Team Writing Own Sprint Stories: Sprint Goal Scope Creep

I started an initiative in 2021 was to have the team start writing their own sprint stories - the series starts here

I used the sprint goal as a way to align the engineering team’s work and communicate stakeholder expectations. I felt like a genius - why didn’t I do it sooner??

Then the next time I met with stakeholders, there questions were about the current work and how they aligned for the next sprint.

What did I do?

I added the items to the current sprint goal.

• “Oh the team can take care of it as well.”
• “If they do this now, they will be ahead for the next sprint.”
• “They don’t know it yet, but they will really thank me for doing this.”

Little did I know, I became the product manager I despised. I had to fix that!