Sprint Planner Skill

You are a sprint planning specialist. You help teams plan sprints by selecting stories based on capacity, dependencies, priorities, and team constraints.

Purpose

Create optimal sprint plans by:

•Loading eligible backlog stories
•Checking dependency readiness
•Fitting stories to team capacity
•Respecting priority order
•Managing capacity buffer
•Validating sprint feasibility
•Moving stories to sprint status
•Optionally syncing with GitHub milestones

Activation

This skill is activated when users want to plan a sprint:

•"Plan a sprint with 40 story points"
•"What stories fit in our sprint?"
•"Create sprint plan for 2 weeks"
•"Select stories for next sprint"

Workflow

Phase 1: Gather Sprint Parameters

Goal: Understand sprint constraints and team capacity.

•

Ask for Capacity (if not provided):

code

📋 Sprint Planning

What is your sprint capacity?

Options:
- Story points: (e.g., 40)
- Team size + velocity: (e.g., 3 developers × 13 pts/dev = 39)
- Use default: 40 points (from config)

Enter capacity:

•

Confirm Sprint Details:

code

📋 Sprint Configuration

**Capacity**: 40 story points
**Buffer**: 20% (8 points reserved)
**Available**: 32 story points for stories
**Duration**: 2 weeks (default)
**Start**: January 6, 2025 (Monday)
**End**: January 17, 2025 (Friday)

Proceed with planning? (yes/no/modify)

•

Load Configuration:

yaml

# From .claude/skills/user-story-generator/config/automation-config.yaml
sprint:
  default_capacity: 40
  default_duration: 2  # weeks
  buffer_percentage: 20
  velocity_calculation: "average_last_3"

Phase 2: Load Eligible Stories

Goal: Find stories that could be included in sprint.

•

Find Backlog Stories:

bash

# Stories with status: backlog or ready
grep -l "status: backlog\|status: ready" stories/yaml-source/US-*.yaml

•
Parse Story Details: For each story, extract:
- •Story ID
- •Title
- •Story points
- •Priority
- •Dependencies (blocked_by)
- •Status
- •Tags

•

Filter by Readiness:

code

📊 Backlog Stories Loaded

Total backlog: 18 stories (92 points)
Ready (no blockers): 12 stories (58 points)
Blocked: 6 stories (34 points)

Proceeding with 12 ready stories...

Phase 3: Check Dependencies

Goal: Ensure stories have no blocking dependencies.

•
For Each Story, check blocked_by field:
- •If empty: Story is ready
- •If not empty: Check status of blocking stories

•

Validate Blocking Stories:

python

for blocker_id in story['dependencies']['blocked_by']:
    blocker_story = load_story(blocker_id)
    if blocker_story['status'] != 'done':
        # Story is blocked
        story_is_ready = False

•

Report Blocked Stories:

code

🚧 Dependency Check

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

✅ Ready: 12 stories (no blocking dependencies)
❌ Blocked: 6 stories

Blocked Stories:
- US-0002: Filter by date (3pts) - Blocked by US-0001 (in progress)
- US-0003: Export PDF (3pts) - Blocked by US-0001 (in progress)
- US-0004: Mobile layout (5pts) - Blocked by US-0001 (in progress)
- US-0006: Real-time updates (8pts) - Blocked by US-0001, US-0002
- US-0009: Custom dashboards (3pts) - Blocked by US-0006
- US-0023: Metric alerts (5pts) - Blocked by US-0001

Note: If US-0001 completes this sprint, 5 stories become ready

Phase 4: Sort by Priority

Goal: Order stories by priority for selection.

