Free guide + fillable action sheet

Why Sprint Goals don't work for your team

Do they not fit your work, or is something else getting in the way?

Everyone has a separate task list. Changing the plan counts as failure. Stories run across several sprints. A better goal sentence will not fix those problems. Find out what needs to change.

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By Matthias Orgler · PDF · No account needed

Preview of the Sprint Goal guide and its practical action sheet

Maybe we should just do Scrum without them.

You might be questioning whether Sprint Goals make sense at all. Or you want to use them, but they never seem useful in your environment. Start with the situation you recognise.

  1. 01

    Our work is too varied for one goal.

    Team setup and unresolved priorities.

  2. 02

    Our goal is to finish all the stories.

    Instructions without a shared product direction.

  3. 03

    We cannot change the plan.

    Commitments and incentives that protect the original plan.

  4. 04

    We get feedback, but nothing changes.

    Reviews that report progress or seek confirmation.

  5. 05

    Everything takes several sprints.

    Oversized work and fixed-plan execution.

  6. 06

    We cannot measure the outcome within a sprint.

    An idea that has not been broken into testable assumptions.

A passage from the guide

The problem may be your team setup.

If everyone is committed to a different result and there is no shared priority, you have organised individual workloads and called the group a team.

The guide names the problem, explains what needs to change, and gives you an action to take. For competing priorities, that means resolving which result takes precedence, what will wait, and which assignments prevent shared work.

Use the fillable action sheet to prepare a concrete discussion with the people who can make the decision.

Name the problem. Take a useful first step.

Read the situations relevant to your team, work through the practical actions, and capture your next decision on the action sheet. Type into the PDF in a compatible reader or print the sheet.

The guide also points to further help with team setup, product direction, slicing, feedback, planning, failure culture and experiments.

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