5 collocation exercises on sprint planning and refinement.
0 / 5 completed
1 / 5
Before planning, the team meets to ___ the backlog.
Teams refine the backlog — clarifying, splitting and estimating upcoming items so they are ready for a sprint. This ceremony is literally called backlog refinement (formerly grooming). The verb is fixed: refine the backlog. Tidy out, sharpen up and cleanse are not idiomatic in Scrum. Good refinement means stories are well-understood and estimated before planning, so the planning meeting runs smoothly and the team can commit with confidence.
2 / 5
During planning, developers ___ a story.
You estimate a story, usually in story points using techniques like Planning Poker. The collocation estimate a story (or estimate the effort) is standard agile vocabulary. Guess off and rate down are not used; price up belongs to sales, not engineering. Accurate estimation helps the team understand capacity and decide how much work to pull into the sprint without overcommitting.
3 / 5
At the end of planning, the team ___ a sprint.
The team commits to a sprint — agreeing on the set of stories they believe they can complete. The fixed phrasing is commit to a sprint or commit to the goal. Promise at, vow for and pledge on are not collocations. This commitment is a shared agreement, not a contract, and it gives the sprint a clear, achievable goal that the daily standup tracks progress against.
4 / 5
If capacity allows mid-sprint, the team may ___ extra work.
When a team finishes early, they pull in additional items from the backlog. The phrasal verb pull in work (or pull in a story) reflects the pull-based nature of agile flow. Drag up, haul on and tug over are wrong. Pulling in work should be deliberate — the next-highest-priority refined item — rather than grabbing whatever is convenient, to keep the sprint focused.
5 / 5
Unfinished work moves to the next sprint when you ___ it.
Incomplete stories carry over into the following sprint. The phrasal verb carry over describes work that was committed but not completed. Push off implies avoidance, roll out means to release, and drop forward is not idiomatic. Frequent carry-over is a signal worth discussing in the retrospective, as it may indicate over-commitment or estimation problems that the team should address.