Agile Software Development

It Is Not Necessary to Have a Sprint Goal. Know Why

A scrum team creates a high-value plan and comes up with a sprint goal in the beginning. They evaluate how to best utilize the allocated schedule, budget, and resources for the lifecycle. Piyush Rahate explains why it is not necessary to break your head over a sprint goal in this article.

To Have or Not to Have a Sprint Goal

A sprint goal is an objective that the development team commits to meet beside product backlog items during a sprint. The actionable items can serve to fulfill one function and that can be the sprint objective. It also can be the reason that makes the team work on those tasks together instead of in separate sprints. However, Scrum is not rigid, do not mandate having a sprint goal every time. Following are the reasons why it is not necessary to have a sprint goal:

Increased Approach Flexibility: The Scrum Guide was more specific before. Teams used to focus more on following rules than delivering quality products to clients. The Scrum guidelines have become more flexible over time. Now, all you need for a successful scrum implementation are 3 roles, 3 artifacts, and 5 events. Scrum is best suited for self-run teams as they can prioritize and decide tasks as per current demands. That was the main motive behind developing the Agile methodology.

Important but Not Necessary: The term ‘sprint goal’ is mentioned several times in the Scrum Guide making it an important part of the process. Scrum teams can create a task list based on the goal they have discussed and agreed upon. However, it is up to them to decide if they want to mandate having a sprint goal every sprint.

Not an Artifact: While a sprint objective can enhance a team’s working style, Scrum gives preference to quality work. So, it is not a scrum artifact but an objective that helps the team to understand the purpose of their work.


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