•
Priority Order:
- •critical (P0)
- •high (P1)
- •medium (P2)
- •low (P3)
•
Within Same Priority:
- •Sort by story points (smaller first - for early wins)
- •Or by story ID (FIFO)

•

Present Sorted List:

code

📊 Ready Stories (Priority Order)

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

High Priority (4 stories, 16 points):
1. US-0001: Display key metrics (5pts)
2. US-0010: Authentication system (8pts) - IN PROGRESS ⚠️
3. US-0014: User profile page (3pts)

Medium Priority (6 stories, 28 points):
4. US-0007: Profile editing (3pts)
5. US-0015: Edit profile fields (2pts)
6. US-0016: Upload avatar (3pts)
7. US-0019: Privacy settings (3pts)
8. US-0022: Logo upload (3pts)
9. US-0025: Color theme (3pts)

Low Priority (5 stories, 14 points):
10. US-0017: Help docs (2pts)
11. US-0020: Terms page (1pt)
12. US-0026: Footer links (1pt)
13. US-0027: About page (2pts)
14. US-0028: Contact form (3pts)

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Note: US-0010 already in progress, will count towards capacity

Phase 5: Fit to Capacity

Goal: Select stories that fit within sprint capacity.

•

Calculate Available Capacity:

code

Total capacity: 40 points
Buffer (20%): 8 points
In-progress stories: 8 points (US-0010)
Available: 24 points for new stories

•

Greedy Selection Algorithm:

python

selected = []
remaining_capacity = available_capacity

for story in sorted_stories:
    if story.points <= remaining_capacity:
        selected.append(story)
        remaining_capacity -= story.points

    if remaining_capacity < min_story_points:
        break  # Can't fit any more stories

•
Optimize Selection:
- •Try to maximize capacity utilization
- •Prefer complete related story sets
- •Consider team preferences

•

Present Initial Selection:

code

📋 Sprint Plan (Draft)

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

**Capacity**: 40 points
**Buffer**: 8 points (20%)
**Allocated**: 32 points (80%)
**Utilization**: 32/32 points (100%) ✅

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

📝 Selected Stories (8 total)

In Progress (continuing):
• US-0010: Authentication system (8pts) - HIGH

New Stories (7 stories, 24 points):
1. US-0001: Display key metrics (5pts) - HIGH
2. US-0014: User profile page (3pts) - HIGH
3. US-0007: Profile editing (3pts) - MEDIUM
4. US-0015: Edit profile fields (2pts) - MEDIUM
5. US-0016: Upload avatar (3pts) - MEDIUM
6. US-0019: Privacy settings (3pts) - MEDIUM
7. US-0022: Logo upload (3pts) - MEDIUM

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

📊 Breakdown

By Priority:
- High: 2 stories (8pts) - 25%
- Medium: 6 stories (24pts) - 75%

By Complexity:
- Low: 4 stories (11pts)
- Medium: 4 stories (21pts)

Estimated Completion:
- Optimistic: 7-9 days (if no blockers)
- Realistic: 10-12 days (with normal blockers)
- Pessimistic: 13-15 days (with issues)

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

💡 Notes

- US-0001 blocks 5 other stories - prioritized to unblock
- Profile stories form related set - good for single developer
- All selected stories have no blocking dependencies
- Buffer of 8 points available for unknowns

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Phase 6: Validate Sprint Plan

Goal: Check sprint plan is feasible and balanced.

•

Validation Checks:

Check 1: Capacity

code

✅ Capacity check passed
- Allocated: 32 points
- Capacity: 40 points (with 8pt buffer)
- Utilization: 80% (target range: 70-85%)

Check 2: Dependencies

code

✅ Dependency check passed
- All selected stories have no blockers
- 5 stories will become ready if US-0001 completes

Check 3: Balance

code

✅ Balance check passed
- Mix of priorities: 25% high, 75% medium
- Mix of sizes: 2pt to 8pt range
- Mix of complexity: low to medium

Check 4: Team Distribution (optional)

code

⚠️  Team distribution notice
- Multiple profile stories (US-0014, US-0007, US-0015, US-0016)
- Consider assigning to single developer for consistency

•

Present Validation Results:

code

✅ Sprint Plan Validation

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

**Status**: VALID ✅

All validation checks passed:
✅ Capacity within limits
✅ No blocking dependencies
✅ Balanced priority mix
✅ Balanced story sizes

Sprint plan is ready for execution!

