large or your backlog is not refined.

There is no universal "good" velocity. Velocity is a planning tool, not a performance metric. Track your team's velocity over 3-4 sprints to find a reliable average. Use that average to forecast future sprints. Velocity should stabilize over time.

Use the Given/When/Then format. Each criterion should be testable and unambiguous. Aim for 3-5 acceptance criteria per user story. If you have more than 7, the story is too large and should be split.