1. Prepare preliminary Sprint Goals

Create each Sprint Goal as a PI Objective type work item.

In QuickPlanner:

• In My Team Area select a team
• Click on Iteration Planning and select an iteration/Sprint from the drop-down menu
• Create a work item, selecting PI Objective as Type, and assign Filed Against to your team 
• Open the PI Objective and Mark as Team 

See Managing a Project with Quick Planner. 

In the Web UI:

• Click Work Items > PI Objective
• Assign Planned For to the sprint, and assign Filed Against to your team
• Mark as Team

1. Send out invitations

• Product owner
• Agile teams

Send out meeting invitations.

See Meetings and Engineering Workflow Management.

1. Establish velocity

The team quantifies their capacity to perform work in the upcoming sprint.

You can view previous and predicted velocity using quickplanner.

• Plans > Quick Planner > Iteration Planning
• In My Team Area, set the appropriate team.
• Click on "Team Progress" in the lower right hand corner of the PI or Sprint
• View past Sprints to see Story Points Achieved to predict velocity for the upcoming Sprint

The total points allocated to the Iteration are also displayed on the Iteration plan.

• Click Plans > All Plans >[Sprint name]
• Click Plan Details > Progress

Team Velocity is also displayed on the Team's dashboard

• Project Dashboards > All [Project name] Dashboards > [Team Name] > Scrum Master tab

2. Sprint Goals

The team identifies sprint goals based on the team and program's objectives.

Click Project Dashboards > [Project name]

• View the PI Objectives on the Release Planning tab of the Dashboard

4. Story Understanding and Estimating

The team discusses each story proposed for the release, including relative difficulty, size, complexity, technical challenges, and acceptance criteria. 

View Stories Via Quick Planner:

a. Plans > Quick Planner > Iteration Planning

b. In My Team Area, set the appropriate team.

c. If unable to view stories, the Categories have not been assigned to the teams.  See Configure Team Area EWM

d. To modify rank, click and drag the work item up or down, or type a new number in the "rank" column.

e. To estimate the story points, click the right dropdown menu and choose a story point.

• See stories needing story points. Project Dashboards > All [Project name] Dashboards > [Team Name] > Scrum Master tab

See Managing a Project with Quick Planner

View Stories Via the Iteration Backlog:

Display the Ranked List view of the Sprint Backlog. 

• Click Plans > All Plans >[Sprint name]
• Set View As to Ranked List.

Hover over each work item to display key information without having to leave the ranked list.

To modify rank, click and drag the work item up or down (click at the far left of the work item), or type a new number in the "rank" column. See Ranking work items.

To see unassigned stories, set View As to Work Breakdown, then click Unassigned. (This view will be used in subsequent steps to create and assign tasks).

To remove stories

• Check one (or more) stories using checkboxes at the left.
• Click Actions > Plan Items For > [PI Name]

See Modifying work items in a plan.

Teams will generally create tasks by decomposing stories into tasks and assigning them to team members. 

a. Plans > Quick Planner > Iteration Planning. In My Team Area, set the appropriate team. Select a Sprint from the dropdown menu.

b. To break down a Story into Tasks, click the Open child task breakdown icon () in the story's attributes. Assign details to the stories:

• file against a team or program category
• assign to a team member 

c. Estimate tasks and find dependencies

• Open the task. Under Estimate, choose an estimate.

d. View Sprint Burndown

• Click Project Dashboards > All [Project name] Dashboards > [Team Name] > Scrum Master tab

6. Team members take responsibility of tasks

Each team member looks at the set of unassigned tasks on the Sprint plan and assigns tasks to themselves.

Some organizations might decide though to let the Scrum Master assign the work to the team.

Each member of the team has their own menu in the Work Breakdown view. to assign work, drag and drop the work item on the assignee's menu (click at the far left of the work item to start dragging).

Also see Project Dashboards > All [Project name] Dashboards > [Team Name]  > Team Member tab for a breakdown of the team's work

In QuickPlanner, assign work by clicking the  icon.

After assigning tasks, view the Team's individual work. Plans > QuickPlanner > Team's Work

7. Commitment

8. Review the Iteration load

When all tasks for all stories (assigned to the Iteration) have an estimate and the allocations of the team members are accurate, the Scrum Master reviews the Sprint load.

Total hours estimated for all tasks in the Iteration should be less than the total hours available.  Otherwise the team is overloaded.

For each team member, the total hours available should also be less than the total hours estimated for the work assigned to that team member.

Teams cannot commit to work in excess of their capacity.

• Click Plans > Recent Plans > [Iteration name]
• Click Plan Details. Click Load.

Mouse-over the load bar to see:

• Total hours available
• Total hours estimated
• Percent of items estimated

Review the loads for individual team members.

• Click the Progress bar beside the member's name until the Load is shown

9. Ongoing during the Iteration Planning

New ideas are captured as stories.
An initial ranking is discussed as ideas are captured - highly ranked ideas can be immediately refined and added to the Iteration or Team Backlog, otherwise ideas are captured at a high level and left in the Program Backlog to be refined at a later time.

Impediments and risks are logged.

1. Standard meeting follow-up items

This includes creating work items from meeting notes, soliciting feedback from absent members, and resolving any work item(s) associated with the meeting.

2. Baseline the Iteration plan.

A snapshot captures the current state of a plan.  You can use the snapshot later to compare with the future states of the plan to identify trends. 

See Taking a snapshot of a plan.