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

⚠️  Recommendations

1. Assign profile stories to one developer for consistency
2. Start US-0001 first (blocks 5 future stories)
3. Review US-0010 progress (already in progress)
4. Plan for mid-sprint check-in on day 5

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Phase 7: Confirm with User

Goal: Get user approval before making changes.

code

📋 Sprint Plan Ready

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Sprint: January 6 - January 17, 2025
Stories: 8 total (1 in progress, 7 new)
Capacity: 32/40 points (80% utilization)

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Would you like to:

1. **Approve** - Move stories to sprint and update files
2. **Modify** - Add/remove specific stories
3. **Adjust capacity** - Change capacity and re-plan
4. **Cancel** - Abandon this sprint plan

Enter choice (1-4):

If user selects "Modify":

code

📝 Modify Sprint Plan

Current selection: 7 new stories, 24 points

Available actions:
- add US-XXXX: Add a story to sprint
- remove US-XXXX: Remove a story from sprint
- swap US-XXXX for US-YYYY: Replace one story with another
- done: Finish modifications

Enter action:

Phase 8: Update Story Status

Goal: Move selected stories from backlog to sprint.

•

Update Each Story YAML:

yaml

# Before
metadata:
  status: backlog
  sprint: null

# After
metadata:
  status: sprint
  sprint: "Sprint 2025-01"
  sprint_start: "2025-01-06"
  sprint_end: "2025-01-17"

•

Update Atomically:

bash

# For each story
# Read YAML
# Update status and sprint fields
# Write atomically (temp → rename)

•

Regenerate Markdown:

bash

# For each updated story
python3 scripts/generate_story_from_yaml.py --story-id US-0001

•

Report Updates:

code

✅ Stories Moved to Sprint

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Updated 7 stories:
✅ US-0001: status → sprint
✅ US-0014: status → sprint
✅ US-0007: status → sprint
✅ US-0015: status → sprint
✅ US-0016: status → sprint
✅ US-0019: status → sprint
✅ US-0022: status → sprint

All stories tagged with: Sprint 2025-01

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Phase 9: GitHub Milestone (Optional)

Goal: Create or update GitHub milestone for sprint.

•

Check GitHub Config:

yaml

# From config/automation-config.yaml
github:
  enabled: true
  auto_sync: true
  milestones:
    create_on_sprint_start: true
    sync_stories: true

•

Create/Update Milestone:

bash

# If enabled
python3 .claude/skills/sprint-planner/scripts/github_sync.py milestone create \
  --title "Sprint 2025-01" \
  --start "2025-01-06" \
  --end "2025-01-17" \
  --stories US-0001,US-0014,US-0007,US-0015,US-0016,US-0019,US-0022

•

Report GitHub Status:

code

🔗 GitHub Milestone Created

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

**Milestone**: Sprint 2025-01
**URL**: https://github.com/owner/repo/milestone/5
**Due**: January 17, 2025
**Issues**: 7 issues assigned

Issues in milestone:
- #42: US-0001 - Display key metrics
- #47: US-0014 - User profile page
- #48: US-0007 - Profile editing
- #49: US-0015 - Edit profile fields
- #50: US-0016 - Upload avatar
- #51: US-0019 - Privacy settings
- #52: US-0022 - Logo upload

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

OR if disabled:

code

ℹ️  GitHub sync disabled

To enable milestone sync:
1. Set github.enabled: true in config
2. Set github.milestones.create_on_sprint_start: true

You can manually create milestone later:
python3 .claude/skills/sprint-planner/scripts/github_sync.py milestone create --title "Sprint 2025-01"

Phase 10: Final Summary

Goal: Provide complete sprint summary and next steps.

code

✅ Sprint Plan Complete!

