Tired of spillovers? Don’t forget to estimate meetings while planning.

We go to planning thinking of certain availability for the next sprint but forget to expect the unexpected.

<Take a read on this POV:>
Review the tasks and user stories, make sure all of them are properly estimated before we start the planning. I’ve taken 10 points in different stories so I know I’m going to be busy.
End of the sprint comes and I rushed to sent tickets out to accommodate the end of sprint, how did I got here?
I estimated everything.
Turns out I forgot THE MEETINGS!
</end of POV.>

If Previously I’d would have taken 8 Points for the sprint, there is a possibility that I would have completed everything on time, of course there are times that even with 10 points per sprint, I manage without problem to finish before end of sprint.

We work on a sprint by sprint basis and most of us just book our weeks according to our tickets/tasks but forget to include things such as:
— Meeting’s times.
— Next sprint preparation tasks.

Factor in all protocol meetings and non-regular meetings that might pop-up during the week.

Add the end of the sprint, when we sum up all the time we did not estimated but end up using due different factors, we notice that is a sizeable amount of time.
Because of this sometimes certain tasks are not completed hence spillovers happen.

This can be avoided if proper estimation is done in the first place.

How to solve this?
Action and Reaction can’t be measured 100% accurate but we can learn from previous sprints and try to estimate an average time spent on such tasks.
On a scenario where the sprint is two weeks, while planning if your capability is of 10 points, make sure to leave free space to be able to use that time for tasks of next sprint,
review backlog, create user stories and of course include the protocol meetings inside this time.

Estimate the meetings & other tasks.

Each passing sprint the team will be able to understand and apply better this pattern, which lead to less spillovers leading to a healthier sprint.

Creating a buffer during the planning session will lead us to not only have room to work on valuable tasks for the next sprint but also use that time when an unexpected event comes out.

That’s at least how this Engineer believes it.
Have another opinion? Feel free to reach out.