Daily Scrum

Daily Scrum, also known as Daily Stand-up meeting (I know it’s not really is but in most cases, we can use it interchangeably), is to inspect progress toward the Sprint Goal and adapt the Sprint Backlog as necessary.

The Daily Scrum is a 15-minute event and this doesn’t change when Sprint length changes. To reduce complexity, it is held at the same time and place every working day of the Sprint.

Only the Developers are required to join this meeting. If the Product Owner or Scrum Master are optional and they can join to update the Sprint progress and provide clarification if needed.

The purpose of Daily Scrums is to improve communications, identify impediments, promote quick decision-making, and consequently eliminate the need for other meetings.

During the daily scrum, each team member answers the following three questions:

• What did you do yesterday?
• What will you do today?
• Are there any impediments in your way?

Daily Scrum pitfalls:

• It is used as a problem-solving or issue resolution meeting. It is not. Issues that are raised are taken offline and usually dealt with by the relevant subgroup immediately after the meeting.
• Using the meeting as a status update: The main objective of this meeting is for the development team to answer their three questions so that they can make any needed adjustments to keep the sprint goal intact.

Sprint Review

The Sprint Review happens at the end of each sprint to inspect the outcome of the Sprint and determine future adaptations. Generally, the Scrum Master facilitates the sprint review, and the product owner presents the results of their work to key stakeholders and progress toward the Product Goal is discussed.

Therefore, the participants of a Sprint Review include:

• Scrum Master as the host/facilitator
• Product owner
• Developers
• Related stakeholders: Each sprint we may released different features that interest different groups of stakeholders. Hence, it’s important to involve the right people so they feel engaged.

This event is timeboxed to a maximum of four hours for a one-month Sprint. For shorter Sprints, the event is usually shorter. Due to the variety of participants, it’s a little hard to set the time for this meeting so the meeting time might changes from sprint to sprint.

During the event, the Scrum Team and stakeholders review what was accomplished in the Sprint and what has changed in their environment. Based on this information, attendees collaborate on what to do next. Here is a general agenda of a Sprint Review meeting:

• Reviewing the goal for the sprint
• Demonstrating new features implemented during the sprint
• Feedback from the stakeholders
• Discussing work not yet accomplished
• Identifying risks and impediments
• Looking ahead to the next sprint, using the top lines from the product backlog

By the end of the Sprint Review  Meeting, revisions should be made to the Product Backlog to better define probable backlog items for the next Sprint session. The Product Backlog can be adjusted completely to introduce new opportunities.

Sprint Retrospective

Sprint Retrospective is an event held at the end of a sprint to improve quality and effectiveness, which demonstrates the Inspection & Adaptation pillars. In this meeting, the whole Scrum team should participate.

The purposes of this meeting are:

• Examine how the current sprint went in term of people, relationships, processes, and tools.
• Identify and order what went well.
• Do the same with things that didn’t go well.
• Identify potential improvements.
• Create a plan for implementing improvements to the way the Scrum team accomplishes its work.

The questions to be asked:

• What went well in the sprint? Success in a sprint can be analyzed by looking at what was done differently to achieve it; who contributed to it and how; and what skills, training, or knowledge made a difference. The team might apply the same thing in the future sprints to achieve the similar success.
• What went wrong in the sprint? The point is not to penalize anyone but to avoid making the same mistakes in the future.
• How should the next sprint play out? This will determine corrective actions to take in the next sprint, preventing the same mistakes from occurring, and making successful actions a repeatable outcome.

The Sprint Retrospective concludes the Sprint. It is timeboxed to a maximum of three hours for a one- month Sprint. For shorter Sprints, the event is usually shorter.

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