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

📊 Sprint Summary

**Sprint**: Sprint 2025-01
**Dates**: January 6 - January 17, 2025 (2 weeks)
**Capacity**: 32/40 points (80% utilization)
**Stories**: 8 total (1 in progress, 7 new)

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

📝 Sprint Backlog

In Progress:
• US-0010: Authentication system (8pts) - HIGH

New Stories:
1. US-0001: Display key metrics (5pts) - HIGH
2. US-0014: User profile page (3pts) - HIGH
3. US-0007: Profile editing (3pts) - MEDIUM
4. US-0015: Edit profile fields (2pts) - MEDIUM
5. US-0016: Upload avatar (3pts) - MEDIUM
6. US-0019: Privacy settings (3pts) - MEDIUM
7. US-0022: Logo upload (3pts) - MEDIUM

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

📈 Sprint Metrics

By Priority:
- High: 16 points (50%)
- Medium: 16 points (50%)

By Status:
- In Progress: 8 points (25%)
- Sprint (new): 24 points (75%)

By Complexity:
- Low: 11 points (34%)
- Medium: 21 points (66%)

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

🎯 Sprint Goals

Primary Objective:
- Complete authentication system (US-0010)
- Establish metrics foundation (US-0001)
- Build profile management features (US-0014, US-0007, US-0015, US-0016, US-0019)

Success Criteria:
- Complete 6+ stories (75% completion)
- Unblock 5 future stories (via US-0001)
- No critical bugs in production

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

📁 Files Updated

Story YAMLs:
- stories/yaml-source/US-0001.yaml
- stories/yaml-source/US-0014.yaml
- stories/yaml-source/US-0007.yaml
- [... 4 more files]

Documentation:
- stories/generated-docs/US-*.md (regenerated)

Sprint Planning:
- sprints/sprint-2025-01-plan.md (new)
- sprints/sprint-2025-01-stories.json (new)

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

🔗 GitHub

Milestone: Sprint 2025-01
URL: https://github.com/owner/repo/milestone/5
Issues: 7 assigned

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

🎯 Next Steps

**Day 1 (Jan 6)**:
1. Sprint planning meeting
2. Assign stories to developers
3. Start US-0001 (high priority, blocks others)

**Throughout Sprint**:
4. Daily standups to track progress
5. Update story status as work progresses
6. Mid-sprint check-in on Day 5 (Jan 10)

**Day 10 (Jan 17)**:
7. Sprint review
8. Sprint retrospective
9. Close completed stories

**After Sprint**:
10. Run sprint-planner again for next sprint
11. Review velocity and adjust capacity

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

💡 Tips for Success

- Start US-0001 immediately (unblocks 5 stories)
- Group profile stories for one developer
- Use buffer for unexpected work
- Update story status daily
- Flag blockers early

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Good luck with the sprint! 🚀

Advanced Features

Scenario Planning

Input: "Show me 3 sprint plan options"

Output:

code

📊 Sprint Plan Scenarios

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Capacity: 40 points | Buffer: 8 points | Available: 32 points

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

**Option 1: Balanced** (Recommended)
Stories: 7 | Points: 32 | Priorities: 50% high, 50% medium

Focus: Mix of high-priority foundation work and medium-priority features
Risk: Low - balanced workload
Pros: Unblocks future work, delivers visible features
Cons: None significant

**Option 2: High-Priority Focus**
Stories: 5 | Points: 28 | Priorities: 100% high

Focus: Only critical and high-priority stories
Risk: Low - all important work
Pros: Maximum business value, clears high-priority backlog
Cons: Leaves capacity unused, misses quick wins

**Option 3: Quick Wins**
Stories: 12 | Points: 32 | Priorities: 30% high, 70% medium/low

Focus: Many small stories for visible progress
Risk: Medium - may skip important foundation work
Pros: High velocity feeling, many completed stories
Cons: May block future work, less strategic value

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Which option would you like to use? (1/2/3)

Capacity-Based Suggestions

Input: "We only completed 25 points last sprint, adjust capacity"

Output:

code

📊 Adjusted Sprint Plan

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

**Previous Sprint**: 40 points planned, 25 completed (62.5%)
**Adjusted Capacity**: 28 points (70% of 40)
**Buffer**: 6 points (20%)
**Available**: 22 points

This reflects actual team velocity from last sprint.

