Excellent article Maarten Dalmijn. I am a huge fan of intent based leadership. davidmarquet.com is another great resource on that topic. I liked your example of how beginning vs. good vs. great teams plan. It can be an indicator of a team’s maturity. I say it can because I think it is also an indicator of the broader organization’s maturity.

One of the challenges I have run into with teams trying to use a unified sprint goals is that it can be difficult to do when the authority for prioritization rests with multiple stakeholders rather than with the PO. Quite often the stakeholder’s objectives are not aligned so you end up with sprint plans consisting of disparate items.

You can still take an intent based approach to planning those different items, but the benefit gets watered down pretty quickly since you don’t have a singular focus for the team. It is also not addressing the core issue so you are putting the cart before the horse.

My point is that improving your planning is sometimes not w/in the control of the team and will require that you get your stakeholders enrolled in that effort if you want to make real progress. Ideally the PO should have the authority, but when that isn’t the case the team needs determine how to get the people that are constraining their improvement on board.