New from UX Empathizer: The Human-Centered Sprint Planning Playbook
Turn vague stories into user-centered goals.
In agile teams, sprint planning can sometimes feel like a race against the clock. A handful of stories, a quick point estimate, and suddenly you're off to the races. But here's the catch: speed without empathy often leads to features that miss the mark.
At UX Empathizer™, we believe sprint planning should be more than ticket triage. It should be an intentional ritual ...one where teams align not just on what to build, but why it matters to the people using it.
That's why we created the Human-Centered Sprint Planning Playbook, a toolkit designed to help PMs, UX generalists, engineers, and product owners embed empathy directly into backlog refinement and sprint planning.
What This Playbook Helps You Do
- Transform vague tasks into actionable, user-centered goals
- Replace guesswork with UX-informed story criteria
- Align faster while shipping smarter, more meaningful features
- Create repeatable rituals that bring clarity to every sprint
What's Inside the Playbook?
This isn't a theory-laden PDF... it's a practical, plug-and-play system:
- UX Acceptance Criteria Template: Go beyond "works as expected" to "feels right for the user." These prompts help teams define success from the user's perspective.
- Persona-Based User Story Examples: Replace generic stories with context-rich examples that reflect real-world goals, constraints, and motivations.
- UX-Informed Definition of Ready/Done: Add clarity to when work is actually ready to start ...and when it's truly done.
- Opportunity Backlog Template: Help your team log, cluster, and refine opportunities from a user-first lens ...perfect for strategic backlog refinement.
- Empathy Prompts for Planning Boards: Bring humanity to every sticky note or sprint board with just-in-time reflection prompts.
- Product managers tired of last-minute guesswork
- Engineers looking to build with more clarity
- UX generalists supporting agile teams
- Dual-role founders and product owners doing it all
Who This Is For
This playbook is built for anyone bridging product and user experience, whether UX is your full-time job or just part of your role.
Perfect for:
Why It Matters
Too often, agile rituals prioritize velocity over value. But when planning becomes purely technical, the user gets left behind ...and teams end up solving internal problems instead of external ones.
The Human-Centered Sprint Planning Playbook shifts the focus from just shipping to shipping what matters.
Because the real Definition of Done?
It's not when a ticket closes.
It's when the user succeeds.
Ready to Make Agile More Empathetic?
The Human-Centered Sprint Planning Playbook is available now.
Lightweight. Flexible. Built for real teams solving real problems.
Explore the Playbook & Purchase. Browse the UX Empathizer Toolkit: www.uxempathizer.com
Better sprints don't start with better estimates. They start with better questions.
