Sprint Mechanics

Professional Development

Ben Baumer

Smith College

Sep 10, 2026

Four sprints over the semester

One sprint

Product & Sprint Backlogs

Role of the Product Owner

“The Product Owner owns priority and value in the product backlog.”

• Responsible for managing the backlog
  • writing (and editing) user stories
  • “As a … I want … so that I can …”
  • estimating the size of user stories
  • defining “done”
  • choosing which stories to include in a sprint
• May have backlog refinement meeting mid-sprint

Estimating size of user stories

• Use quadratic time: 1, 2, 4, 8, 16, … hours
• Solicit opinions from all team members
• Break large items into smaller pieces
• Accept that these are estimates

Anatomy of a sprint

Beginning:

• Sprint planning
• Select user stories for sprint backlog from product backlog
• Form a vision for what you want to accomplish

During:

• Choose tasks from sprint backlog, in sequence
• Assign yourself to each task as you take it (not before)
• Tasks move from Backlog to In Progress, to Done
• No new items in sprint backlog until sprint is over

End:

• Sprint review/demo
• Sprint retrospective

Ongoing:

• Add new user stories to product backlog
• Estimate size of user stories