Sprint Planning Scenario — Collocations in Context
5 exercises — read the scenario and answer questions about which collocations fit the context and why.
Scenario: During sprint planning, the team estimates story points, commits to deliverables, grooms the backlog, flags blockers, and ships features at the end of the sprint.
Planning collocations: estimate story points, groom the backlog
Commitment language: commit to deliverables, flag blockers
Delivery: ship features, carry over, deploy to production
0 / 5 completed
1 / 5
"Estimates story points" — what does this collocation describe?
"Estimate story points" — the core Agile planning collocation.
Story points are a unit of relative effort, not time. The team estimates them — the verb is always estimate, never "count" or "assign marks".
Common estimation methods:
Planning poker — each team member votes simultaneously with cards (Fibonacci: 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13...)
T-shirt sizing — XS, S, M, L, XL
Three-point estimation — optimistic, most likely, pessimistic
Collocations around story points:
estimate story points ✅
assign story points ✅ (acceptable)
vote on story points ✅ (during planning poker)
reestimate / adjust story points ✅
The noun form is also used as a modifier: story-point estimate, point total for the sprint. Knowing this vocabulary signals fluency in Scrum and SAFe environments.
2 / 5
"Commits to deliverables" — in Agile, what does this mean?
"Commit to deliverables" — a collocation with two meanings in tech.
The verb commit is famously ambiguous in software engineering:
Git commit — save a snapshot of code changes to the repository
Commit to something — make a promise or pledge (general English, used in Agile)
In sprint planning, commit to deliverables uses the second meaning: the team collectively agrees to deliver specific items by the sprint end. In classic Scrum this was called a "sprint commitment"; modern Scrum uses "sprint goal" and "forecast" to reduce pressure.
"Groom the backlog" — the collocation for keeping your backlog healthy.
Backlog grooming (officially renamed backlog refinement in Scrum 2011+) is a recurring ceremony where the team:
Review existing items — are they still relevant?
Refine user stories — add acceptance criteria, break epics into stories
Re-prioritise — reorder items based on current business value
Estimate — assign story points to unestimated items
The verb groom comes from the idea of maintaining and tidying — like grooming a garden. It is still widely used informally despite the official rename.
Related collocations:
refine the backlog ✅ (official Scrum term)
prioritise the backlog ✅
prune the backlog ✅ (remove stale items)
split a story ✅ (break a large story into smaller ones)
A well-groomed backlog means sprint planning is fast and smooth.
4 / 5
"Flags blockers" — what is a blocker and why do you "flag" it?
"Flag a blocker" — surfacing impediments in Scrum.
A blocker (also called an impediment in Scrum) is anything stopping a developer from completing their work: a missing API key, a dependency on another team, unclear requirements, a broken environment.
To flag something means to mark it for attention — like raising a flag. In standup meetings, flagging a blocker means explicitly stating it so the Scrum Master can act:
"I'm blocked on the auth service — I need credentials from the DevOps team."
Related collocations:
raise a blocker ✅
surface an impediment ✅
call out a blocker ✅ (informal)
remove a blocker / resolve an impediment ✅ (Scrum Master's role)
be blocked on X ✅ — "I'm blocked on the API integration"
Never hide blockers — Scrum explicitly expects them to be surfaced daily.
5 / 5
"Ships features" — in sprint context, which best describes this collocation?
"Ship features" — the collocation for delivering working software.
To ship in software means to release to production — to put working code in front of real users. It comes from physical product shipping. The core Agile principle is: ship working software frequently, not just documentation.
Collocations with ship:
ship a feature ✅ — deliver a specific feature to production
ship a release ✅ — release a versioned build
ship to production ✅
ship it ✅ — informal: deploy and release
The Agile sprint ends with a sprint review (or demo) where the team demonstrates what was shipped. Incomplete items are carried over to the next sprint, not "cancelled".
Related vocabulary: deploy (technical act of putting code on servers), release (making it available to users), ship (the full act — deploy + release + it works for users). In practice all three are used interchangeably in team communication.