Sprint planning in CWM
Summarize
Summary of Sprint Planning in CWM
Sprint planning in Collaborative Work Management (CWM) enables ServiceNow customers to efficiently plan, track, and manage Agile work for their teams. The Sprint Planning view on the CWM Board consolidates all work items into a Backlog and facilitates creating, scheduling, and executing sprints seamlessly. This capability supports diverse work item types, including Stories and custom types, allowing tailored sprint planning aligned with team and project requirements.
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Key Features
- Backlog Management: Automatically aggregates all unplanned work items, both new and existing, excluding completed tasks to maintain focus. Users can prioritize, rearrange, filter, duplicate (for CWM tasks and Stories), delete, and drag-and-drop items into sprints directly within the Backlog pane.
- Sprint Creation and Configuration: Easily create sprints specifying duration, start/end dates, and story points capacity. Multiple sprints can be added with consistent or varied settings. Each sprint displays workload utilization and remaining capacity to help balance team efforts.
- Personalization: Customize visible columns and layout in both Backlog and Sprint sections via the Personalize side panel. Users can save these settings to current or new Board views and toggle display focus between Backlog, Sprints, or both.
- Work Item Handling: Create new work items directly in the Backlog or within sprints. Plan and move stories and tasks between sprints, supporting dynamic workload adjustment.
- Sprint Execution and Closure: Start and complete sprints within the Sprint Planning view. Upon completion, optionally generate a retrospective board to facilitate team collaboration and sprint review.
- Acceptance Criteria Generation: Automatically generate and refine acceptance criteria for user stories, enhancing clarity and testability without manual entry.
Practical Benefits for ServiceNow Customers
- Streamlines Agile sprint planning by centralizing backlog and sprint management within CWM.
- Provides visibility into workload capacity and sprint progress, improving resource allocation and team productivity.
- Offers flexibility to customize workflows and views according to team preferences and project needs.
- Supports comprehensive sprint lifecycle management—from planning to retrospective—directly within the ServiceNow platform.
- Enhances user story quality with automated acceptance criteria generation, reducing manual effort and improving clarity.
Plan, track, and manage work for your teams in the Agile methodology using Sprint planning in Collaborative Work Management.
Within the Sprint Planning view of your CWM Board, you can manage your team's backlog, create sprints, plan work into sprints, and execute them seamlessly. All existing work items on your CWM Board are automatically added to the Backlog pane in the Sprint Planning view. This means that whether the work items are old or new, they will all be visible in the Backlog. From this pane, you can easily schedule these items into sprints for execution.
You have the flexibility to create work items of various types, such as Stories. You can also use any other default and custom work types that are available on your CWM Board. This flexibility ensures that you can tailor your sprint planning to fit the specific needs of your team and projects.
Enabling Sprint planning view
) side panel, select Sprint planning to enable the display of Sprint planning view on your CWM Board.Backlog
The Backlog pane displays all unplanned work items, including both newly added and older incomplete tasks. Completed work items are not shown, keeping your focus on what needs to be done. You can add work items directly to the Backlog from this view. You can also use the personalize side panel to show or hide columns within the Backlog pane, customizing the display to suit your needs.
- Move work items to the top or bottom of the backlog based on the priority.
- Move items to the currently ongoing sprint.
- Move work items within the list by rearranging rows.
- Delete work items.
- Apply filters on any column. However, filters can't be applied on custom columns within Backlog.
- Change the number of items displayed per page.
- Duplicate work items by using Copy row.Note:You can duplicate only CWM tasks and Stories but not other connected work records.
- Drag and drop a single or multiple work items from Backlog to one of the sprints.
Sprints
The Sprints section in your CWM Board displays the list of active sprints. If you haven’t created any sprints yet, this section will show a form to help you get started. You can create a sprint by selecting the sprint duration, start and end dates, and story points capacity. To create additional sprints with the same settings, use the Add another Sprint option. For sprints with different durations or capacities, select Create Sprint. For more information, see Create a sprint in CWM.
Each sprint is a collapsible section where you can add work items directly and customize the view using the personalize side panel. Each sprint section also shows the percentage of utilized capacity and the remaining story points, helping you manage your team's workload effectively.
Personalizing Sprint Planning view
You can customize the columns displayed in the Backlog and Sprint panes using the Personalize () side panel, allowing you to see the most relevant information. Any changes you make can be saved to the current Board view or as a new view, depending on your needs.
If you require more working area for the Backlog or Sprints within the Sprint planning view, you can toggle between the Backlog, Sprints, and Backlog and Sprints options.