Product Sprint Prioritizer

What This Skill Does

Produces concrete sprint planning artifacts: scored and ranked backlogs, capacity plans, sprint goal statements, user stories, stakeholder summaries, and risk logs. All outputs are copy-paste ready.

Core Workflow

Step 1 — Gather Inputs

Collect from the user:

• Feature/story list (titles or descriptions)
• Team size and sprint length (e.g., 6 devs, 2-week sprint)
• Historical velocity (e.g., 42 points/sprint average) or ask for last 3 sprints
• Known absences or reduced capacity this sprint
• Business goal or sprint theme (OKR link if available)

Step 2 — Score the Backlog (RICE by default)

Apply RICE to each item and produce a ranked table:

When to use alternatives:

• MoSCoW — stakeholder alignment sessions where negotiation matters more than scoring
• Value vs. Effort Matrix — quick visual triage when data is thin
• Kano Model — new product discovery to separate must-haves from delighters

Step 3 — Build the Capacity Plan

Sprint capacity template
------------------------
Team size:          6 developers
Sprint days:        10 days
Raw hours/dev:      8 h/day × 10 days = 80 h
Overhead (20%):     − 16 h (standups, planning, review, retro, Slack)
Net hours/dev:      64 h
Planned absences:   − 8 h (1 dev out 1 day)
Total net capacity: (6 × 64) − 8 = 376 h

Velocity target:    42 story points (from 6-sprint rolling average)
Buffer (15%):       Reserve ~6 pts for unplanned work
Committable points: 36 pts

Adjust the 20% overhead factor up (to 25–30%) for teams with heavy meeting cultures or onboarding new members.

Step 4 — Write the Sprint Goal

Template:

This sprint we will [deliver X] so that [user/business outcome Y], which we will verify by [measurable criterion Z].

Example:

This sprint we will ship the redesigned onboarding flow so that new users reach their first "aha moment" within 5 minutes of sign-up, verified by a ≥15% improvement in Day-1 activation rate in our analytics dashboard.

Step 5 — Write User Stories

Template:

Title: [Short label]
As a [persona], I want [action] so that [benefit].

Acceptance Criteria:
- [ ] Given [context], when [event], then [expected outcome]
- [ ] Given [context], when [edge case], then [expected behaviour]
- [ ] Performance: [response time / load constraint if applicable]
- [ ] Accessibility: [WCAG level or screen-reader requirement]

Story Points: [estimate]
Dependencies: [upstream stories or teams]

Example:

Title: CSV export for reports
As a finance analyst, I want to export any report as a CSV
so that I can process data in Excel without manual copy-paste.

Acceptance Criteria:
- [ ] Given a report is open, when I click "Export → CSV", then a .csv
      file downloads within 3 seconds for datasets up to 10,000 rows.
- [ ] Given a report has no data, when I click export, then I see
      "No data to export" and no file downloads.
- [ ] Column headers in the CSV match the on-screen column labels exactly.

Story Points: 3
Dependencies: Report API v2 (Team Platform, available sprint N+1)

Prioritization Quick-Reference

Value vs. Effort Matrix

Place items into one of four quadrants: Quick Wins (high value, low effort → do this sprint), Strategic Bets (high value, high effort → phase and plan), Fill-ins (low value, low effort → slot if capacity allows), Time Sinks (low value, high effort → reject or redesign).

Kano Classification

Reference Templates

Full copy-paste templates for the Sprint Kickoff Summary, Executive Progress Update, Risk Log, and Sprint Retrospective Output are maintained in the companion TEMPLATES.md file. Use those when producing stakeholder communications, tracking risks, or formatting retro outputs.