DV-13
Sprint Goal Not Defined
Discipline
Default severity: medium
ProcessMetricsQuality
What it detects
A sprint has no sprint goal text — the sprint has a list of items but no articulated purpose. Teams without sprint goals cannot make scope trade-off decisions mid-sprint.
Detection formula
IF sprint.goal IS NULL OR LENGTH(sprint.goal) \< config.discipline.min_sprint_goal_length // default: 20 chars THEN FLAG Apply only to sprints that are active or recently completed (within config.discipline.sprint_goal_lookback_sprints)Examples in practice
- Assignee, field, hierarchy, or sprint hygiene rules are violated on active work.
- Issues miss mandatory fields or ownership while still in progress.
- A team shows a sprint has no sprint goal text while min sprint goal length is set to 20 chars.
Suggested response
Enforce assignee, field, hierarchy, and sprint hygiene rules your team agreed on.
Coaching playbook
Symptom
A sprint has no sprint goal text — the sprint has a list of items but no articulated purpose. Teams without sprint goals cannot make scope trade-off decisions mid-sprint.
Why it matters
When "Sprint Goal Not Defined" keeps appearing, the team is signalling a repeatable process gap. Left unexamined, the pattern hides where work really stalls and makes improvement metrics harder to trust.
What you can achieve
Enforce assignee, field, hierarchy, and sprint hygiene rules your team agreed on.
Facilitation questions
- What system change would stop "Sprint Goal Not Defined" from firing again?
- What do the cited issues have in common — same root cause or same workaround?
- Who owns the two-week experiment and how will we verify on the next import?
Run this rule against your own tracker data with Flow Analyzer.