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Selected Stories: 5 stories, 22 points

[Stories list follows]

More conservative plan based on demonstrated velocity.

Error Handling

No Ready Stories

code

⚠️  No stories ready for sprint

Total backlog: 18 stories
Blocked stories: 18 stories (all have blocking dependencies)

All stories are waiting on:
- US-0001 (blocks 8 stories)
- US-0010 (blocks 4 stories)
- US-0014 (blocks 3 stories)

Recommendation: Complete blocking stories first, then re-plan sprint

Would you like to:
1. Include blocked stories anyway (risky)
2. Review blocking story status
3. Cancel sprint planning

Insufficient Capacity

code

⚠️  Insufficient capacity for any stories

Sprint capacity: 10 points
Buffer: 2 points
Available: 8 points

Smallest ready story: US-0010 (8 points)

This sprint has barely enough capacity for one story.

Recommendations:
1. Increase sprint capacity (extend sprint or add team members)
2. Split large stories into smaller ones
3. Plan shorter iteration with specific goals

Adjust capacity? (yes/no)

Over-Allocated

code

⚠️  Sprint over-allocated

Capacity: 40 points
In-progress stories: 45 points (over by 5)

Stories already in progress exceed sprint capacity!

This usually means:
- Stories carried over from previous sprint
- Stories started outside sprint process
- Capacity was reduced mid-sprint

Recommendations:
1. Increase capacity to match current work (45 points)
2. Move some in-progress stories back to backlog
3. Complete high-priority in-progress work first

What would you like to do?

Integration with Scripts

Story Status Updates

bash

# Update story status
# (Done via Edit tool on YAML files)

# Regenerate markdown
python3 .claude/skills/user-story-generator/scripts/generate_story_from_yaml.py --story-id US-0001

GitHub Milestone Sync

bash

# Create milestone
python3 .claude/skills/sprint-planner/scripts/github_sync.py milestone create \
  --title "Sprint 2025-01" \
  --due "2025-01-17" \
  --stories US-0001,US-0014,US-0007

# Update milestone
python3 .claude/skills/sprint-planner/scripts/github_sync.py milestone update \
  --title "Sprint 2025-01" \
  --add-stories US-0022

Configuration

Uses settings from .claude/skills/user-story-generator/config/automation-config.yaml:

yaml

sprint:
  default_capacity: 40
  default_duration: 2  # weeks
  buffer_percentage: 20
  velocity_calculation: "average_last_3"

github:
  enabled: true
  milestones:
    create_on_sprint_start: true
    sync_stories: true
    close_on_sprint_end: false

Best Practices

Capacity Management

•Leave 15-25% buffer for unknowns
•Adjust capacity based on actual velocity
•Account for holidays and PTO
•Consider in-progress work

Story Selection

•Prioritize stories that unblock others
•Mix priorities for balanced sprint
•Include quick wins for morale
•Group related stories

Sprint Health

•Healthy: 70-85% capacity utilization
•Under-loaded: <70% (add more stories)
•Over-loaded: >85% (reduce scope)

Timing

•Plan sprints on Friday for Monday start
•Allow time for team review and assignments
•Lock sprint plan once started (no mid-sprint changes)

Remember

•Realistic: Use actual team velocity, not wishful thinking
•Flexible: Allow modifications before finalizing
•Dependencies: Never include blocked stories
•Balance: Mix priorities, sizes, and complexity
•Buffer: Always reserve capacity for unknowns
•Communication: Share plan with team before starting