Schoolhouse Rock, Sprint Goals, and Splitting Strategies

Lessons from Conjunction Junction

If you remember Schoolhouse Rock, you likely remember Conjunction Junction. That catchy song taught us about what the conjunctions and, but, and or do. They connect multiple ideas into one sentence.

That lesson turns out to be incredibly useful when thinking about Sprint Goals and how we split work.

Sprint Goals Should Not Have Conjunctions

A Sprint Goal represents a single, shared outcome for the team. When conjunctions appear, they often signal that the Sprint is trying to pursue more than one purpose. Consider the cost of context switching and how that impacts the team’s ability to achieve their Sprint Goal.

Examples:

• Improve onboarding and redesign the dashboard

• Release reporting but address performance issues

• Enable self service or provide manual workarounds

Each conjunction reveals competing or parallel intent. That makes it harder for teams to prioritize, negotiate scope, or adapt when the Sprint does not go exactly to plan.

If a Sprint Goal needs a conjunction to make sense, it is probably not one goal. It is several goals awkwardly tied together.

Strong Sprint Goals are simple enough to say in one breath and clear enough that trade offs become obvious. This supports focus and cohesion.

Conjunctions Are Signals for Where to Split Work

While conjunctions weaken Sprint Goals, they are extremely helpful during backlog refinement.

Whenever a story or feature contains and, but, or or, it usually contains multiple behaviours or value points that can be split.

For example:

• As a user, I can upload a file and validate its contents

  This can be split into uploading first, then validation
  

• The system saves changes but warns me if data is missing

  Saving behaviour and warning behaviour are separate concerns
  

• Support CSV or Excel uploads

  Each format is an independent slice of value

Conjunctions highlight natural boundaries for splitting. They point directly to decisions, behaviors, or outcomes that can stand on their own and be delivered incrementally.

Schoolhouse Rock Rocks at Focus

Each Schoolhouse Rock episode focused on a single concept. Conjunction Junction did not attempt to teach nouns, verbs, and adjectives at the same time.

Sprint Goals should work the same way. One clear theme. One measurable direction.

Stories can be split into smaller pieces as long as each one still contributes meaningfully to that goal. Each story should be something the team can learn from, demonstrate, or validate by the end of the Sprint.

Rock Your Next Sprint Planning and/or Refinement session

Try this in your next planning or refinement session:

• Ensure Sprint Goal contains no conjunctions

• Aim for exploring splitting opportunities for backlog items containing conjunctions

If you remove the conjunction and the sentence still makes sense, you are likely closer to a well formed goal or story.