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I am a product owner and I am helping setup a themed sprint. To be clear, by themed I mean all the users stories are related or cluster around a common goal. I still have other stories that don't work well in the theme that I want to include. The problem is that when I fragment the vision of a sprint we don't work as well. Any suggestions?

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Agile vernacular is so bizarre. –  Kirk Woll Nov 19 '10 at 3:33
Hire a fantasy writer - they usually have great suggestions for how to justify non sequiturs. –  jball Nov 19 '10 at 3:34

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First of all, you and your Team yourself can answer this question, because only you and your Team have the most knowledge about your situation. I know you wish there was a Scrum Manual where you could refer to some page and get the answer but you have to be factual - Scrum's simple framework never suggests that you have themed Sprints. In fact it suggests that the PO prioritize the uncommitted Backlog list of user stories based on their value and ROI, irrespective of themes, as long as the stories follow the I.N.V.E.S.T Principle, and prioritized periodically. Not that there is something wrong with theming, but if it is not working for you or your Team then you have to adapt to something new, that works for you and the Team. Here are some basic suggestions from my side:

Taking a leaf out of another members post I can say that you and your Team, need an ingredient, which is called "Courage"

  1. The SM of the Team, along with you, needs to have the Courage to use the "Inspect and Adapt" principle to find out why fragmenting is not working for the Team.

  2. As long as the Product Backlog is "ready" before you go into Sprint Planning, The Team needs to have Courage to trust you, the PO, in prioritizing the work for them, irrespective of their own wish or desire or way of thinking.

  3. If fragmented Sprints is what will bring most value, then you as the PO need to have the Courage to talk openly to the Team during the Retrospective about why fragmented Sprints is the way to go, and we need to make it work until you guys find an adapted way of working in that fashion.

  4. Lastly Everyone i.e. The Team, the SM and you need to gather the facts and notes from the above discussions, and come to a common consensus and have the courage to try it until you achieve your goals.

Keep in mind, all this needs to be done within the simple Scrum Framework rules stated in the Scrum Guide.

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If you have main vision of the sprint it doesn't mean that you can't include user story which is not part of that vision. User stories are included mainly by their business priority not by their theme. So if you have user story with higher priority than your themed stories you should include it. In my opinion, themed sprints make sence only if priorities reflect splitting user stories into themes.

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