Sprint Goal: What Is It and Why Does Your Business Need One?

A Sprint goal is one of the most valuable tools that you can use to improve your productivity as a Scrum team. While you may already have heard about Sprint Goal, there's a good chance most Scrum teams don't know how it works and how you can use it in your business. In this article, we'll dive into what Sprint Goal is, how it works, and why every business needs to use it effectively to be successful.

What Is a Sprint Goal?

A Sprint is a timeboxed effort to deliver a specific set of functional or technical results. For the purposes of this post, we will refer to the Scrum team's goal as a Sprint goal. A Sprint goal is just one of many important parts of Scrum, an agile approach to product development popularized by the software industry. 

A Sprint goal is a single short-term objective that the Scrum team commits to achieve during a Sprint in order to meet its product's vision. The purpose of having a Sprint goal is not just to finish your work with speed but also because it should help you stay focused on your most important tasks during the course of the project. 

To truly benefit from the process, you must understand what Sprint goals are and the role that your Sprint goal plays in the overall success of your business. One way to make sure that everyone understands what a Sprint goal entails is through two questions: What does a Sprint goal do? And Why does it matter?

Understanding Sprint Goals

Sprint goals are an essential part of Scrum, a project management framework. These goals help teams focus on what they need to accomplish to reach their ultimate goal in every Sprint. A Sprint goal should be concise, measurable, realistic, and outcome-driven. 

For instance, a company might want to work towards increasing the number of subscribers on their mailing list by 20% over the next six months. This can be translated into a goal like gaining 20% more subscribers in 6 months. Each week, teams assess how much progress they've made toward reaching this goal. They do so by estimating how much work was done that week, the small progressive outcomes, and how much is left to complete to reach the goal.

Some Scrum teams may already have a Sprint goal, but it's not uncommon for companies to start with something else. In these cases, it's up to the team members to decide what will be their Sprint goal. You'll know you're setting yourself up for success if you set clear expectations and keep them throughout your Sprints. The one thing to avoid at all costs is promising too many things or making unrealistic promises. Of course, there are always going to be new opportunities coming along that can distract from your current goal. While it might seem tempting to switch gears or lose sight of what's most important, this could ultimately affect your business in the long run.

Additionally, measuring your team's progress by output-driven metrics such as completion rate, project timelines, and velocity makes the Sprint goal seem uninspiring. This mostly renders the Sprint goal unachievable since the pressure is more on meeting timelines and certain numbers during the Sprint rather than actual success.  

A successful Sprint goal is outcome-driven, focused on a common purpose, measuring progress by metrics such as churn rate, referral rate, and profit. When you know what your team needs to accomplish daily, all team members can focus on getting their job done without worrying about extra responsibilities. With this level of teamwork, your Scrum team members are inspired to be innovators and problem solvers instead of working like a "Feature Factory."

How to Create an Outcome-Driven Sprint Goal

The Sprint goal (or a Sprint objective) tells the team what to accomplish in the next Sprint. The goal should be specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, outcome-oriented, and time-bound. The Scrum team, mainly the Product Owner and the Development team, should decide on the goal collaboratively. The team should collectively focus on the current business condition, customer feedback, and the customer behaviour they intend to change to determine the most vital outcome-driven metric they want to influence during that Sprint.

An example of an outcome-driven Sprint goal is: "In this Sprint, our goal is to increase SaaS subscriptions by 10%."  This goal clearly identifies what needs to be accomplished during a Sprint. To achieve this, the Scrum team would first identify the metric it wants to improve upon (i.e., subscriptions) and then brainstorm strategies it could employ. Ideas could include changing messaging on their website, providing more thorough training for new users, offering free trials for potential customers, or giving special discounts for referrals from existing customers. 

Once ideas are narrowed down, the team sets out to execute its plan by developing content ideas and deciding which strategies would be best suited for implementing them. Finally, the team monitors its success during the Sprint review using relevant tools to measure performance against KPIs (Key Performance Indicators).

How You Can Use the Sprint Goal in Agile Development

In agile development, the Sprint goal helps define what needs to be achieved in a particular Sprint. It typically consists of a few sentences that answer these questions: Who are we trying to help (target customer)? What will the product do for them? How does it differ from existing solutions on the market today? Where is this product's current place in the market (marketing position)? The team then uses this information to prioritize work items for their upcoming Sprint.

One of the most important things to know about a Sprint goal is that it's very different from a project goal. Sprint goals are meant to be short-term, meaning they should not take more than two weeks to complete. The purpose of a Sprint goal is to help you stay on target with your larger goals by giving you a specific, measurable task to work towards in the next few days.

The advantages of using Sprint goals are plentiful. With a clear and achievable goal for each day or week, it becomes much easier to accomplish your goals. In addition, team members have fewer distractions as each can focus on one small task at a time. There will also be less room for procrastination as they'll feel accomplished when they reach their daily goal and can reward themselves with other tasks afterwards. 

Without a Sprint goal, your team will only be a group of people busy with different things without a common purpose. Additionally, your Daily Scrum will just be a status update rather than an opportunity to find better ways to tackle the Sprint goal, and your Sprint review will just be about showcasing all the Sprint backlog items completed within the Sprint rather than inspecting whether your Sprint goal has met your intended market goals.

Get Started With an Improved Agile Solution

At IT Management and Consulting International, we aim to improve your team's performance through our Agile solutions. Our Scrum team and organizational coaching solutions have proven to be the right fit for most businesses aiming to achieve their Sprint goals and reduce the backlog. So, book a meeting with us to begin your journey today.