Essential Scrum: A Practical Guide to the Most Popular Agile Process

Chapter 14. Scrum Planning Principles

An old myth states that development with Scrum takes off with no planning. We just start the first sprint and figure out the details in flight. This isn’t true. We do real planning in Scrum. In fact, we plan at multiple levels of detail and at many points in time. To some it may seem like Scrum deemphasizes planning because a majority of the planning occurs just in time instead of substantially up front. In my experience, however, teams often spend more time planning with Scrum than with traditional development; it just might feel a bit different.

In this chapter I expand upon several of the Scrum principles described in Chapter 3, with a focus on how they apply to planning. In doing so, I set the foundation ...