Tales of the Bizarro Scrum – When is Sprint Planning?

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Developer: “I’m not sure when the next Sprint planning is. The ScrumMaster hasn’t scheduled it yet”

Two things concern me here. First, the seemingly variability of events. Second, the reliance on the ScrumMaster.

In Scrum, we work on a cadence. Once we determine the Sprint length, we mostly stick to it with a few exceptions around holidays and unforeseen events. When one Sprint ends, the next one starts with no breaks in between. If we have 2-week Sprints and Sprint Planning is on Wednesday at 9 am, then we stick to this cadence and have the next Sprint Planning in 2 weeks on Wednesday at 9 am, etc. Everyone knows when Sprint Planning is, when the Sprint Review is, when the Sprint Retrospective is, and so forth. This simplifies scheduling and communication and ensures all team members’ schedules are aligned. This also eliminates the need to schedule meetings and send out meeting invites. This brings us to the second concern of reliance on the ScrumMaster.

The ScrumMaster is not the team administrator. Nor is the Sprint Planning meeting for the ScrumMaster. If anyone owns the Sprint Planning meeting it is the Product Owner for topics 1 and 2 (the Why and the What) or the Developers for topic 3 (the How). My preference is to encourage the Product Owner to run with it.