Scrum Basics: Scrum Meetings

Welcome back to part three of our Scrum Basics Series which deals with Scrum Meetings. Most of these meetings you might have already noticed on the Scrum Framework Picture of my post What is Scrum.

So let’s jump right into Scrum Meetings:

Sprint Planning I

This meeting takes place right at the beginning of a Sprint. Participants are the Development Team, the Product Owner (PO), the Scrum Master (SM) as well as sometimes relevant stakeholders of the product that is currently developed.

The goal of this meeting is to create the Sprint Backlog from the Product Backlog.

The workflow is as follows:

1. The PO presents the Product Backlog to the team.
2. The team can ask questions to understand the tickets in the Backlog.
3. If required, the team adds estimations to tickets that are not yet estimated.
4. The team decides how many tickets they are able to develop within in the next Sprint.
5. The team commits to solve all tickets on the Sprint Backlog within the next Sprint.

Desired outcome:

• Common understanding of the stories.
• Commitment to the stories on the Sprint Backlog as well as the Sprint Goal.

Sprint Planning II

This meeting takes place right after Sprint Planning I (the coffee break between both is a MUST :-)). Participants are the Development Team and the SM. The PO is not required, but should be available if questions come up.

The workflow is as follows:

1. Talk about the tickets (one after another).
2. Write down all tasks to be done.
3. Talk about technical constraints.

Desired outcome:

• Each ticket broken down into manageable tasks with less than a day effort.
• Each team member has understood what is required from them to achieve the Sprint Goal.

Daily Standup

The Daily Standup (also called Daily Scrum) takes place every day at the same time, usually in the morning or before lunch. It has a maximum timeframe of 15 minutes. Participants are the Development Team, the PO and the SM. The 15 minutes should be used by the team to synchronise themselves, plan their to do’s until the next day and find out blockers. It’s NOT a reporting session for the PO or the SM.

The workflow is pretty easy: each team member answers the following questions:

1. What did I do since the last Daily?
2. What will I do until the next Daily?
3. What is blocking me?

To keep the focus on these three questions and make sure the Daily takes only 15 minutes, some teams pass around tokens (see picture above).

Desired outcome:

• Everyone is up to date.
• Each team member knows what the others are doing and whom they might need to support.
• Scrum Board is up to date.

Sprint Review

At the end of each Sprint the Review will take place. Participants are not only the Development Team, SM and PO, but also stakeholders as well as other interested guests. In the Review the Development Team shows what they have developed during the last Sprint. The goal is to inform everyone of what has been achieved and receive feedback for the developed parts of the product.

The workflow is as follows:

1. The Team presents the finished Tickets – and really only finished things are shown, no only half developed or not yet tested tickets!
2. The Team gets feedback that is important for the further development.

Desired outcome:

• Common understanding of what has been achieved.
• Everyone was able to give feedback to the team.

Retrospective

The Retrospective is the last meeting of the Sprint. It takes place after the Review and before the Planning of the next Sprint. Participants are the Development Team, the SM and normally, but not always, the PO. The goal of this meeting is to improve the team performance.

It can have different workflows, but the one taught by the Scrum gurus Diana Larsen and Esther Derby is the one mostly used and I found it quite effective myself:

1. Set the stage: get the developers head away from the problem they were just trying to solve and into the Retrospective. Mostly also used to find out about the mood in the team.
2. Gather data: what went well/wrong in the Sprint?
3. Generate insight: find out what blocks the team most and then dig deeper until you find the real source of the problem.
4. Decide what to do: setup the action plan. How will the team solve the problem within the next Sprint?
5. Close the Retrospective: reflect on the Retrospective itself. This is feedback for the SM to improve this meeting.

Desired outcome:

• List of actions for improvement.

The PO is normally involved in this meeting, since they are part of the Scrum Team. However, sometimes they are still seen as a leading position and therefore could be “the elephant in the room”. Then it is good to do a Retrospective without them from time to time to make it easier for team members to talk openly. In general there should be no other guests in this meeting as some topics are only meant for the team to hear.

Backlog Refinement

The Backlog Refinement takes place during the Sprint, some days before the next Sprint Planning. Participants are the Development Team, SM, PO and sometimes Stakeholders. The goal of this meeting is to present new tickets to the team and estimate them.

The workflow is as follows:

1. The PO presents new tickets to the team.
2. The team can ask the PO or, if present, also to the stakeholders about the tickets.
3. The tickets are estimated by the team. (More information about estimation techniques will follow in part four of this series.)

Desired outcome:

• Common understanding of the tickets to be estimated.

Community of Practice

The Community of Practice differs from all the above mentioned meetings. It’s not bound to a Sprint and includes several Scrum Teams. Participants here are members of different Scrum Teams, which are working in the same field of expertise. In this meeting they can discuss topics from their field of expertise and e.g. set cross-team rules. This is especially important if several Scrum Teams are working on one product. Groups with the same expertise could be e.g. backend developers, designers or testers.

Scrum of Scrums

Like the Community of Practice, the Scrum of Scrums is a meeting outside the Sprint and outside the Development Team. It includes representatives from each Scrum Team and is set up to talk about topics that concern several Scrum Teams. It should clarify cross-team problems and remove dependencies between the teams.

Related posts

• Scrum Basics: What is Scrum?
• Scrum Basics: Scrum Roles
• Scrum Basics: Estimating
• Scrum Basics: Principles and Values
• Scrum Basics: Practicing it